Bitcoin Gold in a Nutshell - Writeup
Bitcoin gold essentially wants to make mining easier and open it up for the masses. To do this, they plan on changing the proof of work algorithm from bitcoin's current SHA256 to something called an Equihash mining algorithm.
Bitcoin's SHA256 mining algorithm led to the creation of ASIC miners. These application specific integrated circuits (ASICs) are custom hardware created by a few companies. These chips allow people to mine for bitcoin much more efficiently than other methods and lets the companies who produce control a lot of the mining power.
Bitcoin gold wants to solve the proposed problem of mining centralization by allowing anyone to mine the cryptocurrency with a basic GPU graphics card, similar to the early days of Bitcoin.
Bitcoin Gold and the Hardfork
The proposal of such big changes to the consensus rules means that a hardfork will be required. Bitcoin gold will take a snapshot at block 491407. If you hold bitcoin at the time of the snapshot, you will get an equal amount of bitcoin gold. However, make sure you have personal possession of the bitcoin (eg. in a wallet where you own the private keys) as not all exchanges will recognise the cryptocurrency.
Bitcoin Gold Premine
Following the snapshot of block 491407, the blockchain is not opened to the public yet. During this time until Nov 1st, the developers will premine the blockchain themselves. Each block will have a reward of 12.5 BTG and there are reports of 8000 blocks being premined.
The bitcoin gold team have stated that the premine will amount to less than 0.5% of the total bitcoin supply and that they will use the premined coins to mainly fund future development.
Reactions to Bitcoin Gold
One thing to take from this is that it may open the floodgates to future forks of bitcoin. Bitcoin cash showed that this was possible and bitcoin gold is taking it even one step further.
There was also controversy regarding the premine. People are still unsure of how the funds will be used and if the developers will keep to their word.
And regarding bitcoin gold's initial aim, Satoshi Labs CEO Marek Palatinus, who launched bitcoin's first ever mining pool, is skeptical the project will actually work to decentralize mining.
Resources:
Bitcoin gold website https://btcgpu.org/
Roadmap https://btcgpu.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/BitcoinGold-Roadmap.pdf
Article posted at http://boxmining.com/bitcoin-gold-nutshell/
Lol, Bitcoin Mobile actually sounds pretty catchy. On a more serious note, the major exchanges need to put a halt to these fork before the whole space becomes a giant joke.
I also find it quote funny that Bitfinex had no problem labeling Bitcoin Cash 'Bcash,' but decided to use 'Bitcoin Gold' to refer to the BTG token on their platform.
Political much?
The idea of decentralizing mining is a good one but there just seems to be too much skepticism about the developers and specifically the pre-mine for bitcoin gold to even have a chance of starting off on a good note
How are you going to decentralize mining while also giving your team the exclusive ability to start mining the coin before everyone else? lmao
It does not feel golden to me.
will bitcoin gold ever make you lots of money?
Its had so much bad press, a lot of people want to just dump it when its trade able on exchanges
Making bitcoin Asic resistant was the whole point of Litecoin. Been there, done that except this time they are parachuting existing bitcoin holders into their altcoin.
There are several obscure aspects of Bitcoin Gold that have not been clarified, but most coins have had similar beginnings. Steem for example, the presentation post in Bitcointalk is saturated with people who hate hatred against steem, accusing it of being simple SCAM. And the same goes for Bitcoin Gold, whoever accuses him of SCAM.
I for the moment do not lose sight of the BTG, but I do not think to risk that currency, until it is consolidated and this operation its code 100%.
Thanks for sharing @boxmining
regards
Screw bitcoin gold, I'm going for the altcoins. Absolutely not excited about this fork, how many more will come?
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Only a few days ago oaldamster (https://steemit.com/@oaldamster) and I where joking about it, and he said lets make a bitcoin diamond.
They all saying the same thing: "Our coin is what satoshi nakamoto had in mind." But there all lying, his idea was to have 1 blockchain with only 21 million bitcoins. He never said "Clone me as many as yo will"
He left it opensource so that we can improve the coin in the future, and not to tear it apart in 21 million pieces.
But thats only my opinion...