Bitcoin Gold (BTG) is a

cryptocurrency A cryptocurrency (colloquially crypto) is a digital currency designed to work through a computer network that is not reliant on any central authority, such as a government or bank, to uphold or maintain it. Individual coin ownership record ...

which was created as a hard fork of

bitcoin Bitcoin (abbreviation: BTC; Currency symbol, sign: ₿) is the first Decentralized application, decentralized cryptocurrency. Based on a free-market ideology, bitcoin was invented in 2008 when an unknown entity published a white paper under ...

. The stated purpose of the hard fork is to make

mining Mining is the Resource extraction, extraction of valuable geological materials and minerals from the surface of the Earth. Mining is required to obtain most materials that cannot be grown through agriculture, agricultural processes, or feasib ...

on commonly available graphics cards economically viable. The cryptocurrency has been hit by two 51% hashing attacks, once in 2018 and once in 2020.

History

Bitcoin Gold hard forked from the bitcoin blockchain on October 24, 2017. The stated purpose of the hard fork was to change the proof of work

algorithm In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm () is a finite sequence of Rigour#Mathematics, mathematically rigorous instructions, typically used to solve a class of specific Computational problem, problems or to perform a computation. Algo ...

so that ASICs ( Application-Specific Integrated Circuits) which are used to mine bitcoin cannot be used to mine the Bitcoin Gold

blockchain The blockchain is a distributed ledger with growing lists of Record (computer science), records (''blocks'') that are securely linked together via Cryptographic hash function, cryptographic hashes. Each block contains a cryptographic hash of th ...

in the hopes that enabling mining on commonly available graphics cards would allow mining from a home PC. According to

Mashable Mashable is a Online newspaper, news website, digital media platform and entertainment company founded by Pete Cashmore in 2005. History Mashable was founded by Pete Cashmore while living in Aberdeen, Scotland, in July 2004. Early iterations o ...

the launch was criticized for being hastily put together and for including a developer pre-mine. Shortly after launch, the project's website came under a distributed denial of service attack. In May 2018, Bitcoin Gold was hit by a 51% hashing attack by an unknown actor. This type of attack makes it possible to manipulate the blockchain ledger on which transactions are recorded, and to spend the same digital coins more than once. During the attack, 388,000 BTG (worth approximately US$18 million) was stolen from several cryptocurrency exchanges. Bitcoin Gold was later delisted from Bittrex, after the team refused to help pay some damages. In July 2018, Bitcoin Gold changed mining algorithm to one that requires more memory to further discourage ASIC mining. Bitcoin Gold suffered from 51% attacks again in January 2020. In July 2020, the version 0.17.2 was released as an emergency update in order to elude a long attack chain originated a few days before.

References

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