In 2009, Bitcoin (BTC) was introduced on the premise that everyone could participate in its mining process, which was the case until BTC gradually increased in value. As more people joined the train, the competition also increased effectively, which tipped the balance in the elite miner’s favor who had switched to a more sophisticated mining machine — the custom-built application-specific integrated circuit.
Powerful companies enjoyed different perks while using ASIC. As a result, the bitcoin industry became highly concentrated, which triggered the need for a change. BTC technology decided to review its fundamentals for reward by launching a process called “hard fork”.
What are the Bitcoin specialty ASICs?
Over the years, BTC faced several scalability issues, but Bitcoin Gold (BTG) was introduced to stabilize the unbalanced mining space in the bitcoin base. Before the introduction of the Bitcoin Gold, any individual could mine BTC with a simple GPU and earn a fair share of the GPU mining rewards without spending thousands of dollars on mining equipment. The BTG forks, which happened on October 24, 2017, aimed to displace miners by introducing a new algorithm less prone to the ASICs — restoring decentralization and independence.
Even though BTG changed the paradigm regarding cryptocurrencies by creating a network where individuals can be a miner using basic hardware, it is important to note that it is not a bitcoin competitor — like bitcoin cash. Instead, Bitcoin Gold seeks to compete with other anti-ASIC projects by offering opportunities to users who cannot afford expensive mining equipment to get back into the crypto space.
Interestingly, several news outlets gave a positive forecast regarding the future of the coin. For example, unlike 2020, Bitcoin Gold is predicted to rise continuously starting from 2021, albeit slowly and consistently, from an average of $8.24 in January to $9.7 in December 2021. Bitcoin Gold is also expected to rise to $12.87 in December 2022 and $16.01 in December 2023.
What is Bitcoin Gold worth?
During its introduction, BTG had an impressive start expected of new cryptocurrencies. The trend reached its peak in December 2017 when it was about $400 per BTG. Sadly, the price chart spiraled afterward, and it remained unimpressive for years.
BTG dropped further to $15-20 per BTG range in 2018. It became really worse in 2019 when it was $5 per BTG. The chart saw a few spikes in 2020 when it was $8-10 range which was not close to the usual rate.
Is Bitcoin Gold a good investment?
As the BTC technology becomes gradually outdated, developers are introducing new ways to improve the market cap system. Deemed a “friendly fork” by the developer, Bitcoin Gold is the new crypto developed in response to the demand for improvement, and the BTG offers a newer take on the classic crypto. Since Bitcoin was popular crypto, it seemed logical that Bitcoin Gold will replicate the success.
However, Bitcoin Gold is highly volatile. This means Bitcoin Gold has a high exchange risk, but if you can handle the volatility, BTG can offer amazing investment opportunities. Most importantly, learn to invest money that you can afford to lose.
Endeavor to carry out extensive research on crypto websites before investing in Bitcoin Gold as the currency tends to react strongly to certain events. For example, if news of security challenge comes out regarding the coin, the BTG price is likely to drop sharply. You can respond by investing more and short-selling at the right time. When you discover the price is about to hit bottom, you can act on this information by purchasing more and benefit from the increase and the decrease.
What other trading opportunity is available?
In addition to that, you can trade in Bitcoin Gold with an online broker. Trading with an online broker offers two options other than the wealth of information they’ll provide:
Buy: When you buy, you’ll earn money when cryptocurrencies price rises.
Short: When you short-sell, you still earn money when the prices fall.
As an investor, these investments simply mean that you can benefit from an increase and decrease in the coin price exchange, making it a more attractive project given that the price often increases and decreases dozens of percentage points daily. Btg presents you with a nice opportunity to invest and earn.
What is the difference between Bitcoin and Bitcoin Gold?
Bitcoin Gold is a bitcoin spinoff derived from bitcoin source code. It also retains the bitcoin transaction history meaning that an individual who owns bitcoins before the fork also owns a similar amount of BTG bitcoins. As the first decentralized cryptocurrency, BTC was plagued with several perceived flaws, i.e., the mining industry’s centralization securing and verifying bitcoin transactions.
Bitcoin gold aimed to solve this problem by replacing the SHA-256 GPU (Graphics processing units) mining algorithm existing in BTC with a different one called Equihash. This POW (proof of work) algorithm requires more computing and lightning power, which is made to render specialty ASICs-based optimization dysfunctional. Bitcoin Gold is designed to level the playing ground for the people and improve user experience so that anyone with powerful graphics processors GPUs can mine bitcoin gold on their PCS and possibly their phone.
What happened to Bitcoin Gold?
According to the news, unknown hackers recently compromised the cryptocurrency Bitcoin Gold in a theft that proves any bitcoin-like currency’s susceptibility to an attack. The network lost 388,000 in the sophisticated attack — the equivalent of $18 million — from cryptocurrency exchanges. The attack facilitated blockchain ledger manipulation and enabled people to spend the same digital coins more than one time. The attack was possible because of the low bitcoin hashpower —high hash power rate requires more players, and makes it incredibly difficult to stage an attack on the network.
Consequently, Bittrex, the popular cryptocurrency page, delisted bitcoin gold on their website when the bitcoin gold team refused to cooperate by paying for the damages. The 51% hashing attack was a setback aimed to sabotage the developer’s laid out project goal, but BTG offers decentralization and proper low fees, which other bitcoins lack, and they believe it is why ultimately BTG will prevail.
Conclusion
Although several challenges beset Bitcoin Gold, Alejandro Regojo, one of the co-creators, reiterates the developer’s goals in a newsletter to create a top-five market cap coin that creates an equal opportunity for everyone. Also, the team is determined to create a lightning network effect and a side chain that will help issue tokens so that companies will be able to build with the BTG blockchain in a similar way to bitcoins.
