Your guide to trading Bitcoin Gold (BTG)

Why is Bitcoin Gold important to traders?

Bitcoin Gold is a cryptocurrency and a hard fork of Bitcoin. A hard fork is a substantial change to the technology underlying Bitcoin: blockchain. The stated purpose of this hard fork was to restore the ability of common processors to mine Bitcoin.

Bitcoin Gold decentralises mining, giving ordinary users a fair chance to mine on a common processor, as it uses an algorithm that cannot be run on specialty equipment for Bitcoin mining. It was initially released in November 2017, and is among the top 30 biggest cryptocurrencies measured by market capitalisation.

Bitcoin Gold trading

Bitcoin Gold trading hours

You can trade Bitcoin Gold CFDs on Capital.com 24/7.

How to trade Bitcoin Gold CFDs

An individual has two options when trading in the cryptocurrency market. Firstly, they can buy actual cryptocurrency on exchanges, such as buying Bitcoin Gold on an exchange like HitBTC. This is considered a long-term investment, as the individual is waiting for the Bitcoin Gold price to rise significantly, so they can sell their crypto coins on an exchange.

Alternatively, they can trade a contract for difference (CFD) on a particular cryptocurrency, and speculate on the Bitcoin Gold price difference. A CFD is a financial instrument, which is a contract, typically between a broker and an investor, where one party agrees to pay the other the difference in the value of a security, or between the opening and closing of the trade. You can either hold a long position (speculating that the price will rise) or a short position (speculating that the price will fall). This is considered a short-term investment as CFDs are usually used within shorter timeframes. For instance, to trade Bitcoin Gold CFDs, you are speculating on the Bitcoin Gold to Bitcoin (BTG/BTC) pairing.

There are pivotal differences between buying a cryptocurrency and trading a CFD in a crypto market. When buying cryptocurrency, it is stored in a wallet, but when trading CFDs the position is held in your trading account, which is regulated by a financial authority. You have more flexibility when you trade using CFDs because you are not tied to the asset; you have merely bought or sold the underlying contract. As well as this, CFDs are a more established and regulated financial product.

You can trade Bitcoin Gold CFDs right here, right now. Just sign up at Capital.com and use our advanced web platform or download the best-in-class investment app to trade on the go. It will take you just 3 minutes to get started and access the world’s most traded markets.

What is Bitcoin Gold? What is cryptocurrency?

Bitcoin Gold is a cryptocurrency and a hard fork of Bitcoin, launched in 2017, to return mining to the common individual. A cryptocurrency is a digital asset conceived for use as a medium of exchange, which uses cryptography to secure transactions, control the supply of additional units and corroborate transfers. In short, cryptocurrency is a decentralised electronic currency. Cryptocurrency is stored in a ‘wallet’, which can take various forms. For instance, Bitcoin can be stored in an online wallet, or alternatively in an offline electronic wallet, and it can even be stored physically in hardware.

Why trade Bitcoin Gold CFDs with Capital.com

Advanced AI technology at its core: A Facebook-like News Feed provides users with personalised and unique content depending on their preferences. If a trader makes decisions based on biases, the innovative SmartFeed offers a range of materials to put him back on the right track. The neural network analyses in-app behaviour and recommends videos, articles, news to polish your investment strategy.

Trading on margin: Providing trading on margin (up to 1:2 for cryptocurrencies), Capital.com gives you access to the cryptocurrency market with the help of CFDs.

Trading the difference: When trading Bitcoin Gold CFD, you aren’t buying the underlying asset itself, meaning you are not tied to it. You only speculate on the rise or fall of the Bitcoin Gold price. CFD trading is nothing different from traditional trading in terms of strategies. A CFD investor can go short or long, set stop and limit losses and apply trading scenarios that align with his or her objectives.

All-round trading analysis: The browser-based platform allows traders to shape their own market analysis and forecasts with sleek technical indicators. Capital.com provides live market updates and various chart formats, available on desktop, iOS, and Android.

Focus on safety: Captal.com puts a special emphasis on safety. Licensed by the FCA and CySEC, it complies with all regulations and ensures that its clients’ data security comes first. The company allows to withdraw money 24/7 and keeps traders’ funds across segregated bank accounts.

History of Bitcoin Gold

Bitcoin Gold performance

Despite only being released in November 2017, Bitcoin Gold still has an extraordinary history. In May 2018, Bitcoin Gold suffered from a successful ‘51% hashing attack’; where a group of miners control over half of the network’s mining hash rate (computing power), in order to prevent transactions and halt payments – allowing them to ‘double-spend’ the cryptocurrency (spending the currency twice, think of it in comparison to counterfeit money). Consequently, the cryptocurrency exchange Bittrex lost 12,372 BTG (roughly $669,325 at the time of loss), and when Bitcoin Gold refused to cover this loss, Bittrex announced that is was to de-list Bitcoin Gold.

FAQ

Storing Bitcoin Gold: What is a wallet? Why do I need it to store cryptocurrency?

Before buying Bitcoin Gold, you will need a place to store it. This is what a wallet is for, and it consists of two elements: a private key and a public address. A wallet requires a private key, specific to the individual, that enables access to the Bitcoin address stored in the wallet, which is also the public key. The wallet is what enables Bitcoin Gold, or any cryptocurrency, to be a secure medium of exchange. Essentially, people can send Bitcoin Gold to certain wallets using the public key, which only the individual can access with their private key. Some individuals choose to keep their coins in their wallet provided by their cryptocurrency exchange, due to the fact that a lot of exchanges have mobile apps that allow people to easily buy, sell and spend cryptocurrencies.

What are the dangers of storing cryptocurrencies?

Cryptocurrency exchanges or online wallets are far from immune to the dangers of cybertheft. The infamous case of the Mt Gox Bitcoin exchange highlights this. Historically, Mt Gox was the largest global exchange for Bitcoin, until it declared bankruptcy in 2014 after its security had been compromised. Mt Gox had 850,000 Bitcoins, valued at $450 million in February 2014, before their exchange was emptied by hackers. It is believed that the private keys of Mt Gox’s digital wallet were stolen from as earlier as 2011. These risks are avoided when trading Bitcoin Gold CFDs because you do not need a wallet.

Is there a bubble in the cryptocurrency market?

A ‘bubble’, in market terminology, is where the price of an asset far exceeds its intrinsic value. For instance, the dot-com bubble that occurred between 1995 and 2001, is a prime example, where information technology industry firms saw their stocks rise, merely because of the market sentiment around that particular industry, irrespective of their profits or chances of succeeding. This market then crashed in March 2000.

The problem here is that it is hard to determine the value of cryptocurrency to begin with. Although a lot of investors are holding cryptocurrencies as if they were equities, they are not. Yet they do not particularly act like currencies either, which makes comparisons to currency valuations difficult. However, with any new technology, caution is advised. It could well be the case that the valuations of Bitcoin or Bitcoin Gold are not overvalued, and that the bubble, if there is one, is represented by the various new cryptocurrencies that are being driven by market sentiment. Arguably, this is comparable to the dot-com instance, where stocks like Amazon were not overvalued, but others like Pets.com, which went from IPO to liquidation in 268 days, clearly were. So, it seems that only time will tell whether the market is overheating, but in either case, there are options to trade Bitcoin Gold using CFDs to take both long and short positions.

From late 2017 to early 2018, there was a surge in the price of Bitcoin (reaching $20,000 per Bitcoin), followed shortly behind by other cryptocurrencies. The market then crashed between January and February 2018, and Bitcoin free fell, dropping 65% in value. Consequently, most other cryptocurrencies crashed as well. So there clearly was a bubble in the crypto market. The question that this begs is whether there still is one. The value in most cryptocurrencies is derived from their potential; how they could be used to advance society in the future. Without institutional acceptance however, the potential value, will remain merely potential, but whether this implies that cryptocurrencies are overvalued is another question.