Bitcoin gold first block

In the world of virtual currencies, threats from hackers and other malicious entities are constantly a concern. For that reason, bitcoin gold took additional safety and protective measures from the time of its launch, in an effort to help secure its customers' accounts and coins. These include replay protection and unique wallet addresses. See also: Can Bitcoin Be Hacked? The fact that bitcoin gold is "a free open-source software project that is built by volunteer developers and supported by a rapidly growing community of bitcoin enthusiasts that stretches around the globe" is also a draw for potential customers.

For all cryptocurrencies, one of the major factors which helps to determine both short-term and long-term success is its availability on cryptocurrency exchanges. Users must be able to access the cryptocurrency on exchanges in order to make transactions. There are additional exchanges slated to offer bitcoin gold in the near future as well. According to the website, the cryptocurrency has been listed on 46 markets and 26 exchanges as of January, The developers of bitcoin gold used what is called "post-mine" after the launch.

This was the retroactive mining of , coins after the fork already took place. The way that this happened was through the rapid mining of about 8, blocks, the results of which were set aside as an "endowment" of sorts, to be used to grow and maintain the broader bitcoin gold network. At the time of the launch, all bitcoin owners received bitcoin gold coins at the rate of one bitcoin gold token per one bitcoin token. Coinbase, one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in the world, was notably skeptical of bitcoin gold at launch time. Coinbase representatives stated that the exchange "cannot support bitcoin gold because its developers have not made the code available to the public for review.

This is a major security risk. As of March 4, , bitcoin gold has reachable nodes. The highest concentration of nodes is in Germany 46 nodes , with the next-highest levels being the United States 38 , France 37 , and Russia In February , bitcoin gold launched the bitcoin gold insight explorer, calling it a "fully functional bitcoin gold insight instance and web application service presenting the Insight UI and Insight API.

Like most cryptocurrencies, bitcoin gold has had its share of detractors and controversies. Just days after the launch, miners accused one of the developers of bitcoin gold of having added in a 0. According to the bitcoin gold website, the cryptocurrency maintains ambitious plans for expansion into the future. In the first quarter of , for instance, the website says its goals including "open source libraries integration" with BitcoinJS, BitcoinJ, and CoPay, as well as "academic and university collaboration" and "design and rebranding," including a refreshed website.

In the second quarter of , the digital currency aims to integrate a lightning network and decentralized mining through P2Pool. There is also a plan to integrate a debit card program and other payment systems integrations. By the end of , the cryptocurrency aims to develop "sidechains and cross-chain atomic swaps" as well as a number of meet-ups and developer conferences, university outreach, and more. Looking ahead to , the cryptocurrency has its sights on private transactions and scholarship or research support. Over the longer term, bitcoin gold will conduct research on smart contracts and blockchain democracy, as well as develop a decentralized fiat-crypto brokerage network.

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Bitcoin gold developers are conscious of the connections between this cryptocurrency, its parent bitcoin, and the broader digital currency world. As such, they indicate that "the core improvements we're working on are all of great interest in the broader bitcoin and crypto worlds, not merely for bitcoin gold. Investing in cryptocurrencies and Initial Coin Offerings "ICOs" is highly risky and speculative, and this article is not a recommendation by Investopedia or the writer to invest in cryptocurrencies or ICOs. Since each individual's situation is unique, a qualified professional should always be consulted before making any financial decisions.

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How to buy, sell and trade Bitcoin Gold

In early , the mysterious cryptocurrency developer or team of developers working under the alias Satoshi Nakamoto released the first software program that implemented the digital currency bitcoin. Since then, bitcoin has gone on to not only gain massive appeal across the globe but also to inspire hundreds of other digital currencies.

Many of these cryptocurrencies make use of aspects that were already inherent in Satoshi's initial program and concept. Others take the bitcoin model and adapt or attempt to improve upon it. In some cases, bitcoin has spawned variations that are based on the same underlying concept and program but that are distinct from the original.

In these situations, the bitcoin blockchain has undergone a process known as forking , through which the blockchain itself is divided into two distinct entities. It is through this forking process that various digital currencies with names similar to bitcoin have come to be: bitcoin cash , bitcoin gold, and others. For the casual cryptocurrency investor, it can be difficult to tell the difference between these cryptocurrencies and to map the various forks onto a timeline.

Below, we'll walk through many of the most important forks to the bitcoin blockchain over the past several years. In , shortly after releasing bitcoin, Satoshi mined the first block on the bitcoin blockchain.

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This has come to be referred to as the Genesis Block , as it represented the founding of the cryptocurrency as we know it. Satoshi was able to make numerous changes to the bitcoin network early on in this process; this has become increasingly difficult and bitcoin's user base has grown by a tremendous margin. The fact that no one person or group can determine when and how bitcoin should be upgraded has similarly made the process of updating the system more complex. In the years following the Genesis Block, there have been several hard forks.

Getting Started With Bitcoin Gold

During a hard fork, software implementing bitcoin and its mining procedures is upgraded; once a user upgrades their software, that version rejects all transactions from older software, effectively creating a new branch of the blockchain. However, those users who retain the old software continue to process transactions, meaning that there is a parallel set of transactions taking place across two different chains.

Bitcoin XT was one of the first notable hard forks of bitcoin. The software was launched by Mike Hearn in late in order to include several new features he had proposed. While the previous version of bitcoin allowed up to seven transactions per second, Bitcoin XT aimed for 24 transactions per second. In order to accomplish this, it proposed increasing the block size from 1 megabyte to 8 megabytes. Bitcoin XT initially saw success, with more than 1, nodes running its software in the late summer of However, by just a few months later, the project lost user interest and was essentially left for dead.

Bitcoin XT is technically still available, but it is generally seen to have fallen out of favor. When Bitcoin XT declined, some community members still wanted block sizes to increase.

What is Bitcoin Gold, Exactly?

In response, a group of developers launched Bitcoin Classic in early Unlike XT, which proposed increasing the block size to 8 megabytes, Classic intended to increase it to only 2 megabytes. Like Bitcoin XT, Bitcoin Classic saw initial interest, with about 2, nodes for several months during The project also still exists today, with some developers strongly supporting Bitcoin Classic.

Nonetheless, the larger cryptocurrency community seems to have generally moved on to other options. Bitcoin Unlimited remains something of an enigma since its release in early The project's developers released code but did not specify which type of fork it would require. Bitcoin Unlimited set itself apart by allowing miners to decide on the size of their blocks, with nodes and miners limiting the size of blocks they accept, up to 16 megabytes. Despite some lingering interest, Bitcoin Unlimited has largely failed to gain acceptance. Put simply, SegWit aims to reduce the size of each bitcoin transaction, thereby allowing more transactions to take place at once.

SegWit was technically a soft fork. However, it may have helped to prompt hard forks after it was originally proposed. In response to SegWit, some bitcoin developers and users decided to initiate a hard fork in order to avoid the protocol updates it brought about. Bitcoin cash was the result of this hard fork.

It split off from the main blockchain in August , when Bitcoin Cash wallets rejected bitcoin transactions and blocks. Bitcoin Cash remains the most successful hard fork of the primary cryptocurrency. As of March , it is the eleventh-largest digital currency by market cap , owing in part to the backing of many prominent figures in the cryptocurrency community and many popular exchanges.

Bitcoin Cash allows blocks of 8 megabytes and did not adopt the SegWit protocol. Bitcoin Gold was a hard fork that followed shortly after Bitcoin Cash in October The creators of this hard fork aimed to restore the mining functionality with basic graphics processing units GPU , as they felt that mining had become too specialized in terms of equipment and hardware required.

One unique feature of the Bitcoin Gold hard fork was a "pre-mine," a process by which the development team mined , coins after the fork had taken place. Many of these coins were placed into a special "endowment," and developers have indicated that this endowment will be used to grow and finance the Bitcoin Gold ecosystem, with a portion of those coins being set aside as payment for developers as well. Generally, Bitcoin Gold adheres to many of the basic principles of bitcoin. However, it differs in terms of the proof-of-work algorithm it requires of miners. When SegWit was implemented in August , developers planned on a second component to the protocol upgrade.