DNS servers of Bitcoin Gold were hacked yesterday and the official website, bitcoingold.org is redirecting to “Juice Wrld – Lucid Dreams” YouTube video. The official forum, forum.bitcoingold.org is also redirecting to the video but direct links to forum topics are not redirecting to video and are inaccessible.
Few days back, we mentioned how the Bitcoin Gold was changing its mining algorithm to make BTG mining difficult for the ASIC miners. Today, the Bitcoin Gold team has begun testing the new algorithm on their test pool. So if you are a miner, you might want to test it.
Bitcoin Gold currently makes use of equihash algorithm which is already being used by cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin Gold is going to use modified version of this algorithm in order to keep their blockchain ASIC resistance and prevent it from 51 percent attacks. Current equihash requires minimum 50MB memory but runs faster with 144MB memory. These memory requirements were said to be enough to prevent ASIC manufactures from building ASIC. In 2018, this is not enough.
Ministry of industry and information technology, China has released public blockchain ratings and surprisingly, bitcoin is not #1 on the list. The top 5 coins are Ethereum, Steem, Lisk, Neo and KMD. This is followed by Stellar Lumens, Cardano, IOTA, Monero and Stratis. Bitcoin ranks #13, trailing behind Qtum and Bitshares.
BTCPay Server has added support for Bitcoin Gold (BTG) in the latest update, v1.0.2.11. While it is not yet available in the docker, it will soon be enabled and people will be able to use Bitcoin Gold for making payments. BTCPay server is an open source payment processor that is written in C#. It allows easy migration of your code base to self hosted payment processor.
LocalBitcoins allows users to buy / sell bitcoins directly from other users. There is no company or organization involved and LocalBitcoins acts just as an escrow. The portal has made big changes to privacy policy and terms of service which will come into effect on May 25th 2018.
Coinbase is the most popular cryptocurrency exchange for buying Bitcoin, Ethereum and Litecoin. The company has received E-Money license from the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) in UK and have thus updated their privacy policy and user agreement. The E-money license lays the foundation for future product improvements that will be available to customers outside the US/EU. Coinbase has also taken this opportunity to make our terms more accessible and easier to read.
BlackRock is world’s biggest asset manager and since they are late in the Bitcoin race, they took no time to rip Bitcoin. In a report, their chief investment strategist said that while they do see cryptocurrencies becoming more widely used in future, they are currently too risky and should only be taken seriously by those who are ready for complete losses.
Chinese government has made it clear that it wants to block access to all portals and websites that are relegated to bitcoin, cryptocurrencies and ICOs that are located OUTSIDE China. This report came from Financial News, which is a publication managed by PBOC which said that in order to prevent financial risks, China will be stepping up its efforts to remove offshore / onshore platform related to cryptocurrency trading. Baidu, which is China’s Google, has stopped showing any ads related to cryptocurrencies.
Bank of America has just made an announcement that it will be banning bitcoin and other cryptocurrency purchases issued by their bank. BOA says that there is big risk linked with the cryptocurrency purchases. There is big possibility of fraud as well. People are criticizing their decision on social media. They say if one can get a cash advance inside Las Vegas-casino, then banning users from buying cryptocurrency makes no sense.