What is bitcoin gold?

In short, bitcoin gold aims to achieve two goals:

• First, bitcoin gold wants to change how mining works by making it so the most powerful mining machines (called ASICs) can no longer be used.
• Second, by attracting more people to this system over time, it hopes to free the bitcoin network from the large companies that offer these products, and it argues, command undue influence on the network.

Instead of scaling bitcoin to support more users, bitcoin gold tweaks bitcoin in an effort to "make bitcoin decentralized again." This, proponents argue, will make the network, designed to offer an egalitarian way to send payments digitally around the globe, more accessible to users.

And while created via the same mechanism, bitcoin gold differs from bitcoin cash in a few ways, most notably in its distribution.

Differences include:

• The bitcoin gold cryptocurrency is set to be created in advance (prior to the code being open-sourced to the public).
• About 1 percent of the total cryptocurrency tokens mined before the blockchain goes public will be used to pay the bitcoin gold development team.
• Once this distribution is over, the team claims it will launch the cryptocurrency so that users can redeem their coins.

Of course, while it aims to become the de-facto version of bitcoin, others might consider bitcoin gold an "altcoin" – the term has long been used to denote any cryptocurrency launched using bitcoin’s existing code, but that has an alternative market or use case.

Do I have bitcoin gold?

All bitcoin owners will receive the cryptocurrency at a rate of 1 BTC to 1 BTG, setting the stage for possible market activity.

But, that's not to say it's totally intuitive to retrieve.

One quirk is that it'll be easier to redeem the funds from wallets or exchanges that recognize the cryptocurrency. The easiest way, then, to retrieve the bitcoin gold is to move bitcoin to a wallet or exchange that supports bitcoin gold, or to hold bitcoin in a wallet where you own your private keys (rather than holding them with an exchange).

To date, 20 exchanges and wallets promise to support bitcoin gold once it launches, according to the project's website.

Although one of the most popular U.S.-based exchanges, Coinbase stated on October 20 that it does not support bitcoin gold due to skepticism about how developers have made project information available to others.

"At this time, Coinbase cannot support bitcoin gold because its developers have not made the code available to the public for review. This is a major security risk,” the post reads.

This is perhaps something to keep an eye on as the project progresses. Although the project will officially fork on Monday night, it's not yet open to anyone and everyone, and there’s still plenty left on the developers' to-do list.

Who is behind bitcoin gold?

The team behind the hard fork appears to be a relatively small group.

Hong Kong-based LightningAsic CEO Jack Liao, who's an outspoken critic of the state of bitcoin mining, first broached the idea of bitcoin gold back in July.

His company LightningAsic sells mining equipment, including GPUs, the type of computing hardware bitcoin gold is supposed to rely on.

Since first introduced earlier this summer, the team has expanded to include pseudonymous lead developer h4x3rotab, as well as a team of five other volunteers who are now working on developing and promoting the cryptocurrency in their spare time.

The project can be tracked on Github and on the community Slack group.

How do people feel about bitcoin gold?

All that said, for those interested in exploring or using bitcoin gold, it's worth noting that it has generated its share of controversy.

Satoshi Labs CEO Marek Palatinus, who launched bitcoin's first ever mining pool, is skeptical the project will actually work to decentralize mining as planned.

And he's not the only one to throw shade at the new project.

Bitcoin developer Rhett Creighton is working on alternative bitcoin gold "protest fork" software that seeks to pursue the same idea but without setting aside some of the new cryptocurrency for development.

If more than 51% of miners choose to use his software, the so-called pre-distribution to developers will be erased, he told CoinDesk. "It's up to the miners to decide what they want," he added.

All in all, it's unclear if business and mining groups will ultimately support the project, and if they do, how much value the alternative blockchain could create.

For example, while a list of roughly 50 businesses and miners support the so-called Segwit2x fork, similar support hasn't been seen for bitcoin gold. Likewise, though bitcoin cash began with support from vocal minersand exchanges, bitcoin gold has arguably yet to benefit from such early activity.

What Do Core Think of Bitcoin Cash? From July 2017 but highly relevant

Written by Eli Afram
The question in the title is misleading. Because what Core think, and what Core and Blockstream want you to think and believe, are two entirely separate things.

Recently Bitcoin Core developer Luke Dashjr (aka Luke-jr) wrote an opinion piece almost entirely about “Bitcoin Cash” itself.

But before we get onto the Bitcoin Cash topic here, let me address one glaring point made by Luke early on in his piece. Given that Segwit2x is well underway now, Luke actually makes an admission – stating, and I quote “Basically, BIP148 (UASF) was an early success”. This statement conclusively reaffirms statements I made in an earlier piece that Blockstream (UASF) and DCG ( Segwit2x) are in bed together. And I’m going to restate this – big blockers have been played.

But Luke’s ponderous post is genuinely a marvel in deceit. He bewilderingly states that “Bitcoin Cash” is an altcoin, and that it is an attempt to hijack Bitcoin.

This play on words is all too common within the Blockstream camp. The hijacking came from Blockstream and no one else. But to help illustrate this point, allow me to paint this picture. Suppose you are part of an open source project. You release a founding paper specifying your project’s inner workings, methods, and overall operation. Your project is unfunded, but passionately developed within an open, transparent, thriving community. A new company emerges, and cleverly makes its way among your development team, and receives an incredibly large amount of funding from some very big players in the industry. This company then starts to weed out some of the early developers of the project, and particularly those who don’t agree with the company’s very distinct vision.

Discussion and promotion of the original founding paper is prohibited. This company then (for argument sake let’s just call it Blockstream) rewrites the project to a vision that is incompatible with its original founding paper. So then in retaliation a small group of people, some who were there in the beginning, come together, and re-launch or rather see the continuation of the original project with the original intention, following the original founding paper.

Who in the above paradigm hijacked the project? Unless you are heavily compromised, it takes no genius to figure out the answer. Blockstream took over Bitcoin, fundamentally changed its course direction, and are now actively attacking the minority who wish to retain the original vision.

Bitcoin’s community has been aggressively split for several years now. If Luke’s heart was in the right place, he should genuinely wish Bitcoin Cash all the best, and in fact thank them for going their own way, and finally ending years of dispute. Instead he chooses to attack further.

Segregated Witness is an extreme departure from the Bitcoin described in inventor, and creator, Satoshi Nakamoto’s white paper.

Satoshi in his wisdom wrote “Bitcoin can already scale much larger than [VISA] with existing hardware for a fraction of the cost.” Bitcoin was already scaleable, it didn’t need Segwit. The threat “Bitcoin Cash” poses is that it can finally prove itself, with the removal of the 1MB temporary cap it will demonstrate to the world that Core devs were lying all along, and Bitcoin can scale to astronomical heights, and operate very efficiently and securely.

So now the new agenda by Core and Blockstream is to attack “Bitcoin Cash” as an altcoin, and to discredit its position as the true Bitcoin. But anyone reading Satoshi’s whitepaper and other writings will instantly recognise that ‘Bitcoin Cash’ is indeed the coin the inventor and creator desired. But this isn’t about doing it for ‘Satoshi’. It is about recognising that there was nothing ever wrong with the original roadmap for Bitcoin. The derailment by Blockstream into Segwit isn’t for Bitcoin’s benefit, it is actually for the benefit of Blockstream and its many investors.

Luke also stated that “this isn’t a particularly unique or even first-of-kind altcoin: “Bitcoin Dark” and “Bitcoin Plus” have tried to hijack the “Bitcoin” name previously”.

Again, he mentions the term ‘hijacking’. This isn’t hijacking anything. If Blockstream chooses to fundamentally change the inner workings of Bitcoin, and a group of loyalists who truly believe in Bitcoin’s capability in its current form with the transaction cap removed choose to keep things as they are –  why should it not be called Bitcoin? Bitcoin Cash is true Bitcoin in every sense of the word, and is 100% aligned to the whitepaper description.

Luke’s stated “Bitcoin Plus” and “Bitcoin Dark” are both non-compliant to Bitcoin’s whitepaper, and further they did not maintain Bitcoin’s existing ledger as they were not forks of the main chain. Luke’s inclusion of these two cryptos is intentionally misleading.

Segwit on the other hand is so much a departure from Bitcoin’s whitepaper that if you would determine altcoins on technicalities alone, Segwit would be it, hands down. Where does the white paper mention splitting witness data?

Why should a central body, such as Blockstream, have the final say as to what Bitcoin is and isn’t? Bitcoin Cash’s value and status will in the end be determined by the free and open market, not by the rantings of a Core developer.

Bitcoin at an all time high of $7569,00

We are selling large blocks of bitcoin at a 5-10% discount to market price over the next two weeks

Bitcoin is about to Fork again what do you need to know

Satoshitrading clients have a unique strategy based on what is about to happen and those accounts managed by us are already well placed with nearly a 300% rise in their position since August.

The fight is over a so-called fork in bitcoin’s software, known as SegWit2x, that will create two competing versions of the currency and lead to disagreement over the “real” bitcoin. There’s even a battle over who gets to use the popular BTC ticker symbol.

The fork will also mean a payout to existing bitcoin holders, though any windfall could be overshadowed by larger turmoil. To understand what’s at stake, here’s a plain English Q&A to explain the controversy

Why is bitcoin going to split?

There is a disagreement between key stakeholders over how to update the core software that runs bitcoin. You can learn more about the technical details below, but the crux of the fight is over whether to double the size of bitcoin blocks.

The blocks, which are added every 10 minutes, serve as a record of all bitcoin transactions to create a permanent blockchain ledger. The current controversy means there is likely to be two bitcoin blockchains—one that uses smaller 1MB blocks and one that uses bigger 2MB blocks—and temporary uncertainty over which is the “real” bitcoin.

While bitcoin has experienced these sort of forks in the past (most notably with the creation this summer of rival currency “Bitcoin Cash,”) the market has never regarded such splits as a replacement for the original bitcoin. This time could be different.

When will the fork happen?

It is supposed to take place soon. This website offers a more precise moment —specifically Nov. 16 at 5:42 am—based on the number of blocks being added to the bitcoin blockchain. The fork is supposed to go into effect for block number 494784. (Once again, technical details on blocks and forks are further below).

Who is supporting the split?

The main advocates for the bigger blocks, aka B2X, are consortiums of bitcoin miners who use specialized computer rigs to compile transactions on the blockchain—and earn bitcoins (currently valued at around $7,400) while doing so. They argue the bigger blocks are needed to accommodate the rapid growth of the bitcoin network, and to reduce the rising transaction fees that have come with this growth.

The mining consortiums are being backed by many of the companies that provide the financial eco-system that supports bitcoin. These include certain exchanges, wallet providers, market makers, and storage vaults. The positions of these companies, however, is inclined to shift based on the market and popular sentiment.

Who is opposing it?

Opposition is led by a group of developers who maintain the core software that has so far defined bitcoin. Many of them consider the proposed fork as a corporate takeover of bitcoin, and say there are other solutions to accommodate bigger blocks. Here is how Samson Mow, the CSO of the blockchain company Blockstream, describes the big block advocates:

“[Big block] ringleaders are still pushing for a hard-fork now purely due to ego and escalation of commitment at this point. If you look at the history of contentious forks, starting from Bitcoin XT in 2015, it’s the same group of people. Either they are technically incapable of conceive of scaling methods other than block sizes increases, or they are trying to set Bitcoin on a path of centralization by making it more difficult for people to run nodes.”

The developers are supported by certain companies and mining groups, and by many amateur bitcoin enthusiasts who get together at meet-ups worldwide.

What version of bitcoin will prevail?

No one is really sure. If most miners get behind the proposed split—and stay behind it—that will likely make the big block version the de facto official version of bitcoin.But if the market continues to place more value on the original bitcoin, miners could get cold feet and go back to the small version if it is more profitable. Indeed, for now, certain futures markets are predicting the price of the original bitcoin will be significantly higher post-split than the big block version (it’s unclear how reliable these are).

It’s also likely that big exchanges like Coinbase will serve as king-makers after the fork, in part by deciding which version of the currency gets to be “BTC”— the ticker symbol everyone currently uses to define bitcoin. For now, most exchanges are not openly supporting one bitcoin version or the other. (You can read a rundown on where the 20 biggest ones stand here). Here is what Greg Dwyer of the exchange BitMEX has to say:“There is a lot of passion from both sides in the community as to why we should have a fork and as to why we should not, especially now with Bitcoin Cash (and its ability to mine larger blocks), a number of Bitcoiners do not see the need for 2X anymore. With bitcoin at [its current valuation of $7,400], there is a lot of money at stake to ensure the coin you support succeeds.”

How long will it take to clear up?

That’s also unclear, though it’s probably best for bitcoin if a winner emerges sooner than later. A prolonged battle could spread confusion among investors and trigger a crisis of confidence in the booming crypto-currency market.

Meanwhile, some fear the big block version of bitcoin will fail to contain adequate technical measures (known as replay protection) to ensure transactions on both chains don’t become muddled. This would likewise spread uncertainty.Finally, there is speculation that, even if the big block version of the chain proves less profitable, some big miners will keep mining it anyway in order to impair the small version. If that sounds like civil war, you’re right, and the fallout could be ugly.

What about those payments for current bitcoin holders?

If the big block version of bitcoin goes forward, it will contain an exact replica of the existing bitcoin blockchain—including a record of who owns all of the existing bitcoins. This also means every existing bitcoin holder will also hold those bitcoins on the new chain.

Coinbase and other big exchanges have already confirmed they will accommodate both versions of the chain, meaning a client who holds five bitcoins will also soon hold five B2X (or whatever they call the new version). This is potentially good news for bitcoin holders because, hey, free money! They will wake up with digital assets they didn’t own the day before.Those waiting on a windfall should, however, take note of two caveats. First, there is uncertainty about how much liquidity there will be for both versions of bitcoin after the fork (note that Bitcoin Cash, which arrived after a fork in August, is fairly illiquid). Second, the arrival of B2X bitcoin could trigger a crisis of confidence in the digital currency market—and cause the combined value of both currencies to fall below today’s bitcoin price.

So what are the technical details behind the B2X update?

Before explaining B2X, it’s helpful to realize bitcoin works a bit like the operating systems in your iPhone or Android phone: Every so often the developers push a code update containing features or security updates for everyone to install.

Typically, bitcoin miners and others install the updates without fanfare and carry on. If they don’t, it’s not a big deal since the updates are backward compatible—meaning new and old versions of bitcoin software can recognize each other, including the all-important blockchain transactions.The B2X update, which aims to increase the size of a bitcoin block from one megabyte to two, is different. It involves a “hard fork” that will create incompatible versions of the existing blockchain. To use the phone analogy again, imagine an iOS update that resulted in an iPhone user only being able to message other iPhones that had also added the update.

Finally, note that the technical measure itself—doubling the block size—is rejected by core bitcoin developers as necessary to accommodate the transaction growth on the network. These developers point out a recent technical solution (known as “SegWit”) that fits more transactions on a block is already in place, and that other easy-to-implement congestion solutions will arrive soon.

Where can I learn more about the B2X fork?

This Q&A is only a high-level overview of the coming split. If you want more, Bitcoin Magazine is an authoritative source and has a helpful guide to B2X and other forks. Meanwhile, a recent Forbes feature by bitcoin maven Laura Shin offers a detailed look at the people and factions driving the current crisis. If you’re curious about how exactly forks work (including soft versus hard forks), this is a useful piece. Finally, Twitter is your best source for up-to-date information about the fork. Some useful people to follow include bitcoin veterans like Ryan Selkis (aka Two-Bit Idiot), developer Jameson Lopp, economist Tuur Demeester, and small block advocate Samson Mow. It’s also worth watching the tweets of Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong since his company is likely to affect the final outcome.

Why I like bitcoin cash

The reason I like bitcoin cash is because it maintains a p to p structure and stops the building of a transaction layer.

Other benefits for now are lower transaction costs and increase in speed of a transaction confirmation.

As everyone holding bitcoin has now an equal amount of bitcoin cash it will be interesting to see wether people want lower transaction costs and continue to be able to use a p to p structure , or wether they want a more centralised  visa type transaction layer with high transaction costs.

I am betting bitcoin cash will win this race but it will take time as those invested in bitcoin will need to move their  wealth into bitcoin cash.

This ultimately will see a surge in the price of bitcoin cash.

I am often asked about what are these forks in bitcoin

If you have been paying attention to bitcoin at all lately, you may have noticed a lot of talk going on about 'forks'.

Not like the kind you would find on a table, on a blockchain, a fork is a technical event that occurs because diverse participants need to agree on common rules.

At its most basic, a fork is what happens when a blockchain diverges into two potential paths forward — either with regard to a network’s transaction history or a new rule in deciding what makes a transaction valid.

As a result, those who use the blockchain have to show support for one choice over the other.

Yet, there are many different types of forks, and the science of studying them is still new. So far, we know some forks resolve on their own, but others, fueled by deep rifts in a community, can cause a network to permanently split, creating two blockchain histories — and two separate currencies.

Along with that, there has also been confusion about the various types of forks, how they get activated and the risks they pose.

To clarify, we've assembled quick rundown on how different forks work.

The basics

Before we get into the classifications, it's worth noting that bitcoin forks already occur quite regularly.

A byproduct of distributed consensus, forks happen anytime two miners find a block at nearly the same time. The ambiguity is resolved when subsequent blocks are added to one, making it the longest chain, while the other block gets "orphaned" (or abandoned) by the network.

But forks also can be willingly introduced to the network. This occurs when developers seek to change the rules the software uses to decide whether a transaction is valid or not.

When a block contains invalid transactions, that block is ignored by the network, and the miner who found that block loses out on a block reward. As such, miners generally want to mine only valid blocks and build on the longest chain.

Following are some of the more common forks and their traits.

Hard fork

What is it? A hard fork is a software upgrade that introduces a new rule to the network that isn't compatible with the older software. You can think of a hard fork as an expansion of the rules. (A new rule that allows block size to be 2MB instead of 1MB would require a hard fork).

What happens? Nodes that continue running the old version of the software will see the new transactions as invalid. So, to switch over to the new chain and to continue to mine valid blocks, all of the nodes in the network need to upgrade to the new rules.

What can go wrong? The problem comes when some sort of political impasse arises, and a portion of the community decides to stick by the old rules no matter what. The hash rate, or network computing power, behind the old chain is irrelevant. What matters is that its data (and ruleset) is still perceived to have value, meaning miners still want to mine a chain and developers still want to support it.

The ethereum DAO hard fork was a perfect case study of how a community can split over rules. Now, we have two blockchains using a variant of the software – ethereum and ethereum classic, both of which boast a different ethos and a different currency.

Soft fork

What is it? A soft fork, by contrast, is any change that's backward compatible. Say, instead of 1MB blocks, a new rule might only allow 500K blocks.

What happens? Non-upgraded nodes will still see the new transactions as valid (500k is less than 1MB in this example). However, if non-upgraded nodes continue to mine blocks, the blocks they mine will be rejected by the upgraded nodes. This is why soft forks need a majority of hash power in the network.

What can go wrong? When a soft fork is supported by only a minority of hash power in the network, it could become the shortest chain and get orphaned by the network. Or, it can act like a hard fork, and one chain can splinter off.

Soft forks have been the most commonly used option to upgrade the bitcoin blockchain so far because it's argued they present a lower risk of splitting the network. Past examples of successful soft forks include software upgrades like BIP 66 (which dealt with signature validation) and P2SH (which altered bitcoin's address formatting).

User-activated soft fork

What is it? A user-activated soft fork (UASF) is a controversial idea that explores how a blockchain might add an upgrade that is not directly supported by those who provide the network's hashing power.

The idea with UASF is that instead of waiting for a threshold of support from mining pools, the power to activate a soft fork goes to the exchanges, wallets and businesses who are running full nodes. (In bitcoin, a full node, even if it is not a mining node, is still responsible for validating blocks.)

What happens? The majority of major exchanges would need to publicly support the change before it could be written into a new version of code. After that, the new software (which has an activation point in the future) gets installed on nodes that want to participate in the soft fork.

What can go wrong? This method requires a much longer lead time to work than a hash-power-triggered soft fork. In fact, it's believed it may take as long as a year or more to write the code and get everyone ready.

Further, if the majority of miners end up not ‘falling in line’ and activating the new rules, they could use their overwhelming hash power to split the network.

Currently this idea is theoretical and has not been implemented.

Revised prediction - Should hit $6000 before year end