BTG Fork is Now Active, But…

UPDATE OCT 27: We’ve successfully taken a snapshot of all players accounts prior to the fork, so if you had BTC deposited with us at the time of the snapshot you will be receiving your BTG once more documentation is out for us to offer them. Please be patient while we figure this out, as currently it is not on us but rather on the Bitcoin Gold team to complete development so that we can properly distribute BTG to our players. Currently, there aren’t even any BTG wallets available to the public, so it may take some time. Unfortunately, we cannot provide an exact timeline for BTG distribution, however please stay tuned to our blog for updates on when and how we will be distributing BTG to our players.

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It looks like the developers over at Bitcoin Gold overshot the approximate date of reaching block 491407 on the original Bitcoin blockchain by about 3 days. The date was originally set for some time in November, but they updated to Oct 25 as the most likely date of reaching the block. In case you’re confused, the date that kept coming out of every company that had a stake in BTG was Oct 25 which essentially ended up being dubbed the “official (but unofficial) day of the fork”. Although the majority of the information stated the approximated date for the fork, in reality it was solely based on when miners would reach/mine block 491407 on the blockchain. 

⚂  Wait, So Has It Forked Yet or Not?

To be clear, the BITCOIN GOLD HAS ALREADY FORKED, so if you’re one of the ones confused about this whole BTG ordeal thinking you still have a few days to store your BTC for the fork – Sorry, the anticipated fork has already occurred, which ended up happening on October 24th 10am UTC. If you had BTC in a proper wallet that you own the private keys to (ie. Ledger/Trezor Hardwallet, Electrum, Armory), or you had them stored at an exchange or other service that has stated that they will be adopting BTG once more dev info and two-way replay is implemented, then all you need to do at this point is BE PATIENT. Remember, BTG is a completely new coin, so there is new dev that needs to take place before BTG can be distributed, whether that’s sending  BTG from a wallet (which don’t even exist at the time of writing this) or from an exchange, or any other service that plans on offering it to their customers for that matter. 

Other Hurdles Before BTG Can Actually Start Being Traded/Used

And of course, you’ll need a BTG wallet to hold your shiny new Bitcoin Gold coins, especially since the address structure is completely different from BTC/BCH. This was done to mitigate accidental sends of one coin to another since your wallet would alert you that it was an invalid address. Although this is a step in the right direction, the vast number of companies/exchanges/services willing to adopt BTG in one fashion or another will most likely be holding off on doing so at least immediately speaking due to the lack of two-way replay protection. Without this key functionality, you could potentially lose BTC while sending BTG. Even with other lesser forms of replay protection that are integrated with BTG currently, most of the larger exchanges/sites will most likely halt BTG integration into their system until they see that two-way replay protection has been implemented. Especially if the exchange or service is transacting large amounts of BTC, this is a must to ensure that no BTC are lost or stolen due to the addition of BTG. Any liability due to security holes for a cryptocurrency based business is one of the quickest ways to shut it down. Again, you’ll need to be a little more patient this time around compared to the BCH fork timeline. Wallets aren’t even slated to go public until November 1st, and its pretty clear that BTG are worthless without a wallet to hold them in. So everyone, please keep this in mind and be patient! Its still unclear due to so many incomplete sources on whether its safe to send/use the BTC wallet/service that you plan on receiving your BTG at, however its most likely safe to do so as the forked block has, well, forked already and all has been already recorded on both blocks (and continue to do so, but don’t quote us on this – Do your research before moving any coins – We aren’t liable for what happens based on your decisions regarding either BTC or BTG). 

What About SafeDice?

Although we have announced that we will be honoring BTG claims for players who had funds in their SD wallet before the fork, at this point we cannot set a specific date on when we will be distributing these coins. We have an idea of how we will be distributing them, but we still need more cooperation from the coin devs before we can say for sure. Again, all of this will ultimately depend on development/feature completion on Bitcoin Gold Teams end since we can only integrate what is provided to us given the circumstances. It’s difficult for us to even provide a concrete answer at this point on whether its safe to move your coins from not just us or any wallet for that matter since we do not control how the new forked blockchain works or whether it has any bugs that need to be worked out, however its most likely safe to say that by now your balances have been recorded on both blocks and you should be able to move your BTC freely without causing issues with BTG once its actually distributed. We cannot make guarantees on this since, again, its up to the BTG team on how things work (they haven’t made any official announcements on whether wallet holders can move their BTC yet safely), so if you want to be 100% safe we recommend you wait until further official news comes out regarding this subject. We should see more confidence in BCH use and dev around November 1st, however given how little documentation is out currently despite the fact that the fork already occurred, hope for the best but prepare for delays and/or issues with Bitcoin Gold. The more forks that occur, the more it seems like they are substitutes to ICOs conceived in countries such as China who have declared country-wide bans on ICO’s as a whole. With this being said, we recommend treating any existing and upcoming forks as investments on the higher end of the risk scale.

– thesourc3 (SD Mod)

Upcoming Bitcoin Gold (BTG) Fork in Oct

So by now you’ve most likely already heard about the upcoming blockchain fork set to occur in October. If you haven’t, the fork is slated for October 25th, 2017 at precisely block # 491407. What exactly is entailed with this so-called “fork” and why is it occurring? The first portion of the question is a lot easier to answer than the one following.

⚂  What’s Entailed in the Upcoming October Fork

Once the fork occurs at block # 491407, there will be a “coin split” (once again) which will result in the creation of a brand new coin: Bitcoin Gold (BTG). Bitcoin will operate as it did, while miners who decide to adopt Bitcoin Gold will begin creating blocks with a new proof-of-work algorithm called Equihash (which is also shared by the altcurrency Zcash – In turn, you’ll want to look for GPUs efficient for Zcash as they will most likely run at similar efficiency if you plan on mining BTG). The original blockchain will remain as is, and a new blockchain will split off the original and will begin recording transactions for Bitcoin Gold. While as Bitcoin utilizes the PoW algorithm SHA256, which is best suited to mine with ASIC miners, Bitcoin Gold will be more suited for GPU mining, similar to ETH or XMR. Also, comparatively, difficulty adjustment for BTC changes every two weeks while as BTG has been set to increase difficulty every block. Its uncertain as to how this will affect mining/profitability for BTG since there are so many unknown variables (miner adoption, possible rapid difficulty increase, etc), however it will be interesting to see how this concept pans out. 

In addition to the mining changes, once the fork occurs everyone who has a balance in a BTC wallet that they own the private keys to will get that same amount of BTG once Bitcoin Gold wallets are released. At the current moment, there are no Bitcoin Gold wallets available, and most are slated to be publicly available on November 1st. Be sure to keep this in mind if you plan on holding your BTC to receive BTG, as you’ll most likely need to keep your BTC in your wallet, untouched, for a certain amount of days possibly even up to a whole week or more. Also if you do plan on collecting BTG for your existing BTC balance, be sure to have 6+ confirms before block 491407 is mined. It’s better safe than sorry when it comes to events like this!

So why is this split happening exactly? To tell you the truth, this is a hard question to answer. The developers of BTG state that the reason for the split is to “decentralize” mining by allowing more at-home miners using the video card in their PC, also known as “Democratic mining”. Currently, BTC is predominantly mined with specific hardware, also known as ASIC miners due to their superior efficiency. Due to pricing and availability of such units, this makes it much more difficult for the regular user to mine BTC, which causes a significant portion of BTC to be mined through larger, centralized networks. Since mining is where coins are generated, what ends up happening is that these larger companies and organizations end up controlling the majority of the hashing power, essentially controlling the BTC network. Is this a bad thing? Not necessarily, however some can view it as going against the concept of a decentralized infrastructure which was the original intentions of Bitcoin. By changing the proof of work from SHA256 to Equihash, the new coin essentially makes all SHA256 ASIC miners obsolete to mine it since they are no longer able to. Instead, BTG is intended to be mined with optimized graphics cards which can be installed into normal home computers at a reasonable price compared to ASICs. Will this actually solve anything, or will it just cause more confusion and hinder adoption of cryptocurrency in general? It’s very hard to say, but one place to study is the fork before this upcoming one, Bitcoin Cash. As they say, history tends to repeat itself. Either way, we’ll find out here soon how this fork will affect BTC and other cryptocurrencies.

⚂  Will SafeDice Be Offering Bitcoin Gold?

Here at SafeDice, we have elected to offer Bitcoin Gold for investors who have a balance of BTC in their SD wallet at the time of the fork. You will be receiving the same amount of BTG as you have BTC, no more and no less. However, keep in mind that due to how new Bitcoin Gold is and the fact that there just aren’t much details on it yet, we will require some time after the fork to allow users to receive/withdraw their Bitcoin Gold. Unlike Bitcoin Cash, we will not be offering BTG as a playable currency. With that being said, we will most likely offer a separate withdraw page on the site where you will be able to type in your BTG wallet address and receive your 1:1 BTG based on the amount of BTC in your SD wallet at the time of the split. We are currently working on the logistics of this, so please bare with us while we ensure that the coins are distributed in a safe and secure manner. We will update this post as updates are made in regards to Bitcoin Gold. As usual, we thank you for playing at SafeDice and be sure to stay tuned here at our blog for further details on the BTG fork!

Please Note: The upcoming BTG fork is completely different than the upcoming Segwit2x fork slated for November! We will have further details on the Segwit2x (B2X) fork in November once details are more solid.

– thesourc3 (SD Mod)