What Is Bitcoin Gold (BTG)?

Bitcoin Gold (BTG) is a forktoken of the original Bitcoincryptocurrency. BTG is a community-driven project to attract institutional and enterprise shareholders' attention. The project aims to provide an opportunity for new individuals across the globe to participate in the mining process and develop a decentralized democratic Bitcoin mining infrastructure. Users can use Bitcoin Gold for various activities such as exchanges, swap services, and wallets adopted by several browsers and service providers. 

The project aims to create an experimental innovation and development in the Bitcoin blockchain. Bitcoin Gold is an open-source protocol that seeks to represent a unique combination of fundamental characteristics of the original Bitcoin blockchain and a novel approach to blockchain development and applications. Besides, the project also aims to represent the implementation capabilities of Bitcoin by expanding opportunities for DeFi and DApp developers to use the BTG coin. Moreover, the project also aims to allow developers to participate in the governance and development of the blockchain.

According to the BTG roadmap, Bitcoin Gold seeks to enhance and extend the crypto space with the blockchain closely compatible with SegWit and Lightning network without using Bitcoin hash power responses. SegWit (Segregated Witness) is a Bitcoin platform upgrade used for changing the pattern in which data is stored. Meanwhile, the Lightning network is a "Layer 2" blockchain that allows users to trade Bitcoin quickly. Bitcoin hash power refers to the amount of computing and process power being contributed to the network through mining. The project seeks to be a user-friendly crypto asset for users, miners, and developers with plenty of space for new ideas. 

BTG is the hard fork token used to power the Bitcoin Gold project. Hard fork tokens are nodes of the new BTG tokens of the Bitcoin blockchain that no longer accept the older BTC tokens. However, the BTG token revolutionizes the mining process by introducing a new proof-of-work algorithm that includes scalability. 

Furthermore, the project aims to launch BTGPay, which connects merchants, services, and integrators to build solutions and helps consumers find answers to their problems. BTGPay seeks to be the new age of e-commerce payment platforms with minimal transaction fees, chargeback protection, and debit-card-based service. 

History of Bitcoin Gold (BTG)

In July 2017, Jack Liao and six other cofounders launched a hard fork, Bitcoin Gold. BTG was born to bring Bitcoin mining back to the “people.” The project's announcement mentioned that the purpose of the hard fork of Bitcoin was to change the proof-of-work algorithm from the SHA256 algorithm to Equihash. SHA256 algorithm is a patent cryptographic hash function that modifies data or encrypts it so that the message or data is unreadable without decoding. In contrast, Equihash is an algorithm that offers enormous resistance to ASICs.