Will Bitcoin Gold Glitter or Tarnish? Bitcoin Gold Prices Dropped Sharply on the First Trading Day

Bitcoin turned another fork on the road this week or more accurately, headed out in a new direction entirely. Bitcoin Gold was released as a way of miners being able to explore new avenues to find those elusive cryptocurrency nuggets. This fork is a blockchain which has been identical to Bitcoin until today. From now, though, Bitcoin Gold will go its own way.

The Bitcoin mining fraternity has come to be dominated by those few enterprises with the computer fire-power to crunch the immensely complex calculations needed to chip away at the codes protecting the coins. Hardware is not the only issue here, firepower needs electricity and electricity costs.

Democratisation was always at the core of Satoshi Nakamoto’s original vision – but cryptocurrencies seem to have moved away from this ideal. Sensing this, back in July, Jack Liao, the founder of Lightning ASIC, a Hong Kong-based mining firm, and a leading player in the Bitcoin ecosphere, muted a fork which would enable this change of course.

To ensure this, one of the innovations is the mirroring of previous holdings. Owners of Bitcoin will get Bitcoin Gold tokens which match the Bitcoin balance in their wallet.

The whole launch has come as a complete surprise to the majority of Bitcoin holders. Most thought it’s a test or beta project with no inkling that it was actually going to happen. It is not just private holders that have been caught out. Several cryptocurrency companies have decided not to support Bitcoin Gold until it has proved its security and “replay protection” capabilities.

Bitcoin is stable since the fork and is trading at $5741.3 as of 8:30 GMT.

Bitcoin gold dropped 62% in its first trading day. It was trading at $539 several hours after the launch and dropped to the current price of $118.80.

The question remains whether Bitcoin gold will become a significant cryptocurrency. So far, the launch of Bitcoin gold seems a bit vague as investors and traders are not certain of Bitcoin Gold pricing. Time will tell.

Noble Gold specializes in IRAs and 401(k) rollovers through precious metals and cryptocurrencies investments.