Not All That Glitters Is Bitcoin Gold

Cryptoverse is a mighty fine illogical place. See for yourself: Total capitalization of the market continues to drop, but a number of projects on the market keeps on growing. According to the recent data, there are 2410 cryptocurrencies registered at the moment, while any decent amount of liquidity stays in the “top dogs” resting at the fronts of the charts. Other coins can be called “penny stocks” wannabes and assets of the projects that gather money through crypto, which does not get the same level of attention from the traders, aside from the one day traders, interested in speculative trading and those riding pump and dump train. But there are other types of crypto, that literally have no purpose. An excellent example of those is Bitcoin’s twin brother - BTG.

This hardforking offspring is called Bitcoin Gold, and it started from a high point which is entirely understandable. People liked project’s central idea - creating a bitcoin analog, that is essentially the same, but better. It should've become more decentralized, more honest, more transparent. Basically, creators of the project promised to give people the asset that has all the key traits of the people’s gold. And for a while - they were able to keep their promise - BTG managed to stay in that role for a while, project’s asset remained on the almost $500 dollars per coin mark, with a total market capitalization in almost $7 million.

But today their situation is much worse as the price of the asset dropped to the $25 dollar point coin, and their total market capitalization is in pieces too, barely reaching for the $2 million. At the eve of the first year, we decided to find out the reason for the drastic transformation.  

“Boasting isn’t wise in the cryptoverse, but we are among the first 25 cryptos out there, despite endless supply of competitors, - said Martin Kuvandzhiev, one of the Bitcoin Gold Co-founders, during an interview to the Bitnestoday.com. - One of the big reasons why we were able to achieve that, was practice. We had a massive number of problems that allowed us to develop a considerable level of expertise, while we were searching for a quick solution.”

The recent incident that happened with Gulden, another cryptocompany showed that well enough. Gulden messed up their rolling update of the network and as a result - they harmed Coinmi’s operational capacity, which resulted in a prolonged conflict that went completely public. Bitcoin Gold had a similar ordeal - this summer they have fallen victim to the biggest nightmare of every crypto project that uses PoW (Proof-of-Work) protocol - dreaded 51% attack. Similarity, their trading platform has suffered significant losses, around $18 million. Bitcoin Gold refused to compensate for the exchange’s loses and as result of that - they were banished and ended up being delisted.

“We have warned the exchanges about evident and upcoming danger, but it seems that some people decided not to take us too seriously. As a result - they lost a serious amount of money. We patched everything up within a month, by switching to our own protocol. This whole situation is a valuable lesson, that gave us few insights on the state of the crypto and made us think. I doubt that everything will ever become as it used to be, but we are not giving up and continuing”.

That is a remarkable show of humility and a great display of proper corporate ethics in times of crisis. However, what do Bitcoin Gold has, aside from their manners? Sure, the right team makes a lot for the company's reputation, but first and foremost - crypto is business, and you have to judge a product by its financial and investment values. And here people’s gold takes a dive nose first.

Sure, BTG pricing was stable to a while, with the volatility at the reasonable, controlled rate. Even more - they got a small boost to the price, mostly because Coinbase custody agreed to take their asset in their portfolio. Furthermore - they signed up partnerships with a number of big, well-known companies in the industry and outside of it: Paytomat, coindirect, Hotels24, ZelTrez wallet и Change Hero. It’s also worth mentioning that they got implemented into the “lightning” network. But long-term perspectives of the project often play a pivotal role in the development of the project. And they do drop the ball here, and statistics show it.

Numbers from the CoinMarketCap show one and simple truth: this does not help all that much. Sure, maybe at the moment market is all hot and bothered with the bitcoin, and as we know it - cryptocurrency №1 is kind of a stuck at the end of its first decade-long lifecycle and despite the progress it’s far from being perfect. But it’s also entirely possible that Bitcoin Gold - basically the same thing as bitcoin, but harder to mine. And that's it - it does not have any sufficient advantages over it’s “big brother”.

Maybe BTG has some revolutionary ideas? Nope, it’s getting lost among numerous competitors. Perhaps it can offer a good price value? That is also not true since it’s highest point stayed at the end of December, back in 2017. Since then it became a "reverse stable coin" - its stability lays  in continually losing money only.

And there is little to no hope that this situation will change anytime soon. Digital world does not sleep, and new players want to leave their mark on the charts, while the main bitcoin network is also actively developing. On the other hand - their main feature, ASIC-proof mining is not as exciting as it used to be, there is an apparent lack of the technical development and even diehard fans lose their hope for the project’s future.

Taking into consideration all those facts you get an eerie feeling. Sure, the idea behind blockchain and crypto means a certain level of openness as a default, making it a people’s market. But it turns out that a vast amount of projects like Bitcoin Gold, and other cryptos with Bitcoin in its name can cripple the cryptoverse by diluting community’s attention and sources of liquidity coming from investors.