In 8 days and 21 hours, Bitcoin Gold fork will happen in block 491407. It means that a new Bitcoin will appear in the market, named BitcoinGold (BTG). If Bitcoin is going to split, why is Bitcoin price being traded at $5750? Why have we seen Bitcoin touching new price records just some days ago?
What is Bitcoin Gold?
Before we give an answer to these question, we need to know what Bitcoin Gold is and how experts expect that it will affect the market. (https://www.coinstaker.com/bitcoingold-helped-bitcoin-boost-price/) Bitcoin Gold is a new cryptocurrency that will share the blockchain information that Bitcoin had until block 491407. Once we arrive at this block, then the Bitcoin blockchain will split into two, the one that Bitcoin will follow, and the other path that Bitcoin Gold will take.
But which is Bitcoin Gold purpose? As it is explained on Bitcoin Gold official webpage, the idea is to make Bitcoin mining decentralized again. Nowadays, mining Bitcoins have become exclusive for some few companies, and small miners struggle to obtain some profits with the Equihash algorithm. With Bitcoin Gold, this changes. It provides to more people an opportunity to participate in the mining process.
If this is a better way of conceiving Bitcoin, then, Bitcoin price should drop and let the new currency take the lead on the market. Well, not exactly. Investing in cryptocurrencies is quite different than any other assets that we know on the financial markets.
What happened before?
When Bitcoin Cash (BCH) split, the owners of Bitcoin could claim an equal amount of Bitcoin Cash if they knew their private key. (https://www.coinstaker.com/bitcoingold-helped-bitcoin-boost-price/) This situation allowed investors to multiply their money without doing anything.
Fourteen days after the fork, Bitcoin Cash arrived at $1000 dollars and since then BCH follows a down trend. At present, Bitcoin Cash is being traded at $315 dollars. At the same time, Bitcoin price grew up almost exponentially. At the moment of the fork, Bitcoin was traded around $2750 dollars. One month after it, Bitcoin arrived at $5000 dollars. But the long term trend, allowed Bitcoin to cross the $5000 dollars’ resistance level and arrived at $5860.
And now, do we see something similar?
Since some weeks, Bitcoin price is on a bullish market that will last, stable at least, until the Bitcoin Gold fork. What is happening now is that, as it happened before with Bitcoin Cash, the owners of Bitcoin will experience that they will have the same amount of Bitcoin that they possess now but in Bitcoin Gold. This situation created a movement of capital from other cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin Cash, NEO or IOTA to Bitcoin, knowing that their funds will be multiplied when the next fork will occur.
At the moment, Bitcoin percentage of the cryptocurrency market is growing and other alt-coins are losing it.