Beware of the fake Bitcoin Gold site asking for your private keys

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If you haven’t heard already, there’s a new Bitcoin coming to town.

A group of Bitcoiners has taken a leaf out of Bitcoin Cash’s book and announced that come October 25, they will be forking from the blockchain network and create yet another version of the world’s most popular cryptocurrency. And this, they said, shall be called Bitcoin Gold (BTG).

Make no mistake, however, Bitcoin Gold’s agenda is different compared to Bitcoin Cash nor the upcoming SegWit2X hard fork in November. The two are seeking to scale the Bitcoin network to handle more traffic, whereas Bitcoin Gold is looking to have more people take a slice of the mining industry’s profits.

The project is created by Hong Kong mining firm Lightning ASIC founder Jack Liao and a developer who goes by “h4x3” code name, and its goal is to change the Bitcoin’s consensus algorithm to allow users to mine the cryptocurrency using graphic processing units (GPUs), among other things. Bitcoin Gold plans to use the Equihash algorithm, which will enable home computer hardware like GPUs to profitably mine Bitcoin Gold. Distributed server processing system Ethereum currently allows GPU mining, but it is switching to a new mining scheme soon, which means that Bitcoin Gold is a piece of good news for those with leftover GPU rigs looking for cryptocurrency to mine.

“Bitcoin Gold implements the UAHF [user activated hard fork] proposal to accept GPU mining,” according to BTCGPU website archive. “Miners can choose the size of the blocks they want to mine, with a default of 1 MB. It includes replay and wipeout protection.”

Red flags

But will Bitcoin Gold really save the world or it is just the latest in the long line of scams in the cryptocurrency space?

The Bitcoin Gold project has yet to get off the ground, but potential red flags have already started to fly. First and foremost, there are no technical information about Bitcoin Gold—not on the project’s website, nor on its GitHub and Slack channel. And this project is scheduled to launch in a couple of weeks.

Bitcoin Gold also plans to use the same address format as Bitcoin Cash and legacy Bitcoin (BTC), which makes things even more confusing for users. Previously, there have been reports of users losing their Bitcoin Cash tokens after they mistakenly sent them to Bitcoin addresses. Developer “h4x3” told MotherBoard that they will have a new address format for Bitcoin Gold, “but that will come after the launch.”

The most troublesome part, however, is that there are already scams that are taking advantage of some cryptocurrency enthusiasts.

Case in point is the ClaimBTCGPU.org website, which asks for the user’s private key to “guarantee” that they can claim their BTC balance—a pure and simple scamming tactic. Members of the cryptocurrency community have already reported the site to Google, but expect that this is not the last time we will see such kind of a phishing scam.

It’s clear that Bitcoin Gold has no place in the cryptocurrency space, and is only creating unnecessary drama to complicate the sector’s search for the one true Bitcoin. Bitcoin Cash is the only adult fork existing and it continues to move forward post the blockchain split in August.