The fork called “Bitcoin Gold” (BTG) has been quite the mystery since it announced its plans to fork the Bitcoin network and change the currency’s consensus algorithm. According to the team, the fork took place on October 25, and the network was supposed to start on November 1. However, BTG developers didn’t finish the project’s mainnet in time, and now the team says the network will launch on November 12, 2017, at 2 PM EDT.
Also read: Distributed Denial of Service Attack Greets Forked Bitcoin Gold on First Day
Bitcoin Gold Mainnet Plans to Launch 11 Days Late
According to the “Bitcoin Gold Community” mailer, the team plans to launch the BTG network this Sunday. The BTG team says a full node client will be available for download and the bitcoin gold blockchain will officially be live. Blocks can be mined by users and pools from all around the world explains the BTG announcement.
“Wallets and exchanges will be able to process deposits, withdrawals, and trades (as soon as they are ready). This is the culmination of months of hard work, which have led to many changes and improvements,” the BTG team details.
We are extremely grateful for the community around the world who have been contributing hash power to our testnets; besides patiently testing their own mining process.
Codebase Changes and “Unofficial Bitcoin Gold Websites”
New protocol additions to the BTG codebase include the Equihash PoW change, Replay Protection, the difficulty-adjustment-algorithm (DAA), and a new address format. Additionally, the BTG team explains they are very grateful to all the “service providers” who’ve helped them build the BTG ecosystem. The team plans to update its mining documentation so BTG can be easily mined by anyone, and also assists service providers with more technical info. The BTG mailing list also provides a page of “unofficial” bitcoin gold websites and explains the team is not associated with these sites.
Ten Exchanges Are Swapping BTG Futures Markets
The cryptocurrency community is still skeptical about this fork and associated token. The pre-mine of BTG’s first blocks continues to be a controversial subject. Further, as far as wallet providers and exchanges there are not that many businesses that have announced supporting this particular fork. Right now there are ten exchanges swapping bitcoin gold futures according to Coinmarketcap data. Exchanges trading BTG futures include Bitfinex, Hitbtc, Coinnest, Binance, Yobit, Gate.io, and more. Bitcoin gold futures are trading at prices between $160-260 per BTG on these particular trading platforms.
What do you think about the bitcoin gold mainnet going live on Sunday, November 12? Let us know what you think in the comments below.
Images via Shutterstock, Coinmarketcap.com and the BTG website.
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