Bitcoin Gold Fork Is a Success, but Coins Won’t Be Available Until 11/1

There has been a lot of discussion around the Bitcoin Gold hard fork over the past few weeks. With this fork now officially behind us, the time has come to ensure that people can actually obtain their coins and sell them on exchanges if they wish to do so. These two areas still need a lot of work, though, as there is still plenty of confusion as to how the BTG distribution will happen exactly.

Bitcoin Gold Fork is Behind us

With two Bitcoin forks happening in quick succession, there has been significant instability in the cryptocurrency markets all over the world. More specifically, all altcoins have been affected by the Bitcoin Gold fork and the upcoming SegWit2x split. We have seen people buy Bitcoin in large quantities just to ensure they can benefit from both “airdrops” as quickly as possible. With the Bitcoin Gold fork activation block behind us, the time has come to look toward the future again.

The first order of business for a lot of people will be ensuring they obtain their BTG balances in the first place. That may prove to be somewhat problematic, as it seems no coins will be distributed until November 1st. A snapshot of the Bitcoin blockchain was taken when the Bitcoin network hit block 491,407. This block was mined last night, and the timer on the Bitcoin Gold website has been updated accordingly. Everything seems to hint at a successful “first step” for BTG.

No one will be surprised that this development has sent shockwaves throughout the cryptocurrency community. A lot of people are surprised that they will not automatically receive their Bitcoin Gold, although that was never the plan of the developers. Rather, the devs are still working on the code and some additional features. Since this is not a “live fork” by any means, they can effectively distribute the coins in a week from now based on information recorded days prior.

This latter point shouldn’t surprise anyone who did his or her research, though. The Bitcoin Gold developers made it clear there would be an issuance of coins after the specific block was found on the Bitcoin network. They never said it would be immediately afterward, as they still have yet to premine a small supply of coins. Without a mainnet to do so, that can’t happen. Plus, the Bitcoin Gold source code has yet to be made open-source, which is a must before exchanges can even consider supporting it.

Surprisingly, it seems most altcoins are suddenly recovering in value for the first time in nearly a week. A lot of coins have noted gains of 3% or more now that the Bitcoin Gold snapshot debacle is behind us. It is understandable that people would want to convert altcoins to BTC and get their hands on free coins while the altcoins themselves crash in value. They can subsequently buy back a lot cheaper and receive a BTG balance whenever it becomes available. It’s a clear win-win for people who did their homework in this regard.

This doesn’t mean Bitcoin Gold will be an instant success either, mind you. There is still a lot of work to be done by the project’s developers and very little time to do so. If the coins are to be distributed on November 1st, we need open-sourced code and two-way replay protection in place before that date. So far, those deadlines look pretty tight, but we’ll see how the developers decide to tackle things moving forward. An interesting week lies ahead for BTG supporters, to say the very least.