The launch of Bitcoin Gold, a new rival to the dominant cryptocurrency, has been hit by hacks, causing a drop in the value of Bitcoin
Bitcoin Gold is being touted as a ‘fork’ in the main bitcoin operation, designed to be easier to mine than traditional cryptocurrency.
It aims to be ‘more democratic’, not requiring the powerful processing units required to make cryptocurrency mining profitable.
Under Bitcoin Gold, Bitcoin owners would be given the equivalent of their current value, except those who are storing coins in online exchanges.
However, the launch of the new site was hit with a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack, flooding the server with page view requests making it nearly impossible for legitimate requests to get through.
This is not the first time Bitcoin has split, in July disagreements over the direction of the cryptocurrency led to the development of Bitcoin Cash, currently valued at $325.
Cryptocurrency attacks
Other cryptocurrencies have faced similar attacks on their launch, over the summer CoinDash saw $7 million in coins moved to anonymous internet users.
The DDoS attack plunged the price of Bitcoin Gold by 66%, and the attack also affected the value of Bitcoin itself.
The initial attack caused the value to fall to $5,374.6, which was mostly recovered when the issue was seen to.
Other currencies such as Ethereum also took a hit after the attack.
Bitcoin still remains the leading cryptocurrency, with all trading estimated at $93 billion, compared to $5.5 billion for all other cryptocurrencies.
New investors in Bitcoin Gold now fear that confidence has been shaken by the attack, causing some to jump ship and reduce the value to $161 per coin.
Experts are now questioning the legitimacy of forks in major cryptocurrencies.
Sol Lederer, Director at Loomia, said that splits such as these can be confusing for investors and go against the idea of a limited number of Bitcoins, affecting the value.
However, Bob Summerwill, Chief Blockchain Developer at Sweetbridge, said that ‘irreconcilable differences’ could be dealt with easily through splits.
