new cryptocurrency has been created through a hard fork of the bitcoin blockchain.
Completing a process that began in July, the bitcoin gold technical team has taken what it calls a "snapshot" of the bitcoin blockchain so it could be recreated and reconfigured with new rules, ultimately creating bitcoin gold at block 491,407 on the original blockchain.
As of now, the process is underway by which the new bitcoin cryptocurrency will be completed and released to existing bitcoin users.
As profiled in our explainer, the project aims to tackle the perceived problem that miners as a group have too much influence over the direction of the bitcoin network. To lessen their control, bitcoin gold replaces bitcoin's current mining algorithm with one that cheaper graphics processing units (GPUs) are able to mine.
