The Bitcoin Gold (BTG) network suffered another set of 51% attacks on January 23-24, as roughly 29 blocks were removed in two deep blockchain reorganizations (reorgs). Reports indicate that more than 7,000 BTG was double spent as the chain suffered a loss of $70,000 in two days.
Also read: Bitcoin Gold Hacked for $18 Million
Bitcoin Gold Sees Two Deep Blockchain Reorgs With 29 Blocks Replaced
In May 2018, the Bitcoin Gold (BTG) blockchain was 51% attacked for the first time suffering a loss of more than $18 million. BTG is a fork of the Bitcoin protocol but it doesn’t use the SHA256 consensus algorithm like BTC, BCH, or BSV. The blockchain BTG utilizes a variant of the Equihash algorithm (Equihash 144, 5 or “Zhash”) which can be mined with a GPU. Bitcoin Gold’s creators believed that creating a Bitcoin fork that could be mined with GPUs as opposed to ASIC devices would be more decentralized. However, things went south in the spring of 2018 when a miner gained control of more than 51% of the overall BTG hashrate. After losing $18 million, BTG was also asked to pay the exchange Bittrex back or face being delisted. Since then BTG has been meandering along while other small coins like ethereum classic and vertcoin were 51% attacked too.
Last week on Thursday and Friday, BTG again dealt with a malicious mining entity as more than 51% of the chain’s hashrate was captured and still is. The blockchain suffered from two deep reorgs on both days that saw $19,000 double spent on Thursday and $53,000 double spent on Friday.
