Bitcoin Gold

Bitcoin Gold
Ticker symbol BTG
Development
Initial release 0.15.0.1 / 12 November 2017 (2017-11-12)
Latest release 0.15.0.2 / 6 January 2018 (2018-01-06)
Code repository github.com/BTCGPU/BTCGPU
Development status Active
Forked from Bitcoin
Written in C++, Qt
Operating system Windows, OS X, Linux
Developer(s) Bitcoin Gold Organization
Source model Open source
License MIT License
Website bitcoingold.org
Ledger
Ledger start 3 January 2009 (2009-01-03)
Timestamping scheme Proof-of-work
Hash function Equihash
Block reward 12.5 BTG (approximately to mid 2020), halved approximately every four years
Block time 10 minutes
Block explorer BitcoinGold Explorer BTG EXPLORER BTGexp.com
Circulating supply 17,000,000 BTG (as of 26 April 2018) [1]
Supply limit 21,000,000 BTG
Valuation
Market cap $315,000,000 USD (as of 24 August 2018)

Bitcoin Gold is a distributed digital currency. It is a hard fork of Bitcoin, the open source cryptocurrency. The stated purpose of the hard fork is to restore the mining functionality with common Graphics Processing Units (GPU), in place of mining with specialized ASIC (customized chipsets), used to mine Bitcoin.

ASIC resistant GPU powered mining provides a solution, as this kind of hardware is ubiquitous, and anyone can start mining with a standard, off-the-shelf laptop computer.

Bitcoin Gold was hit by double-spending attack on May 18, 2018.[2][3]

The fork

The hard fork occurred on October 24, 2017, at block height 491407.[4][5] The Bitcoin Gold team used ‘post-mine’ - a mining of 100,000 coins after the fork had already occurred. The team did this via a rapid mining of approximately 8,000 blocks at 12.5 BTG per block. The bulk of premined coins have been placed into an ‘endowment’, and according to the developers will be used to grow and maintain the BTG ecosystem. However, of the 100K coins, some five percent were set aside as a bonus for the team, or about 833 coins for each of the six members.[6]

Differences from Bitcoin

Bitcoin gold uses the memory hard equihash as proof-of-work algorithm instead of the sha-256.[7] But for the rest, the project follows the guidelines of the Bitcoin core project.

May 2018 attack

In 2018 Bitcoin Gold (and two other cryptocurrencies) were hit a by a successful 51% hashing attack by an unknown actor.[8] The attackers successfully committed a double spend attack on Bitcoin Gold, a forked cryptocurrency from Bitcoin in 2017. An amount of approximately $18.6 million USD worth of Bitcoin Gold was transferred to a cryptocurrency exchange (typically as part of a pair transaction in exchange of a fiat currency or another cryptocurrency) and then reverted in the public ledger maintained by consensus of Proof-of-Work by exercising a >51% mine power.[8][9][10][11][12]

References

  1. ↑ "Bitcoin Gold (BTG) price, charts, market cap, and other metrics - CoinMarketCap". coinmarketcap.com.
  2. ↑ "Edward Iskra, Bitcoin Gold director of communications first admonished clients about the attack on May 18, reporting that an evil-minded miner was using the exploit to steal means from cryptocurrency exchanges", https://hype.codes/bitcoin-gold-hit-malicious-miners-double-spend-attack
  3. ↑ "According to a post on the Bitcoin Gold forums, the attacks have started taking place since last Friday, May 18.", https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/hacker-makes-over-18-million-in-double-spend-attack-on-bitcoin-gold-network/
  4. ↑ "Block #491407".
  5. ↑ "Bitcoin Gold Roadmap" (PDF). btcgpu.org.
  6. ↑ "Bitcoin Gold Clarifies Premine Endowment". Cointelegraph. 19 November 2017.
  7. ↑ Aaron van Wirdum (Oct 11, 2017). "Bitcoin Gold Is About to Trial an ASIC-Resistant Bitcoin Fork". BitcoinMagazine.
  8. 1 2 "Bitcoin Gold Hit by Double Spend Attack, Exchanges Lose Millions". CCN. 2018-05-23. Retrieved 2018-05-24.
  9. ↑ "Bitcoin Gold loses millions as it is hit by a double spend attack". Fast Company. 2018-05-24. Retrieved 2018-05-27.
  10. ↑ Osborne, Charlie. "Bitcoin Gold suffers double spend attacks, $17.5 million lost | ZDNet". ZDNet. Retrieved 2018-05-27.
  11. ↑ "Responding to Attacks - Bitcoin Gold". Bitcoin Gold. 2018-05-24. Retrieved 2018-05-27.
  12. ↑ "Bitcoin Gold Responds to Recent Double Spend Attack". CCN. 2018-05-25. Retrieved 2018-05-27.
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