Bitcoin Gold (BTG): The last bastion for GPU miners or a doomed failure?

Core Data Overview

• Birth: Originated from a BTC hard fork in October 2017, block height 491407
• Mining Algorithm: Changed from SHA-256 to Equihash-BTG (ASIC-resistant design)
• Supply: 21 million coins (same as BTC)
• Black History: Suffered two major 51% attacks (2018, 2020)

What is BTG?

BTG is essentially a “resistance” against the centralization of BTC mining power. Back when BTC was monopolized by ASIC mining companies, the founding team said: Let's create a coin that can be mined with GPUs, realizing the dream of one vote for each person.

What's the result?

✅ Successful Areas:

• It really can be mined with a graphics card, lowering the entry barrier.
• Attracted a large number of home miners and GPU mining pools
• After ETH transitions to PoS, the remaining GPU computing power has found a new purpose.

❌ Heartbreaking reality:

• Because the algorithm is shared with other coins, GPUs are everywhere, making it very easy to be attacked.
• The attack cost is much lower than BTC (BTC requires expensive ASIC chips, while BTG only needs to rent GPU clusters)
• Liquidity is far inferior to BTC, and the volatility is astonishingly high.
• The ecosystem is underdeveloped, and merchant acceptance is low.

Investment Perspective: Game Theory or Gambling?

Supporters' Argument:

• The true “decentralized spirit” (relative to BTC)
• The miner community is active, continuously generating purchasing power.
• The long-term existence of GPU mining means there is still demand for BTG.

Arguments of the Opponents:

• The history of 51% attacks is right before our eyes, and the trust crisis is hard to dissipate.
• The security discount is too large, and the risk premium is明显.
• Once new ASIC chips appear, the entire concept collapses.
• The market capitalization is far smaller than BTC, institutional investors avoid it as if it were the plague.

One-sentence conclusion

BTG is more like a manifesto of the crypto punk spirit rather than a pragmatic investment. If you believe in “hardware democratization”, then BTG is indeed valuable; if you are purely looking at returns, the certainty of BTC is far higher - this is a game of choosing sides.

Currently, BTC is under pressure, and altcoins generally have weaker resistance to declines. Be cautious.