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Bitcoin Gold is now live
Bitcoin gold, the cryptocurrency fork of the bitcoin blockchainlaunched on November 12. The cryptocurrency fork was originally scheduled for a public launch over a week earlier, on November 1, but was delayed. The project will be supported by LightningASIC, a Hong Kong-based mining hardware vendor, as well as a community of developers around the world.
Bitcoin Gold to Limit Mining Chips
What is the difference between bitcoin gold and the original bitcoin? On the surface, the two will be quite similar. In fact, bitcoin gold aims to retain most of the properties of the original protocol. However, it will limit the use of some specialized chips for mining and make changes to the way transactions are added to a Blockchain. This new project is also an example of a so-called “airdropped” digital currency, as it will distribute new coins to all previous bitcoin holders who held the original cryptocurrency at the time of the split. These users will receive bitcoin gold until the date when the transaction ledger began to differ between the two cryptocurrencies.
Activities before the official launch
Bitcoin Gold has already been the subject of a fair amount of controversy, even before its launch.. It turns out that the development team has been mining blocks in isolation since the new blockchain network was formally created in October, setting aside a number of coins to support development. This move has drawn some criticism from others in the industry. The team behind this particular effort was hoping to send a signal of confidence to the broader cryptocurrency market. “We are extremely grateful to the community around the world who have contributed hash power to our testnets; in addition to patiently testing their own mining process, they are enabling exchanges, pools, wallet developers, and all other service operators to deploy and test their support of BTG so that the bitcoin gold community can have a full suite of services at launch,” the project’s developers said in a statement.
The launch of Bitcoin Gold is likely to shake up the rest of the cryptocurrency market, although the exact impact is something investors will have to wait and see. Exchanges will likely be monitoring the launch closely. For comparison, shortly after the release of bitcoin cash in Augusthas accumulated a market value of around $4 billion. Traders are likely to expect the possibility of a similar outcome in this case, although it is by no means guaranteed.