Bitcoin Gold gives the impression that each bitcoin is backed by gold, but that is not the case. It is basically the same as bitcoin but with some changes to the code that try to fix some of the problems with bitcoin.
Problems like transaction speeds and to make it more decentralized by allowing the normal PC the ability to mine the coin. Not just high end super computers that massive companies own. This makes the coin less likely to a hack than bitcoin.
Clone Success
We still think Bitcoin Gold and any other coins with bit in the name are just trying to ride off the success of bitcoin. Bitcoin might be a slow old dog, that requires specialised mining equipment, but It is still by far the highest market cap.
Company Message
Bitcoin Gold is a hard fork of the open source cryptocurrency Bitcoin. The fork occurred on 24 October 2017, at block height 491407. The stated purpose of the fork is to restore GPU mining functionality to Bitcoin, as opposed to specialized ASICs with entry prices in the thousands of dollars. (wiki)
By default, both sides of a cryptocurrency hard fork will continue to use the same address format. That means it’s possible to send coins to an address on the other blockchain unintentionally, which can cause users to lose funds by mistake.
Bitcoin Cash, for example, is a hard fork that did not change the address format; its addresses are indistinguishable from Bitcoin addresses. There have been many reports of people accidently sending their BTC to a BCC address and vice versa.
In some cases these coins could be permanently lost. In order to ensure that this potential confusion does not exist in Bitcoin Gold, a unique address format will be implemented. The prefix of PUBKEY_ADDRESS and SCRIPT_ADDRESS will be changed to a new prefix (yet to be determined) that can easily be distinguished from Bitcoin addresses.
The risk of a replay attack is inherent to every cryptocurrency hard fork and has to be taken into consideration to protect users from losing their funds. A hard fork is an exact duplicate of the blockchain, and as such, a transaction that is broadcast publicly to the network can be replayed on both sides of a fork, unless replay protection is implemented.
Bitcoin Gold will implement a solution called SIGHASH_FORK_ID replay protection. It is an effective two-way replay protection mechanism that enforces a new algorithm to calculate the hash of a transaction so that all the new Bitcoin transactions will be invalid in Bitcoin Gold blockchain and vice versa.
Bitcoin Gold will implement replay protection BEFORE THE LAUNCH.
Skilled engineers from a small number of companies developed Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs) that could perform SHA256 calculations millions of times faster and more efficiently than any other computer. This made non-specialized computer hardware obsolete for mining Bitcoin. Satoshi’s vision of “one-CPU-one-vote” was replaced by one-ASIC-one-vote.
Bitcoin Gold was created with the idea to decentralize Bitcoin mining. Currently, the only way is to buy hardware from one of those manufactures - the biggest of which is believed to manufacture over 70% of the global supply of SHA256 ASICs. This has led to a situation where one entity can hold the entire network hostage, and this is exactly what happened when the backwards compatible Segregated Witness upgrade was blocked by a faction of miners, despite there being universal consensus from Bitcoin experts that it should be activated. In order to counteract this concentration of power in the mining sector, Bitcoin Gold will implement a new proof-of-work algorithm - Equihash. Replacing the SHA256 algorithm means that all of the ASICs designed for Bitcoin will be useless for mining Bitcoin Gold.
Equihash is a memory-hard algorithm that can be most efficiently solved by GPUs - a standard type of computer and smartphone hardware that is manufactured by mainstream companies and available around the world. With ASIC manufacturers out of the picture, Bitcoin Gold will provide an opportunity for a whole new class entrepreneurs and investors to get involved with mining. Bitcoin Gold mining will be decentralized again, closer to Satoshi’s original vision.
Bitcoin Gold will adopt a difficulty adjustment algorithm called DigiShield V3. The idea behind it is to look at how much time has elapsed between the most recent block and the median of a set number of preceding blocks, and to adjust the difficulty every block to target a 10 minute block interval.
This more responsive difficulty adjustment algorithm is extremely useful in protecting against big swings in the total amount of hash power.
Such swings can result in extreme deviation from the normal 10 minute target block interval. Bitcoin Cash attempted to protect against this risk by implementing an “emergency difficulty adjustment” algorithm, but that had the catastrophic effect of causing sometimes 50 blocks to be mined in one hour, and other times more than 12 hours between two blocks.
Luckily, we have both Ledger and Trezor support for BTG.
Ledger
The app can export your extended public key (xpub) to web apps in a U2F compatible web browser (Chrome, Opera or Firefox). The xpub is privacy-sensitive information, as all public addresses can be generated from it.
Public key exports by default require manual approval on the device to prevent inadvertent sharing of your public addresses. This setting can be configured as follows:
Trezor
Bitcoin Gold is integrated into Trezor Wallet. It is, therefore, possible to use it in the standard interface.
Bitcoin Gold Desktop and Mobile Wallets:
Exodus
Exodus is a desktop wallet which can be used to store a wide variety of cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin Gold. Exodus is actually free to download and has been mainly designed for people who are starting anew out in crypto and hence might not be ready to drop any money on a hardware wallet.
The interface avoids using overtly technical language and has a hands-on support system in place, including a comprehensive list of FAQs and articles explaining its features, troubleshooting and more. Hence it is a user-friendly wallet, mostly for beginners in crypto trading.
Atomic Wallet
Another option is Atomic Wallet.
Atomic Wallet is a desktop wallet built with security, anonymity and decentralization in mind. Atomic Wallet was designed to leverage the potential of atomic swaps and become part of a fully-fledged decentralized cryptocurrency ecosystem.
The “physical” wallet itself is a PC application that can be downloaded onto your computer. Your private keys and other data will then be stored on your PC in an encrypted form. This means you hold your own keys, which are encrypted and kept only on your own device, control your own funds and can efficiently swap tokens without needing to go through a centralized exchange.
This application then interacts with the blockchains of supported coins. For example, if you check your transaction history in the program, it looks it up on the blockchain and then shows it to you, rather than storing this potentially sensitive information somewhere.
