Bitcoin Gold is a cryptocurrency based on the original Bitcoin blockchain. As the name suggests, this is a fork of the very first digital coin. It is a soft fork – that is, to create and run the crypt, the open source Bitcoin code was copied with some changes.
The new cryptocurrency project was officially launched on October 25, 2017. On this day, the developers of Bitcoin Gold BTG copied the Bitcoin blockchain and subsequent blocks began to be generated in their own network. What is the meaning of this fork, and what are the prospects for gold Bitcoin in 2021?
Bitcoin Gold features
The emergence of Bitcoin Gold was preceded by another fork – Bitcoin Cash. Apparently, the cryptocurrency developers decided to play on a well-known name, because many cryptocurrencies that appeared long before the new Bitcoins are also forks of the original network, but at the same time have more unique names.
The person representing the Bitcoin Gold cryptocurrency development team is Jack Liao from China. Like many of his compatriots, he became famous more in the field of mining than in creating revolutionary crypto opportunities.
Perhaps that is why affordable mining has become the main feature of BTG. After all, it’s not a secret for anyone that the current Bitcoin mining is the lot of powerful industrial ASIC farms, while the usual video cards (GPUs) have become completely ineffective.
hus, the “noble” goal of Jack Liao and his team is a popular Bitcoin with decentralized mining, available for mining to an average cryptocurrency user. To implement this feature of confirmation of work, the Equihash hashing algorithm is used. It is optimized specifically for GPU mining and is not compatible with ASIC processors.
At the very beginning, the developers announced the launch date for the mining network – November 1, 2017. However, the system was not brought to mind, so the network worked for some time only in test mode. The long-awaited launch of BTG mining took place on the night of November 12-13, 2017.
Bitcoin Gold mining
The complexity of Bitcoin gold allows you to mine coins using Nvidia and AMD video cards, but it is preferable to do this using the first option. The following Nvidia video card models are optimal for BTG mining:
- GTX 1060 (from $200);
- GTX 1070 (from $400);
- GTX 1080 (from $650).
Or more advanced video card models. It is highly desirable to have a powerful PC in terms of basic parameters and high-speed Internet. Before mining BTG, you also need to find a cold place to install the farm in order to reduce the thermal load on the video card cooled by the standard fans. After all, effective BTG mining requires almost uninterrupted operation of the farm.
To receive a reward, you need to create a Bitcoin Gold wallet – the corresponding address can be obtained on the bitcoin exchange Cryptex without verification or in a multicurrency wallet. The official website of Bitcoin Gold provides a list of pools for mining. There are two types of Bitcoin Gold pools:
- with personal reward;
- with shared reward.
A personal reward goes to the one whose farm was the first to solve the problem. The owner of this farm ultimately receives the mined coins from the current complexity in full. Such pools are worth choosing if the farm has high capacity to compete successfully. The more powerful the farm, the higher the chance that it will be the one who will solve the calculations.
The shared reward goes to all participants in the pool, in proportion to the capacity of their farms. This option is best suited for small budget home farms, since regardless of who from the pool solved the calculations, the reward will be shared among the participants.
After selecting the pool and downloading the software, copy the Bitcoin Gold wallet address to the appropriate section. The pools also have settings that allow you to set the minimum amount of reward accrued by the pool. When setting this parameter, you should consider the technical capabilities of your farm.
To start mining, you need to download a miner with Equihash technology support. The software is able to determine the parameters of the video card itself and set the appropriate settings for mining. In the created bat-file, write the server address, port, username, etc. Mining can be started and monitored in the miner’s software window.
Bitcoin Gold rate and prospects in 2021
BTG trading started in October 2017 on cryptocurrency exchanges at about $100 per coin. The maximum was achieved on November 11 of 2017, before the official launch of crypto mining. Then the cost of one coin reached 422 dollars.
With the increased flow of Bitcoin gold transactions in just a few days, the BTG rate dropped by more than 2 times, and at the beginning of 2018 it turned out to be in a range that is relevant to this day. In 2020, the cost of one BTG coin ranged from $5 to $15.
If you look at the Bitcoin Gold rate chart, you can trace the typical exchange dynamics of a cryptocurrency with volatility in the middle range. Nowadays, BTG is interesting for miners with video cards, who do not consider long positions in this cryptocurrency and in fact immediately sell the mined coins.
The other side of BTG is speculative market interest. In short-term transactions, Bitcoin Gold is actively used, and pumping and dumping schemes are quite clearly traced. There are no special prerequisites for a significant growth in this in 2021, as well as factors for its collapse, but the future growth may be followed by the original Bitcoin growth that we see in the past few weeks. The development team led by Jack Liao is actively supporting their project, but their reputation in the crypto world is not entirely perfect.
The daily volume of transactions with gold bitcoin exceeds $8.5 million. This is almost a 5.5 thousand times less than the original Bitcoin. Like the original Bitcoin, Bitcoin Gold has a limited supply of 21 million coins. Given the complexity of Bitcoin Gold mining, there are still several years before the last coin is mined, so interest from GPU miners in 2021 will not disappear, unless, of course, more profitable competitors in terms of mining on video cards appear.
