Bitcoin Gold Review
Too much time has passed since the Bitcoin Gold hard fork took a place in the crypto industry. In this fork event, a cryptocurrency has formed to change the Bitcoin mining process to an approach that prevents the cryptocurrency from being controlled by any groups At that time, several reasons pushed the crypto community to go through that fork event and shape the BTG cryptocurrency. But what is Bitcoin Gold’s hard fork, and what is the BTG value in 2020? Know everything about the BTG cryptocurrency with our in-depth Bitcoin Gold 2020 review and discover whether the BTG altcoin is slowly dying off – Or preparing for a comeback
What is BTG?
Bitcoin Gold (BTG), a cryptocurrency was formed through a fork of the BTC blockchain. While it was a significant fork event, many new crypto users may still don't know about and wonder what is Bitcoin Gold hard fork? Well, the Bitcoin BTG fork event was one of the most important Bitcoin events as we mentioned in our previous blog “5 Hard Forks You Need to Know” As a result of that fork, the BTG cryptocurrency was launched in October 2017 with the lead of Jack Liao - the CEO of Lightning ASIC and who have set the target of making Bitcoin decentralized again as the main aim of Bitcoin Gold. At first glance, it seems counterintuitive since Bitcoin is already decentralized, so what should that mean? And what is Bitcoin Gold used for? To illustrate, the community behind Bitcoin Gold was believed that a small group controlled the Bitcoin mining process through manufacture and distribution mining equipment. Some of that small group have allegedly engaged in prejudicial practices against individual miners and the entire Bitcoin network like influencing BTC prices. The forked coin (BTG) came up with a new consensus algorithm (called EquiHash) that enables anyone to engage in the bitcoin mining process, not just those who have sophisticated, expensive hardware (ASIC mining machines) Supporters of BTG believe that the cryptocurrency could be more decentralized by the Bitcoin Gold algorithm “Equihash” that supports regular miners with common GPUs over ASIC miners with their specialty equipment that tend to monopolize mining to a small group, which is a more in line with Satoshi’s original vision of “One CPU, one vote”.
Bitcoin Gold vs. Bitcoin
Similar to bitcoin, BTG has the same consensus algorithm "proof-of-work" and the Bitcoin Gold logo is similar to the one that native bitcoin has, as BTG was built on the Bitcoin protocol. Bitcoin Gold's blockchain has the entire transaction history of the Bitcoin blockchain until the fork date before Bitcoin holders had gotten a BTG amount that is equivalent to their BTC coins within the fork event. Then, the BTC and BTG blockchains both continue independently after the fork, and both cryptocurrencies have set 21 million as a total supply of the coins.
And similar to Bitcoin, the Bitcoin Gold transaction time is 10 minutes, which means; the BTG transaction takes almost 10 minutes to be confirmed after the coins have been transferred Yet the main difference between both is; the Bitcoin Gold blockchain uses a new mining algorithm called "EquiHash" instead of SHA 256 that is used by BTC. With the BTG algorithm (EquiHash), the cryptocurrency wouldn’t disproportionately prefer major mining processes Bitcoin Gold was never designed to overtake Bitcoin, unlike Bitcoin Cash, as it wanted to wrestle mining power away from those dominating the mining sector and hand it back to everyday amateur miners equipped with a GPU The BTG cryptocurrency that is maintained and supported by the Bitcoin Gold Organization has highlighted the decentralized nature of the bitcoin protocol, and its new algorithm has given several features to the BTG coin
The Bitcoin Gold Future
The team behind developing Bitcoin Gold believes that the cryptocurrency has to not only be fast with some features but also has to be essentially secure and decentralized. They seek to build an open, collaborative world as the BTG roadmap shows some development plans in progress. These plans include BTCPay Integration of the BTG Lightning Network, Schnorr Signatures, and the BTG Plasma Specification project which was held with high standards. And the BTG future may depend on whether these projects will succeed to garner any substantial traction in the Bitcoin community or not
Pros and Cons of Bitcoin Gold:
To sum up, here are the Bitcoin Gold Pros and Cons:
Pros
- BTG can be mined on common graphics cards (GPUs) which are available for most people instead of specialty ASICs
- Expanding the range of users who mine BTG prevents monopolizing the mining operations to a few big players.
- Decreasing the influence of large companies on the Bitcoin Gold market
- Stable prospects for BTG cryptocurrency
- More decentralization and independence for crypto money.
- BTG cryptocurrency also provides a fast, affordable, and secure way to transfer crypto money
- BTG cryptocurrency is more accessible as it is available on many exchange platforms
Cons
- The forked coin doesn't have big public support and failed to garner any substantial traction in the Bitcoin community. Yet the development team behind Bitcoin Gold is working in full swing to push BTG up by some projects in progress which give BTG the hope to grow in the future
- Bitcoin Gold suffered in May 2018 from an attack that left the cryptocurrency to lose 388,000 BTG coins from several cryptocurrency exchanges
How to mine BTG?
Mining is the most what distinguishes Bitcoin Gold from other cryptocurrencies, wherein anyone can start mining BTG gold coins with a mere computer backed by a graphics card (GPU), which is considered as a Bitcoin Gold mining machine. Other advantages of Bitcoin Gold mining are: easy to set-up, no expensive equipment needed, many pool options, a stable ecosystem, and truly decentralized If you wonder about the best Bitcoin Gold GPU, you may have to choose the GTX 1080Ti 11GB card from Nvidia or the RTX 2070 8Gb card from AMD
A Quick Guide for Mining Bitcoin Gold (BTG)
Within different operating systems and/or with several different miner options, here are how to mine BTG:
- Pic one from several choices for a miner program. Whether you are looking for the best Bitcoin Gold mining software or best miner for Bitcoin Gold mining pools you can benefit from suggestions in the BTG forum guidepost here. You might need to use the BTG calculator for each miner program to help you choose the best miner for Bitcoin Gold coins
- Download the latest version of the miner program you have picked up, and unzip to see the required files. In case you have chosen a mining pool such as BTG minergate (the best pool Bitcoin Gold can be mined with), you can use their BTG mining calc to calculate how much BTG would you get by mining on the pool
- Follow the miner option instructions to set up and run.
Where to Buy BTG?
If you are planning to buy some BTG coins, here are the best suggestions to do:
- Buy BTG through Crypto exchanges Crypto exchange is a platform where you can buy/sell or trade a cryptocurrency for another asset. Being a hard fork of native Bitcoin, allow the BTG coin to be listed on the majority of crypto exchanges. However, most exchanges allow you to buy/sell BTG only within trading pairs such as the Bitcoin Gold Ethereum pair (BTG ETH) or against Tether as BTG USDT The most popular exchange platforms that support BTG trading are Binance, Bitfinex, Huobi, HitBTC, Coinegg, Bit-Z, etc
- Buy BTG via Credit Cards with cryptocurrency exchange services Cryptocurrency exchange services are a more simple and user-friendly approach from Crypto Exchanges as they are essentially focused to make crypto easy to access
For instance, you can use instant ChangeNOW exchange service to buy BTG coins with credit cards or another payment method wherein many options are available for you to help you buy or sell over 170 cryptocurrencies to other wide range of assets in a fast, secure, and simple way. The service provides you with an approach to buy Bitcoin Gold coins swiftly and safely with minimal authentication procedures
4 Steps to Buy BTG with ChangeNOW:
- Step 1. From the ChangeNOW home page, choose a currency, enter the deposit amount, and after the amount of BTG coins, you will get automatically calculated, click on Buy.
- Step 2. Enter your BTG address. (where you would like to receive BTG coins)
- Step 3. Click on the confirm button after checking the information.
- Step 4. Complete the purchasing process and you will receive your tokens immediately.
What is the Bitcoin Gold Wallet?
Bitcoin Gold Wallet is the place where you can store your BTG assets. You have a wide range of BTG wallet options. But before you jump on any crypto wallet, make sure that you have chosen a secure and reliable crypto wallet that is compatible with BTG coins. You can also pick one of our suggestions below:
- BTG Core Wallet: the official wallet that is available as a windows Bitcoin Gold wallet
- Crypto wallet services such as Trust Wallet, the secure, user-friendly wallet that supports a great variety of cryptocurrencies, which is available for Web, Android, and iOS. Or HTC Exodus, a multi-currency wallet that supports BTG cryptocurrency. You can also use the mobile app Bitcoin Gold wallet by freewallet
- Cold wallets: These wallets grant secure offline storage for your cryptocurrency assets and support multiple cryptocurrencies. Ledger Nano S is the most well-known cold wallet, but does Ledger Nano S support Bitcoin Gold coins? According to their official website, Nano Ledger Bitcoin Gold storage is supported, as it is listed on too many exchanges
- Crypto exchanges' wallets like Binance, HTC, Huobi, Gate.io, etc
Bottom line
With its new mining algorithm, Bitcoin Gold provides anyone the opportunity to participate in the mining process, which significantly increases the range of users who maintain the network. Hence, that ultimately leads to a more decentralized and secure cryptocurrency Yet Bitcoin Gold needs more than the decentralization and security to continue to grow, and most BTG investors could be those who believe in decentralization and seek to build an open, collaborative world. However, the team behind Bitcoin Gold has several plans to push BTG to grow and expand in the future, which are already in progress. But only time can tell us if their goals will happen or not. To learn more about BTG price prediction, please visit the following Bitcoin Gold post in our blog.
