Bitcoin has seen a precedent this year, with not one, but three hard forks to be completed before the end of 2017. If someone told me this a year ago, I would laugh at their face. Not so funny now though, is it?
We first had a hard fork in August, when the somewhat aggressive UASF BIP 148 threw the community into a commotion of FUD-fuelled speculation. That was seemingly resolved with the NY agreement and followed by a surprise last-minute hard-fork known as Bitcoin Cash. Now we are facing some further complications with Segwit2x adoption and a possible hard fork in November related to this.
But this time, let's talk about another surprise hard-fork that came to light very recently and is due just in 5 days (October 25 -2017)
BITCOIN GOLD
The Fork that no one is talking about.
And why?
From my conversation with Martin Kuvandzhiev (core developer at Bitcoin Gold), I think I found the answer to this question:
There is NO MARKETING.
None at all.
Easy to go unnoticed in the sea of heavily advertised ICOs and hyped up coins if there is zero capital and human workforce involved in marketing and publicity, don't you agree.
They are still doing well, methinks, we are talking about Bitcoin fork after all, and there's a million people out there anticipating the coming chain split and the potential of earning some extra "coins for free" which is what a hard fork is most known for these days...
Here is my interview with Martin Kuvandzhiev where we addressed all concerns surrounding this fork. I specifically asked him about the rumors of pre-mined coins, replay protection, distribution and wallets, exchanges and much more.
I spent almost an hour chatting to Martin, trying to understand the potential of the Bitcoin Gold project and judge the possible future ahead.
And of course, as any investor or holder or Bitcoin, I am also excited at the opportunity to get some extra profit from something that doesn't involve any specific effort on my part.
But as a Bitcoin supporter, I also feel that the more forks we see, the more diluted the main coin becomes and it reflects on its value. On the other hand, as we see now, the combined value of the main coin and the forks is often higher than the value of the coin prior to the fork, so it seems like a win-win scenario for many.
Overall, I found Martin to be very open and honest about the project with no attempt to hype anything, the key point that he managed to lay across is the fact that Bitcoin Gold is NOT trying to compete with Bitcoin, nor any other coin for that matter and that at the moment it is still a project mainly driven by ideology and passion. Quite the opposite of what many are speculating on reddit. There were many claims of this project being a scam but Martin emphasized the decentralized nature of this project and the lack of controlling entity.
What is your take on Bitcoin Gold and are you excited to grab hold of those coins, would you BUY, HODL or SELL when you receive those tokens?
Further reading:
Is Bitcoin Gold the people's fork?
Bitcoin Gold Is About to Trial an ASIC-Resistant Bitcoin Fork
Bitcoin Gold: What you need to know - by Jimmy Song
my Bitcoin Simplified Weekly video podcast