As we have seen on August 1st of this year- the Bitcoin fork, resulted in a new coin known as Bitcoin Cash (1). You may have also heard Bitcoin has yet to split again-not once, but twice more!
This is not a pun on the upcoming Bitcoin SegWit2X upgrade- there may literally be 2 forks before the new year...one of which has supposably already happened, though this is not entirely confirmed. Either way- lets take a closer look.
Bitcoin Gold:
Bitcoin Gold has been created for a need of decentralization of Bitcoin...OK- that aside the team plans to hard fork and create the new cryptocurrency known as Bitcoin Gold. Any existing privater keys holding Bitcoin (BTC ) on Oct. 25th, will receive an equal amount of Bitcoin Gold (BTG) a week later on Nov. 1st.
Coin holders may face a delay due to a possible lack of BTG wallets, or exchanges failing to honor the new coin until later dates. With this said, 2 exchanges have already commited to have BTG available for trading including Hong Kong's Bitexchange, as well as a new CFD exchange Bitstar.
Luke Parker of Brave NewCoin describes the more technical aspect of the fork in a recent article. "The biggest change in the code that helps it be complementary to Bitcoin, is that it uses a different mining algorithm that is resistant to ASIC chips, called Equihash. Zcash uses the same mining algorithm, and just like Ethereum, these coins both require the use of GPUs instead of Bitcoin’s current ASIC mining machines. ASICs are widely regarded among bitcoin's development team and their supporters as the primary source of many of Bitcoin’s current problems, leaving Bitcoin centralized in the hands of a small number of miners." (2)
The Question of WHY?
Criticism for the project stems form the fear an unknown amount of Bitcoin Gold could potentially be mined. This is due to the developers stating, they plan to mine the new blockchain themselves for an undisclosed period of time after the fork. Aside from this, the BTG brand has been further condemned from not tinging much to the table aside from being based on Equihash making it GPU mineable. Bitcoin Gold would also include replay protection, as well as having a variable difficulty that is set to change on a per block basis- a added benefit to GPU miners.
There is also little to no clarity or information from the Bitcoin Gold team. Their website is down as of writing this, and there has been little information provided from the BTG team aside from the Oct 25th fork date.
How to Claim Your Coins!
In order to claim your BTG coins, make sure you have access to your private keys. IMPORTANT: It is extremely important to be cautious when trading your newly acquired Bitcoin Gold coins, as they will share the SAME private key. It would be in your best interest to be extremely cautious when going about claiming these coins- make you NEVER give out the private keys to anyone- especially online.
Aside from that- you will also want to ensure you do not trade your bitcoin during or right after the hard fork. This will protect you from replay attacks until the dust settles. You can use wallets such as Ledger Nano S or Trezor to store your private keys.
Wallets like Jaxx and similar apps allow you to store your private keys and control them yourself! Aside form this, a paper wallet can be used to inexpensively store your keys offline, by printing them and storing them in a safe dry place.
Make sure you're set for the upcoming fork- and enjoy the extra coins! Please Follow and UpVote!
Sources;
(1) https://www.theverge.com/2017/8/1/16075276/bitcoin-cash-hard-fork-coinbase
(2) https://bravenewcoin.com/news/bitcoin-gold-a-friendly-dividend-fork-or-bitcoins-disaster-recovery-plan/