What Is Bitcoin Gold (BTG)? How To Start Mining Bitcoin Gold?

What Is Bitcoin Gold?

If you are pretty up-to-date with the cryptocurrency space then you already know about it. But those of you who still do not have any idea regarding Bitcoin Gold, let me summarize it for you.

Bitcoin Gold is one of the newest players in the cryptocurrency market with the motto “Make Bitcoin Decentralized Again”.

The developer team hard forked this new cryptocurrency from the original Bitcoin blockchain.

Starting at block 491407 of the original Bitcoin blockchain the bifurcation will happen. Bitcoin Gold Miners will begin creating new blocks from that height.

Today the market cap of BTG is $2,378,965,578 making it top 20 coins on coinmarketcap.

Last updated on 17th February 2018

The Bitcoin Gold development team already carried out the hard fork at 25th of October.

What Is The Reason Behind Creating Bitcoin Gold?

From last few years, we are seeing massive scalability issues regarding the Bitcoin blockchain. The concept of Bitcoin is quite old – Satoshi Nakamoto proposed it way back in 2008.

So it is not the first time we experienced a hard fork. Back in August, we saw another hard fork and some of Bitcoin’s loyal followers created Bitcoin Cash.

Plus currently, Bitcoin’s mining environment is heavily dominated by ASICs.

These ASICs take great advantage of Bitcoin’s SHA256 algorithm and mine like crazy. That’s why entry-level miners with their tiny GPU mining rigs cannot even bother to try mining Bitcoin now.

In his Bitcoin whitepaper, Satoshi claimed that in Bitcoin’s world one CPU will equal to one vote. But that cannot be said anymore because right now it has become one ASIC one vote.

So Bitcoin is not truly decentralized anymore. This is the main problem Bitcoin Gold aims to address.

Who Are Behind Bitcoin Gold?

Bitcoin Gold is the brainchild of CEO of Hong Kong-based mining firm and mining equipment company LightningAsic, Jack Liao. Along with his anonymous developer who calls himself h4x3rotab and 4 other members Bitcoin Gold was developed.

How Can Bitcoin Gold Solve The Issue Of Centralization?

According to Bitcoin Gold’s white paper, they are confident that they can solve this issue by blocking ASIC mining completely. They believe that if they only allow GPU mining then decentralization will be possible.

That is why to completely shut off ASIC mining they are employing this new algorithm called Equihash. Instead of Bitcoin’s original SHA256 hashing algorithm which allows ASICs, Equihash is GPU mining rig friendly.

ZCash is already using this algorithm and it is a great algorithm, to say the least.

They are also introducing technologies like segwit and replay protection in their system.

Apart from this, this new cryptocurrency doesn’t aim to solve any other problems Bitcoin currently have.

How To Get Bitcoin Gold And What Wallet To Use?

Bitcoin Gold is currently in beta phase so the number of exchanges that support them is on the lower side. Currently, it looks like Bitcoin Gold is only supported by exchanges like Cex.io, BitFlyer, BitBay etc. But the team is in talks with other famous exchanges.

Exchanges like Binance, YoBit, HitBTC, Bitfinex are expected to join the bandwagon once Bitcoin Gold reaches popularity.

Update: Well, the number of exchanges that support Bitcoin Gold has increased significantly. Currently, around 20 cryptocurrency exchanges support some form of BTG trading. This list includes popular exchanges like Bithumb, Binance, Bittrex, Bitfinex, Coinone, HitBTC, YoBit etc.

Right now only three wallets support Bitcoin Gold. And they are – Coinomi, Guarda, and Freewallet. So no hardware wallet support for Bitcoin Gold at this exact moment.

Update: Ledger Nano S has jumped on the bandwagon! You can now safely store your BTG tokens on your Ledger Nano S.

Read:-

• [GUIDE] Binance: Best Exchange To Use For Trading
• Best Hardware Wallets For Cryptocurrencies In 2018

How To Mine Bitcoin Gold?

The hard fork took place on 25th October and since then the developers worked very hard to launch the mining testnet. It was launched on 1st of November.

The mining is still in testnet phase. So it is a good time to download the necessary tools and see if your rig has the potential to miner Bitcoin Gold.

Update: Bitcoin Gold has launched fully. So the mining is not in testnet phase anymore. Lots of people are currently mining Bitcoin Gold and getting good results.

There are a handful of mining pools that currently support Bitcoin Gold mining. But I suggest using Mining.SG and Minepool.gold, which is the official mining pool by the way.

First of all you need to configure your mining rig. As BTG is on Equihash you can use our guide on how to build 8 GPU Zcash Mining Rig & it can work on mining BTG for you.

Read:-

• 13 GPU Profitable ZCash Mining Rig – 2018
• [Guide] Choosing GPU Mining Motherboard – 2018
• [Guide] Choosing PCI-E Risers For GPU Mining Rigs – 2018

How To Mine Bitcoin Gold With Mining.SG Pool?

• First of all, navigate to Mining.SG (https://pool.mining.sg/).
• Then navigate to their “Getting Started” page.
• This is where things change for AMD and Nvidia users.

For Nvidia Users

• • Download the EWBF Miner for your Nvidia graphics card from this link: EBWF CUDA MINER Nvidia
  • After downloading extract the files to a folder.
  • Create a new text document in that folder, and start editing it.
  • Paste the following line of code replacing the wallet address after user to your Bitcoin Gold address and “example” part to a worker name of your choice:
    miner --server pool.mining.sg --port 3032 --user GQE1srvTaXDXH1Gpga16qBtEVEJyb2yQg7.example --pass x
  • Now save the file with a name like start.bat
  • CAUTION: Be sure to use the .bat file extension. Without that, your system won’t be able to recognize it as a batch file.

For AMD Users

• • Download the Claymores miner from this link: Claymore BTG Miner
    
  • After downloading extract the files to a folder.
  • Create a new text document in that folder, and start editing it.
  • Paste the following line of code:
    set GPU_FORCE_64BIT_PTR=1
set GPU_MAX_HEAP_SIZE=100
set GPU_USE_SYNC_OBJECTS=1
set GPU_MAX_ALLOC_PERCENT=100
set GPU_SINGLE_ALLOC_PERCENT=100
ZecMiner64
  • Save the file with a name and extension like “start.bat”.
  • Now open the config.txt file and paste the following information in replacing the already written one:
    -zpool ssl://pool.mining.sg:3032 -zwal GQE1srvTaXDXH1Gpga16qBtEVEJyb2yQg7.example -zpsw x -allpools 1
  • Save and exit.
• Now in both cases, you can click on the start.bat file to start mining Bitcoin Gold with Mining.SG pool.

How To Mine Bitcoin Gold With Minepool.gold?

• At first, make your way to Minepool.gold’s homepage (https://minepool.gold).
• Now head over to the “Getting Started” page.
• From here on the process is similar to mining with Mining.SG’s pool.

How To Get Free Bitcoin Gold

Right now there are no faucets or legitimate websites giving away Bitcoin Golds for free. So please don’t fall into this kind of traps and give away sensitive information like private keys, wallet addresses etc.

Always step with caution because one bad footing can make you a hacker’s prey. And before you know it they will drain your wallet.

But fortunately, if you kept your Bitcoin still during the time of hard forking you are eligible for getting free Bitcoin Gold in 1:1 ratio during the premine or ICO.

So if you had 5 Bitcoins during the time of splitting, you can claim 5 Bitcoin Gold. But, If you kept the Bitcoins in an exchange wallet or online wallet then this may not be applicable to you. Currently, this is the only method that can get you Bitcoin Gold for free.

Final Words

Bitcoin Gold is a new cryptocurrency so as always it is advised to step carefully. For miners, Bitcoin Gold can be the new big thing since their policy is mining focused.

They have implemented variable difficulty in their mining algorithm which will be a great thing for GPU miners. The difficulty is adjusted after every block instead of every two weeks in Bitcoin.

Plus they have introduced technologies like segwit and replay protection, and thrown unique wallet addresses in the mix.

Currently, BTG is trading for $130 with a total market cap of $2 billion. So it seems to me that it is doing great right now. But what about long-term? Well, I have no idea how relevant it will be in the future.

To be extremely honest currently, not much can be said about Bitcoin Gold. Only time will tell how successful it will become.