A recent blog post from developers has revealed that bitcoin gold will go live over the coming weekend. The official date and time for this change will be the 12th of November at 7pm UTC.
This latest fork in the cryptocurrency was initially planned for the 1st of November. It is being backed mainly by a group of developers and a Hong Kong-based mining hardware firm.
The new digital currency will retain many of the most important properties of the original bitcoin. However, it will overhaul the mining process to make it easier for miners.
The overall idea is to de-centralise the mining process and let more people get involved with this important task than is currently the case. Currently, mining is time-consuming and creates enough heat from the equipment to warm up a small house in Siberia.
This is going to be done by using a different proof of work block verification process from that which is currently used on bitcoin. What this means is that people can mine coins without having to spend a fortune on high end computers first of all.
In addition, existing bitcoin users will receive new coins, provided that they are bitcoin owners at the time of the split. Controversially, the team working on bitcoin gold have been already mining coins, setting aside a number of them for development costs.
The message from the developers showed gratitude to the global community that has helped them carrying out testing on the new currency. They said that the bitcoin gold community will have a “full suite of services” at the launch date thanks to these efforts.
The previous major bitcoin fork led to the introduction of bitcoin cash in August. The success of this new currency led to it having a market value of close to $4 billion in its early days and it has recently reached its all-time high price.
Of course, experience has shown that a lot of people buy into bitcoin just before a hard fork, with the idea of getting free coins before selling up at a profit. This means that we may see a high degree of price volatility in the first few days of trading on bitcoin gold.
It is also worth noting that at the time of writing not all bitcoin exchanges are ready to deal with bitcoin gold. Therefore, analysts are split over how well it is likely to do in the opening days of trading.
SegWit2x Repercussions Continue to Be Felt
Meanwhile, the repercussions of the suspended SegWit2x upgrade as still being felt, with some of its main advocates feeling the heat on social media. For example, Charlie Shrem apologised for backing the project but the entrepreneur and founding member of the Bitcoin Foundation still received abuse on Twitter for being a supporter of the fork for so long.
He tweeted that “I was wrong” and then said that he hoped everyone would see that his “intentions were good”. However, he then received replies accusing him of “wasting countless hours of developer time” and of being part of a group trying to rush through the hard fork without being sure about the consensus behind it.
It hasn’t yet been confirmed whether the SegWit2x upgrade has just been temporarily postponed or whether it will now never see the light of day.