Bitcoin gold update
It has been a remarkable first day of trading for the newly forked Bitcoin Gold (BTG). The platform’s website was greeted with a “massive” DDoS attack on Tuesday as the newly distributed token plunged.
Bitcoin Gold Declines Sharply
BTG was hit by sellers on day one, with prices falling more than 70% from their open. The cryptocurrency was last down 69% at $133, according to CoinMarketCap. Prices may have traded as high as $680, according to YObit.net.
Bitcoin Gold split from the Bitcoin blockchain around 2:20 a.m. when block 491,407 was mined. A snapshot of current BTC owners was taken during the fork to assign them a 1:1 ratio of the newly minted coin.
The BTG network is expected to launch in early November, according to the developers.
BTG Website Hit by Major Attack
Bitcoin Gold’s project developer team stated on Tuesday that its official website was hit by a “massive” DDoS tack. The website appears to be up and running at last check.
According to CCN, “Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks are fairly common against cryptocurrency projects, especially the controversial ones.”
Bitcoin Gold was one of the most controversial in recent memory. The developers behind the project raised eyebrows by refusing to share the open source code prior to the fork. Some observers said this was an immediate red flag. Bitcoin Gold wasn’t an ordinary fork since it was created in advance of the official launch. The development team is also said to have received 1% of the tokens as payment.
Bitcoin Gold is similar to other forks in one crucial way: it seeks to improve the existing protocol governing the blockchain. China-based miner Jack Liao initiated the fork in order to create an ASIC-resilient mining protocol. This essentially means eliminating ASIC miners from the system, thereby attracting more people to the cryptocurrency.
BTG is planning to distribute its tokens to anyone holding bitcoin when the fork occurred. Earlier this month, Japan’s bitFlyer announced it would be supporting the new protocol.
Featured image courtesy of Shutterstock.
Wow, I had no idea the distribution was happening so far from the official fork. Also the whole keeping 1%, how can they do that?
I'm also confused how one miner can initiate a fork of Bitcoin, I thought stuff like that was arrived at by consensus.
Really? I have no idea what an ASIC miner is and I'm guessing that's fairly representative of the population at large. Perhaps it will bring more miners to the currency.
So ultimately I guess my question is; is our beloved Bitcoin still the same?
Thanks for this very informative piece by the way; great way to start my day :-)
Cg
Thanks for reply...Quick synopsis on asic-
Application-specific integrated circuit chips (ASICs) are bitcoin mining hardware created solely to solve Bitcoin blocks. ... Consequently, ASIC Bitcoin mining systems can solve Bitcoin blocks much quicker and use less less electricity or power than older bitcoin mining hardware like CPUs, GPUs or FPGAs.