Craig Wright had to be escorted out of an event after a standoff with the founder of Bitcoin Gold Jack Liao. During a conference in Taiwan, Wright once again tried to dodge questions about a real proof he is Satoshi Nakamoto. Then, he attacked Liao for answering an audience question in Chinese.
https://twitter.com/bitcoingold/status/999383701824798721
Bitcoin Gold (BTG) has managed to survive since October 2017, when the fork was first launched. Lately, however, BTG has largely disappeared from the radar, with a months-long slide seeing it halve from the $100 levels, to hover around $47.62. The most recent move by the coin to disable ASIC mining did not manage to create a renewed interest. At this point, BTG remains a coin led by mining economic, where a flat and unmovable price is not such a problem for miners that regularly cash out.
!BTG!
BTG has been trading on extremely low volumes, of around 2,000 BTC.
Double Spending Attack Discovered?
Yet there are more ominous signs of failure around the Bitcoin Gold network. For now, BTG has a low enough hashrate that it can be taken over. And some believe this is what happened a few days back - a 51% attack.
On May 19, the Bitcoin Gold blog pointed out for the first time that a lot of hashing power was pointed to try and reverse large transactions. BTG is currently on 54 exchanges, and it is precisely exchanges that were attacked:
“An unknown party with access to very large amounts of hashpower is trying to use “51% attacks” to perform “double spend” attacks to steal money from Exchanges. We have been advising all exchanges to increase confirmations and carefully review large deposits.”
Curiously, what may have triggered the attack is the falling hashrate for BTG, which has been slashed in half since March. After becoming ASIC-resistant, the network is mined by GPUs - and while a 51% attack is expensive, it is not unfeasible, as it would be with a higher hashrate network.
https://twitter.com/bitcoingold/status/997466283653455872
For some, even the theoretical opportunity of a 51% double-spending attack would mean a coin is dead. But BTG keeps working for now - with increased vigilance when it comes to exchanges.
The Bitcoin Gold team has warned exchanges to increase the demand for confirmations, making the 51% attack impossible.
In the past, the Bitcoin Gold network has seen powerful miners join in, but refrain from double-spends, instead solving more blocks ahead of schedule at a relatively low difficulty.
This article appeared first on Cryptovest