What's new with Bitcoin Gold (BTG)?
Bitcoin Gold project news
Over the past few years, there has not been any significant news related to the Bitcoin Gold cryptocurrency. This altcoin grabbed attention by appearing as a Bitcoin fork in 2017 — at the peak of cryptocurrency popularity, dubbed the "crypto boom."
Amidst the hype surrounding the first massive cryptocurrency boom, Bitcoin Gold was able to attract a lot of supporters despite being essentially just an unremarkable copy of Bitcoin and its copycat.
The developers of Bitcoin Gold were engaged in the development of the project until 2019:
- Released a specialized wallet for Bitcoin Gold called ElectrumG;
- Implemented smart contract features;
- Began preparations to launch a Lightning Network or LN (payment network) for the Bitcoin Gold protocol, similar to what happened with Bitcoin.
However, neither the Lightning Network nor the BTCPay payment service with LN transaction integration was realized. In other words, after 2019, not a single item on the team's roadmap has been realized, and no Bitcoin Gold protocol updates have been released.
In July, the Bitcoin Gold team announced on its X profile (formerly Twitter) that its official website, bitcoingold.org, had been compromised, and the new domain was located at btgofficial.org. This, incidentally, was the only Twitter post from 2018.
Bitcoin Gold halving
The Bitcoin Gold protocol is based on the architecture of the first cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, so it has a similar network mechanism. Like Bitcoin, the Bitcoin Gold protocol has a mechanism of halving, that is, a reduction in issuance or, in other words, deflation.
On April 24, 2024, the fourth halving event occurred on the Bitcoin Gold network, which halved miner rewards from 6.25 to 3.125 BTG. The event happened on the 840,000 block.
The next Bitcoin Gold halving, as in the case of Bitcoin, is expected in April 2028.
BTG exchange rate
The Bitcoin Gold cryptocurrency has roughly doubled in value over the past year as of November 2024, with its price increasing from $15.17 to $30.67, according to CoinMarketCap.
Although the BTG cryptocurrency has corrected since reaching a local peak of $60.56 in March 2024, the positive changes in the crypto market due to the election of Donald Trump, a U.S. president loyal to digital assets, have led to the growth of bitcoin, followed by altcoins like it.
Development
The Bitcoin Gold project looks abandoned, as the roadmap's last version was released in 2019. Since then, no significant updates to the Bitcoin Gold protocol have been released.
If you look at the Bitcoin Gold project's GitHub, you can see that the developers' activity is quite weak, and updates are rarely released. The last Bitcoin Gold protocol update, v0.17.3, was released back in August 2020.
The team has also abandoned Bitcoin Gold social networks, which have not been maintained for over 5 years. Bitcoin Gold is not an example of a project focused on the crypto community.
Conclusion
Bitcoin Gold looks like a dead project despite the relatively large capitalization and the presence of a reasonably large community of supporters of this altcoin.
Since 2019, the project has not been developed in any way, and Bitcoin Gold itself has practically not been discussed. However, strangely enough, this does not prevent the cost of BTG cryptocurrency from growing following the rate of the leading crypto asset on the market — BTC.