It’s pretty easy to understand why the recent BitcoinGold (BTG) fork was met with many a collective eyeroll by the crypto community. The documentation and marketing strategies left a lot to be desired. Quite simply, the dev and marketing team didn’t do a lot to muster up much demand for the new coin. At least not yet.
The stated purpose of the Bitcoin Gold fork was to return an element of democracy to the Bitcoin universe. To take mining power away from the hands of the few mega-miners and ASIC-based machines and return it to the greater user community. Bitcoin Gold mimics Bitcoin in many important ways: block size, maximum number of coins, and transaction structure. The primary difference is in the hashing algorithm. BTG has chosen to employ Equihash, the same ASIC-resistant algo utilized most notably by Ethereum and Zcash. This will make Bitmain and all Antminers useless in the pursuit of mining BTG.
There is one thing that may yet make BTG popular and ensure mass adoption. Ethereum mining has become increasingly difficult in recent months. To further complicate matters, Ethereum has begun to pivot away from Proof of Work (PoW) mining and moving towards a modified Proof of Stake (PoS) concept. This further diminishes the role of miners in their future. There is a very real possibility that BTG becomes the prime beneficiary of all of those GPUs that desperately need something to mine.
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DISCLAIMER: These are my opinions and not to be construed as investment advice. All investments in crypto carry substantial risk and should only be undertaken with money that you can absolutely afford to lose. Consult your investment adviser and/or significant other before making any investment in anything.