Crypto exchange Bittrex is set to delist Bitcoin Gold (BTG), a hard fork of Bitcoin (BTC), by Sept.14, after details of an $18 million hack of the BTG network in May emerged this week. How unexpected was this announcement coming from the exchange, and what are the chances for BTG now that it has found itself in the midst of yet another scandal?
“One CPU one vote” ideology: How Bitcoin Gold was created
Bitcoin Gold (BTG) is a hard fork of Bitcoin (BTC). It splintered off the original blockchain on Oct. 24 2017, at a block height 491,407. The project was first announced in July 2017 on Bitcointalk.org, when Jack Liao, CEO of LightingAsic and BitExchange, revealed that he was looking for a way to change Bitcoin’s proof-of-work (PoW) algorithm from the SHA256 algorithm to Equihash.
“Given the dysfunctional current reality of the Bitcoin mining sector,” as the BTG’s roadmap reads, Liao and his team wanted to create a digital currency that wouldn’t require expensive, state-of-the-art hardware for mining. By mid-2017, allegedly 70 percent of BTC mining was performed by Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs) — i.e., specialized hardware designed solely for mining purposes. ASICs can perform SHA256 calculations significantly faster and more efficiently than an average computer. BTG, with its Equihash protocol, in turn, would allow for productive mining powered by casual graphics processing units (GPUs).
Meanwhile, unlike its relatively successful predecessor Bitcoin Cash (BCH) — a BTC hard fork whose supporters claim it to be “the real Bitcoin” — BTG was not designed to take over the original Bitcoin:
Source:
https://cointelegraph.com/news/why-bitcoin-gold-got-delisted-from-bittrex