Review on Bitcoin Gold by Huseyn Akberov

Here it is me again and another Bitcoin prefixed crypto currency.

What is Bitcoin Gold?

Bitcoin Gold is a hard fork of the original open source cryptocurrency that was produced on October 24, 2017. Objective: The stated purpose of Bitcoin Gold is "to make Bitcoin decentralized again." Bitcoin Gold is one of the largest and most discussed Bitcoin forks.

On the surface, the idea of "decentralizing Bitcoin again" seems counterintuitive. Like all other cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin has been designed to be decentralized; It has nothing to do with any central bank, specific country, or government agency.

However, one of the main problems of Bitcoin that drove the development of Bitcoin Gold has nothing to do with the core issue issue. Rather, it is related to the mining process. Bitcoin Gold developers believe that by adopting a new algorithm for the mining process (in this case, the test algorithm called EquihashBTG), the new branch of the world’s most popular cryptocurrency by market capitalization will not be disproportionately favored Main mining business.

Understanding Bitcoin Gold

Bitcoin mining is a profitable but resource-intensive process. The most profitable mining companies are usually those that combine many mining equipment, each of which requires special and expensive equipment. People who try to mine Bitcoin on their own must invest a lot of money and time to create their own platform, otherwise they will get lost in the process because their computers cannot compete with professional platform systems. One of the main goals of

Bitcoin Gold is to change the algorithm for mining cryptocurrency, which means that the mining process on dedicated equipment cannot be performed faster than on a standard computer system.

Bitcoin Gold is not the first major branch of Bitcoin. Bitcoin Cash was forked from major cryptocurrencies on August 1, 2017. On November 15, 2018, the Bitcoin Cash hard fork split it into two currencies: Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin SV.

Distribution, protection, and transparency

In addition to the goal of “re-decentralizing” Bitcoin and making it easier for small miners to obtain digital assets for fairer and more efficient distribution, Bitcoin gold developers also focus on protection and transparency. Unlike other blockchains (including Bitcoin), Bitcoin Gold attempts to increase anonymity by not publishing transaction details or wallet addresses. As a free and open source community project, decentralization and transparency are the inherent expectations of the Bitcoin Gold community. However, threats from hackers and other malicious entities are an ongoing problem.

In the field of virtual currency, small test blockchains like Bitcoin Gold are particularly vulnerable to 51% attacks. Attackers try to control 51% or more of the computing power or blockchain hash rate. Although Bitcoin Gold claims that it has implemented additional security and protection measures from the date of release, such as full replay protection to help protect its customers’ accounts and currencies, the blockchain supported 3 51% attacks and multiple BTG wallet. robbery.

The most recent 51% attack occurred in January 2020. The first attack in January 2020 gave the attacker 1,900 BTG or $19,000; in the second attack, approximately 5,267 BTG or $53.00 was stolen. After losing 388,000 BTG (approximately US$18 million) in May 2018, the cryptocurrency exchange Bittrex chose to remove the Bitcoin Gold (BTG) blockchain. The first incident required Bitcoin Gold to update its mining algorithm to EquihashBTG.

The History of Bitcoin Gold: Launch and Controversy

The legacy of Bitcoin Gold has been controversial from the beginning. On the same day as the release in October 2017, BTG launched a large-scale DDoS attack on its cloud site, and within a few days after the release, miners accused one of the Bitcoin gold developers of increasing mining fees by 0.5%. This is hidden from the mining community. 2 There are also concerns that Bitcoin Gold’s security measures are not as strong as they originally claimed, and these flaws may make it more vulnerable to threats.

Similarly, when Bitcoin gold developers were considering listing on BTG, they used the so-called "postmine" after the launch, which refers to cryptocurrency exchanges. This is a retrospective mining of 100,000 coins after the fork. The way this happens is by rapidly mining about 8,000 blocks, the result of which is reserved as a kind of "donation" for the development and maintenance of the broader Bitcoin Gold network. 3 Approximately 5% of these 100,000 coins are set aside as a bonus for each of the six core team members. The remaining 95,000 coins are reserved to support the development of the BTG community ecosystem.

Coinbase did not release BTG to Bitcoin holders on its platform after its launch in October 2017. This action led to the plaintiff Daniel Archer filed a lawsuit against Coinbase on March 27, 2018, accusing Coinbase of breaching your contract Terms, especially negligence, conversion and breach of contract. The original ruling stated that the agreement between Coinbase and Archer does not contain any part that requires Coinbase to provide services for third-party cryptocurrencies. In August 2020, the Court of Appeal upheld the original court's summary ruling in support of Coinbase.

Availability of Bitcoin Gold on exchanges

As the examples of Bittrex and Coinbase have shown us, for all cryptocurrencies, one of the main factors that help determine short-term and long-term success is their availability on cryptocurrency exchanges. Users must be able to access the cryptocurrency on the exchange to be able to trade.

The cryptocurrency can also be obtained through more than 20 wallet services, including Trezor wallet, Ledger wallet, Exodus, Coinomi, Guarda, Freewallet, BTGWallet and Kasse. 5 According to the website, the cryptocurrency has been listed on more than 40 exchanges as of June 1, 2021, in 11 national currencies.