What is the Bitcoin Gold Fork?
The crypto world has only just brushed the dust off the last Bitcoin fork, back at the start of August, ahead of which Bitcoin fell to sub-$2,000 levels from a June high of $2,976.41. We had heard plenty of speculation over the possible outcome, the worst case scenario being Bitcoin’s collapse with talk of Bitcoin holders seeing their Bitcoin values falling to zero. This sent jitters through the crypto world.
Things have certainly calmed since the fork, with Bitcoin surging to a September high of $4,909.11, before it fell following China’s decision to shut down Bitcoin exchanges and ban all initial coin offerings (ICOs).
So, while many will have been looking ahead to the much talked about November SegWit2x fork, where another split that could result to 3 versions of Bitcoin is anticipated, few have discussed or focused on this month’s Bitcoin Gold fork scheduled for implementation on 25th October, 2018.
So why is the need for another fork? The Bitcoin community is looking to completely decentralize the Bitcoin network that continues to be monopolized by the mining industry and a few miners within the mining community who have the majority of the hash power at present.On 25th October, Bitcoin is going to see another hard fork implemented that will result in a new cryptocurrency named Bitcoin Gold (BTG).
As we’ve seen with Bitcoin Cash in the summer, existing private keys holding Bitcoin balances will receive the same amount in Bitcoin Gold on 1st November; though as things stand, it may be a number of weeks before Bitcoin Gold will be tradable.
For now, Bitcoin Gold has been characterized as a friendly fork by the development team as the coin is considered to be complementary to Bitcoin. The key consideration is to block anticipated upgrades of Bitcoin through hard forks. Supporters of Bitcoin Gold hold the view that the best crypto engineers are working on Core and for this reason, Bitcoin Gold will try to follow Core as much as possible.
The Bitcoin Gold fork is another battle in the war between the mining cartel and Bitcoin’s core developers. The mining cartel is in search of even more hashpower and centralization, while Bitcoin’s core developers are looking to reverse the centralization that has been seen in recent years.
