Bitcoin Gold (BTG)

Use Case of Bitcoin Gold

• Decentralized Digital Currency: Bitcoin Gold is used as a digital money that allows people to send and receive value without needing banks or middlemen.
• Mining Accessibility: It aims to make mining more accessible by using a different mining algorithm that works better with common graphics cards, allowing more people to participate in securing the network.
• Peer-to-Peer Transactions: Bitcoin Gold supports fast and direct transactions between users anywhere in the world.
• Store of Value: Like other cryptocurrencies, it can be used to hold value over time, similar to digital gold.

Pros of Bitcoin Gold

• Decentralized Mining: Uses the Equihash algorithm to allow GPU mining, which helps prevent mining centralization by large ASIC mining farms.
• Accessibility: Enables more individual miners to participate using common computer hardware rather than expensive specialized equipment.
• Bitcoin History: Shares the entire Bitcoin transaction history up to the fork, giving Bitcoin holders an equivalent amount of Bitcoin Gold at launch.
• Community Focus: Aims to align more closely with the original vision of decentralized mining ("one CPU, one vote").

Cons of Bitcoin Gold

• Price Volatility: Has experienced significant price drops and market instability since launch.
• Allegations of Pre-mining: Faced controversy over accusations of pre-mining, which affected trust in the project.
• Lower Adoption: Less widely used and traded compared to Bitcoin, leading to lower liquidity.
• Competition: Competes with Bitcoin and many other cryptocurrencies, making it harder to stand out.
• Uncertain Future: Market sentiment and developer activity have fluctuated, making its long-term success unclear.

For more details, you can visit the official Bitcoin Gold project website.

Founders of Bitcoin Gold

Bitcoin Gold was founded in 2017 by a group of enthusiasts with diverse skills. The main co-founders include:

• Jack Liao: Often recognized as the founder, he was CEO of the mining software company Lightning ASIC.
• Hang Yin: Co-founder and lead developer, with a background in computer science from Fudan University.
• Martin Kuvandzhiev: Co-founder and developer, with experience in software engineering and academia.
• Franco Niebles: Co-founder and designer.
• Robert Kuhne: Also listed among the founders.

The team aimed to create a more decentralized version of Bitcoin by changing the mining algorithm to allow mining with common graphics cards instead of specialized ASIC hardware.

Founders and Team

Bitcoin Gold was founded in 2017 by a group of enthusiasts including Jack Liao, Hang Yin (co-founder and lead developer), and Martin Kuvandzhiev (co-founder and board member). They come from diverse backgrounds in computer science and software engineering.

Institutional and Enterprise Investors

Bitcoin Gold has attracted attention from institutional and enterprise investors due to its goal of decentralizing Bitcoin mining and making it accessible to more people. Specific names of institutional investors are not publicly detailed.

Community and Individual Investors

The project has a community of individual miners and investors who support Bitcoin Gold because it uses a mining algorithm (Equihash-BTG) that allows mining with common GPUs instead of specialized equipment, promoting decentralization.

Summary

• Founded by Jack Liao and others with tech backgrounds
• Supported by institutional and enterprise investors (unnamed publicly)
• Backed by a community of individual miners and crypto enthusiasts

For more details, visit the official website: bitcoingold.org

Halal Status of Bitcoin Gold

• General Consensus: There is no specific ruling on Bitcoin Gold itself, but it is generally treated like other cryptocurrencies in Islamic finance discussions.
• Bitcoin and Similar Cryptos: Bitcoin Gold, like Bitcoin, is often considered halal by many scholars if used as a digital asset or medium of exchange without involving speculation or interest (riba).
• Reasoning: Cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin Gold are viewed as halal when they function like "digital gold" — a store of value and medium of exchange — and transactions are transparent and free from prohibited elements like gambling or excessive uncertainty.
• Scholarly Views: Opinions vary; some scholars permit cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin Gold if used properly, while others caution against speculative trading aspects.

Short answer: Yes, Bitcoin Gold can be halal if used in a way that follows Islamic principles, mainly avoiding speculation and interest.