As the value of Bitcoin has increased exponentially over the past few years, so has the interest in mining Bitcoin. While once it was possible to profitably mine Bitcoin with a personal computer, the barrier to entry is now much higher if you want to make a return on your investment.
This is where Bitcoin Gold comes in. Launched in 2017, Bitcoin Gold is a fork of the Bitcoin blockchain that reduces the barrier to entry for miners by allowing them to mine with GPUs instead of ASICs.
While ASICs are designed specifically for mining Bitcoin and are therefore very efficient at it, they are also expensive, with the most popular models costing several thousand dollars. GPUs, on the other hand, are much cheaper and can be found in any computer that’s used for gaming.
This makes Bitcoin Gold much more accessible to miners, and as a result, there is more competition and the difficulty of mining a block is increased. This also means that it’s less profitable to mine Bitcoin Gold than it is to mine Bitcoin.
However, if you’re looking to get into cryptocurrency mining and don’t have the budget for an ASIC miner, then mining Bitcoin Gold could be a good way to start.