Bitcoin Gold released today, somewhat under the radar with the tumult going on between Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash.

Having barely recovered from the drama of a full-force attack on Bitcoin by the proponents of Bitcoin Cash, the market could be forgiven for not noticing the release of Bitcoin Gold. It released with little fanfare, briefly spiked at around $450 in futures (less than a tenth of a Bitcoin) and now seems to already be fading, likely to be sold into alt coins with more compelling potential once it hits the open market.

The big selling point of Bitcoin Gold (other than its copied name) is its ASIC-resistance. The notion of ASIC-resistance is somewhat complex, but can be explained as a difficulty algorithm that is more successfully handled by GPU's instead of by dedicated ASIC computers. The idea of ASIC-resistance is to then enable the decentralization of the coin by developing the difficulty in such a way that large concentrated mining farms in few hands won't bother mining it. Instead, many smaller-scale miners will perform mining tasks, enabling the mining community to be more of an "everyman" miner, and therefore be less centralized.

Bitcoin Gold faces a significant problem. There are already far more developed and readily available ASIC-resistant coins on the market. Vertcoin and Groestlcoin are prime examples. Both Vertcoin and Groestlcoin are, of course, much further along in development than Bitcoin Gold and can be bought at a fraction of the temporary value of Bitcoin Gold upon its release to the market.

Another criticism of Bitcoin Gold is that a good few hundred thousand coins were pre-mined prior to its release. This has not gone over well in the crypto community, so many are likely to dump the coins once able to do so.

If the market acts freely, we will likely see an outpouring of value from Bitcoin Gold into other ASIC-resistant coins.

However, it is possible that this will present another opportunity for an attack on Bitcoin. If the whales of the Bitcoin Cash community decide to pour their Bitcoin Gold assets into Bitcoin Cash, we could see another dramatic round of war between Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin. It is possible that this could be coordinated along with concerted transaction spam attacks to bog down the Bitcoin mempool as well. Watch out for those crazy Bitcoin transaction fees and realize - this is all part of a coordinated attack on Bitcoin.

Both Vertcoin and Groestlcoin could be great picks today and over the next few weeks.

If you found this interesting or helpful, donations would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!

Vertcoin address:

VwdxBfExpnxVxAY3YHf44zriVgFBVQcutC

*This is not professional trading advice. In the world of crypto, only spend what you can afford to lose!

image source:

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