Bitcoin Gold

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Bitcoin Gold
Ticker symbol	BTG
Development
Initial release	0.15.0.1 / 12 November 2017 (10 months ago) (2017-11-12)
Latest release	0.15.0.2 / 6 January 2018 (8 months ago) (2018-01-06)
Code repository	github.com/BTCGPU/BTCGPU
Development status	Active
Forked from	Bitcoin
Written in	C++, Qt
Operating system	Windows, OS X, Linux
Developer(s)	Bitcoin Gold Organization
Source model	Open source
License	MIT License
Website	bitcoingold.org
Ledger
Ledger start	3 January 2009 (9 years ago) (2009-01-03)
Timestamping scheme	Proof-of-work
Hash function	Equihash
Block reward	12.5 BTG (approximately to mid 2020), halved approximately every four years
Block time	10 minutes
Block explorer	BitcoinGold Explorer BTG EXPLORER BTGexp.com
Circulating supply	17,000,000 BTG (as of 26 April 2018[update]) [1]
Supply limit	21,000,000 BTG
Valuation
Market cap	$315,000,000 USD (as of 24 August 2018[update])

Bitcoin Gold is a distributed digital currency. It is a hard fork of Bitcoin, the open source cryptocurrency. The stated purpose of the hard fork is to restore the mining functionality with common Graphics Processing Units (GPU), in place of mining with specialized ASIC (customized chipsets), used to mine Bitcoin.

ASIC resistant GPU powered mining provides a solution, as this kind of hardware is ubiquitous, and anyone can start mining with a standard, off-the-shelf laptop computer.

Bitcoin Gold was hit by double-spending attack on May 18, 2018.^[2][3]

The fork[edit]

The hard fork occurred on October 24, 2017, at block height 491407.^[4][5] The Bitcoin Gold team used ‘post-mine’ - a mining of 100,000 coins after the fork had already occurred. The team did this via a rapid mining of approximately 8,000 blocks at 12.5 BTG per block. The bulk of premined coins have been placed into an ‘endowment’, and according to the developers will be used to grow and maintain the BTG ecosystem. However, of the 100K coins, some five percent were set aside as a bonus for the team, or about 833 coins for each of the six members.^[6]

Differences from Bitcoin[edit]

Bitcoin gold uses the memory hard equihash as proof-of-work algorithm instead of the sha-256.^[7] But for the rest, the project follows the guidelines of the Bitcoin core project.

May 2018 attack[edit]

In 2018 Bitcoin Gold (and two other cryptocurrencies) were hit a by a successful 51% hashing attack by an unknown actor.^[8] The attackers successfully committed a double spend attack on Bitcoin Gold, a forked cryptocurrency from Bitcoin in 2017. An amount of approximately $18.6 million USD worth of Bitcoin Gold was transferred to a cryptocurrency exchange (typically as part of a pair transaction in exchange of a fiat currency or another cryptocurrency) and then reverted in the public ledger maintained by consensus of Proof-of-Work by exercising a >51% mine power.^{[8][9][10][11][12]}

References[edit]

External links[edit]

• Official website
• Source code