What is Bitcoin Gold?
Bitcoin Gold emerged as a result of a hard fork of the original open-source cryptocurrency on October 24, 2017. While hard forks can occur for various reasons such as scaling issues and developer conflicts, Bitcoin Gold’s main aim was to decentralize bitcoin.
This goal sparked much discussion and led to Bitcoin Gold becoming one of the largest and most widely talked about bitcoin forks. At first glance, the idea of making bitcoin decentralized again may seem contradictory since bitcoin is designed to be decentralized by nature.
It is not controlled by any central bank, country, or government body. However, the main issue that prompted the development of Bitcoin Gold was not related to centralization, but with the mining process.
Bitcoin mining requires significant resources and special equipment, making it a profitable but expensive endeavor. In order to compete, many individuals join mining pools or invest a large amount of money and time in creating their own rigs.
This creates a disadvantage for amateur miners whose computers cannot compete with professional rigs. The developers of Bitcoin Gold sought to address this by implementing a new mining algorithm, known as Equihash-BTG, which would not favor large mining operations.
Bitcoin Gold is not the first hard fork of bitcoin. In fact, Bitcoin Cash had already forked off from the primary cryptocurrency on August 1, 2017. On November 15, 2018, a hard fork of Bitcoin Cash split it into two currencies – Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin SV. The emergence of Bitcoin Gold and other hard forks highlights the ongoing debates and developments in the world of cryptocurrency.
