Talking Points
- Bitcoin hard-fork has happened slightly earlier than expected, creating a new digital coin.
- New token, Bitcoin Gold (BTG) hit lower from the off by forward sellers; website under denial of service attack.
The DailyFX Bitcoin Glossary is designed to provide traders with a reference for important terms and concepts essential for understanding the emerging cryptocurrency universe.
Bitcoin (BTC) Hard-Fork Creates a New Digital Currency
Around 02:20 am on Tuesday, block 491,407 was mined on the Bitcoin blockchain, heralding the arrival of a new coin, Bitcoin Gold (BTG). A snapshot of current Bitcoin owners was taken and holders of the original coin at that time were awarded the new BTG coins on a 1:1 basis. Traders who were short of BTC at that time will be short of BTG on the same basis.
The new Bitcoin Gold network is not expected to go live until the start of November when the new coins will be credited, or taken away.
Early trading indications, at YObit.net, saw the price of BTG as high as BTG/BTC 0.11900, around $680, while the current quote of BTG/BTC 0.073800 is equal to $415. The price of Bitcoin has also drifted lower in the last 24 hours from a high of $6,000 to a current quote of $5645.
However, not all exchanges are expected to support Bitcoin Gold, including BitMex and Coinbase, although they may support the token at a later date. At the time of writing, the official Bitcoin Gold website, www.btcgpu.org, was out of service due to a DDoS attack due to over 10 million requests per minute.
We will be covering the latest Bitcoin hard-fork in further depth at our Weekly Bitcoin Webinar, on Wednesday at 12:00pm.
Care should also be taken ahead of the SegWit2x hard-fork which is scheduled for mid-November.
Chart: Bitcoin (BTC) One Hour Timeframe (October 19 – October 24, 2017)
In the wider crypto-currency market, gains were seen across the board, with notable double-digit returns seen in Ripple (XRP), Dash (DASH) and NEO (NEO). Bitcoin Cash still dominates the market with a share of 55.4%, while the Crypto-currency universe is worth just under $170 billion, just $6 billion short of its all-time high capitalization.
Market Moves/Top 8 Capitalizations – October 24, 2017
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--- Written by Nick Cawley, Analyst.
To contact Nick, email him at nicholas.cawley@ig.com
Follow Nick on Twitter @nickcawley1
