Bitcoin Gold (BTG) is an open-source hard fork of the Bitcoin cryptocurrency. The fork occurred on October 24, 2017, at block height 491407. The stated goal of the fork is to make mining decentralized again by allowing the Bitcoin Gold cryptocurrency to be mined using graphics cards instead of specialized ASICs, the price of which can reach several thousand dollars.
Bitcoin Gold uses the SHA-256 and Equihash encryption algorithm, which was originally applied in the Zcash cryptocurrency. The Bitcoin Gold team used post-mining to mine 100,000 coins after the fork had already occurred. The team did this by quickly processing about 8,000 blocks at a cost of about 12.5 BTG per block. The bulk of the coins obtained in the pre-mining was placed in a "fund" and, according to the developers, they will be used to grow and maintain the Bitcoin Gold ecosystem. Nevertheless, of the 100,000 coins, about five percent were allocated as a bonus for the team, or about 833 coins for each of the six team members.
