How and where to buy Bitcoin Gold

This fork wasn’t like others

Each fork is intended to improve bitcoin by overcoming certain shortfalls.

Bitcoin has previously forked into Bitcoin Cash (BCH) to improve transaction speeds, and the Segwit2x fork (at block 494,784) is intended to do the same.

Both of these use the same SHA-256 algorithm type as BTC. This means they’re in more direct competition with BTC, because there’s only a finite amount of hardware around to mine all three currency types. Miners will probably have to choose which one they’ll spend their resources on.

But BTG will be using the Equihash algorithm instead, which cannot be solved using the same purpose-made ASIC BTC mining system. Instead, it’s designed to be mined with general purpose hardware.

This is the currency’s main feature. It’s designed to be decentralized and to put more of the mining power back in the hands of the masses rather than small groups of traders.

On the other hand

Potential buyers need to consider whether BTG’s new mining architecture can effectively decentralize the currency and whether that will necessarily be good for its value.

There have also been a number of issues, such as a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack shortly after launch which prevented it from functioning, according to Motherboard, and a potential range of technical issues.

According to Forbes, users are also reporting difficulties connecting to other nodes of the network, which might strike directly at the main benefits and points of difference offered by Bitcoin Gold.

You will need to decide whether these issues are a concern and whether BTG will be able to overcome any reliability and technical issues. You will also need to decide whether correcting these issues will actually end up translating into an increase in value.