The official Bitcoin Gold website is down following a reported DDoS attack this morning. The attack occurred around 4:30 AM EST according to the company’s twitter account.
Within a couple hours of reporting the attack, Bitcoin Gold announced via Twitter that the situation had been handled but it would take a while to start things normally. At the time of writing the site still appears to be down.
The attack is just the latest piece of controversy in what has been the most controversial cryptocurrency fork of 2017. The Bitcoin Gold team has been highly critical of the current state of bitcoin mining and the influence large mining operations have bitcoin. So it’s no surprise that the BTG team has faced an uphill battle in bringing their digital gold to life.
Despite early challenges, the team announced via Twitter this morning that BTG has already started trading on several exchanges.
In addition to external forces working against Bitcoin Gold, the team has received criticism for a lack of communication and preparation leading up to the fork. Coinbase, a popular bitcoin exchange, had this to say about the upcoming fork, “At this time, Coinbase cannot support Bitcoin Gold because its developers have not made the code available to the public for review. This is a major security risk.”
The Bitcoin Gold fork is the second fork of the cryptocurrency in just three months. The Bitcoin Cash fork in August faced many of the same issues for miners and developers, but for investors, the fork felt like a free payday. With many in the crypto community gearing up for the potential segwit2x fork in November, it’s becoming harder to tell which is the real bitcoin.
What do you think of the BTG fork? Is it an awesome payday or an unnecessary nuisance?