Appearance of Bitcoin Gold has negative effect on Bitcoin prices

Last Tuesday, Bitcoin Gold came into an existence after a new iteration of the original Bitcoin blockchain had forked off, just three months after the controversial Bitcoin Cash fork. While Bitcoin Gold has next to no chance of replacing the original Bitcoin in the marketplace, it has nevertheless caused small-scale market turbulence. The purpose of Bitcoin Gold is to adjust the blockchain in an attempt to once again make mining accessible to the general public. While major mining operators have essentially annexed the marketplace in 2017, some commentators consider Bitcoin Gold to be the solution for small-time miners. Robert Khune, a strategist involved in the Bitcoin Gold project, agrees: “Bitcoin has always had the ability to escape from any potential abusive mining hardware manufacturers”, explained Khune, adding that successful forks are “what will be required” in order to make mining fair and accessible to the public once again. Bitcoin downturn Bitcoin dipped 4.4% to $5,652 as of 8.55am on Wednesday (Eastern Time), however, the cryptocurrency is still up 36% this month and approximately six-fold percent compared to this time last year. The recent minor downturn has been driven by the anticipation of disarray as a result of expected hard forks in the near future, with an entire community of wallet holders divided over decisions to either support or reject these forks. Some are also speculating that the most recent fork could be an opportunity to essentially double their coins, as Bitcoin holders would also be credited with equal amounts in Bitcoin Gold – although few exchanges have offered their support when it comes to the new currency. A sign of things to come? Crypto experts are predicting that further splits are likely to be imminent, especially when certain factions of the community want to increase Bitcoin’s block size in order to make transaction times shorter. The first phase of this plan, titled SegWit2x, was implemented during the summer, when it took data off the main network – leading to widespread condemnation from many wallet holders and trading platforms alike – with some even urging users to dump SegWit2x Bitcoins immediately.