Bitcoin Gold hopes to change the paradigm around mining on the Bitcoin blockchain. According to the founders, the Bitcoin blockchain has become too centralized. Large companies with huge banks of mining computers now mine the vast majority of Bitcoin. For the founders of Bitcoin Gold, having large companies control the Bitcoin network defeats the purpose of a decentralized ledger and peer-to-peer currencies. In response, they’ve initialized the Bitcoin Gold project. It’s an alternate fork of the Bitcoin blockchain that implements changes that make mining more equitable. The goal of Bitcoin Gold is to create a network where anyone can become a miner with only basic hardware. As a result, Bitcoin Gold mining would be spread among many miners, instead of a few large companies.There have several features such as decentralization. Bitcoin Gold decentralizes mining by adopting a PoW algorithm, Equihash-BTG, which cannot be run on the specialty equipment used for Bitcoin mining (ASIC miners.) This gives ordinary users a fair opportunity to mine with common GPUs. Besides, there have fair distribution. Hard forking Bitcoin’s blockchain fairly and efficiently distributes 16.5 million BTG immediately to people all over the world who have interest in cryptos. Other methods, such as creating coins with a new genesis block, concentrate ownership within a small group. There also have a replay protection. To ensure the safety of the Bitcoin ecosystem, Bitcoin Gold has implemented full replay protection and unique wallet addresses, essential features that protect users and their coins from several kinds of accidents and malicious threats. Most new mineable cryptocurrencies involve ASIC-resistant hashing algorithms, and it’s becoming something of an industry standard to promote decentralization. In that respect, Bitcoin Gold holds a lot to be excited about. At its core, it’s about transitioning the Bitcoin network to more decentralized mining. However, as we saw above, there’s not much evidence that the current Bitcoin mining system is broken. There have been some small complaints, and it’s not ideal that the network is so centralized. Nevertheless, miners on Bitcoin have a lot to lose if they wield their power too aggressively. There are also new entrants to the Bitcoin mining community that are decentralizing control from a few key ASIC farms. The general consensus from Bitcoin experts is there’s not enough new in Bitcoin Gold to warrant an independent investment. While it certainly doesn’t hurt to hold onto your free BTG that you receive as a result of the fork (if you owned Bitcoin before Oct 24), wait until the dust settles before deciding whether to buy more.'
MonaCoin is an open source digital currency and a peer-to-peer (p2p) payment network. Dubbed by its creators as “the first Japanese cryptocurrency,” the coin has become somewhat of Japan’s national alternative to Bitcoin or Litecoin. Like its predecessors, the coin was created purely to serve as P2P electronic cash, a decentralized digital currency aimed at Japanese citizens. There are a few key differences that set it apart from the coins that came before it, and this guide is dedicated to drawing out these differences. Conceived in December of 2013, Monacoin was officially born on January 1st, 2014 with no premine. A Bitcoin Talk Forum on the same date details the coin’s launch and its specifications. A soft fork was executed at block 937440 to implement Segwit, a move made to keep it in line with Bitcoin, Litecoin, Vertcoin, and other payment-focused cryptocurrencies. In addition, the Monacoin team has reportedly implemented the Lightning Network for their coin. Speaking of soft forks, Monacoin is actually a hard fork of Litecoin, something we’ll take into account further as we look into its specs below. Monacoin was originally founded by the pseudonymous Mr. Wantanabe, no doubt in homage to Bitcoin’s Satoshi Nakamoto. Besides this pen name, the rest of the coin’s team is completely anonymous, so there’s nothing to report on here. In addition, the project has no visible roadmap on its site or anywhere else online. The team does seem to stay on top of updates and upgrades, however, as the Segwit and Lyra2REv2 updates and Lightning Network implementation suggest. It is popular in Japan where it was developed. It Uses Lyra2REv2 and Dark Gravity Wave v3 algorithm to ensure fairer mining opportunities, success rate and difficult levels of mining process respectively. Monacoin is the first cryptocurrency from Japan. It has received wide support and success in the country and is not crossing the national boundary to try and become a global phenomenon. While that is not going to happen in the next year or two, it does have the making of a good crypto token. It is steadily improving its service and has constantly strived to give its users the best possible experience. When Scrypt compliant ASIC miners appeared they switched to Lyra2REv2 to ensure the mining MONA remains a fair battle between miners from around the world. The instance of a Japanese national using Monacoin to buy land made news in the country and beyond, spreading the popularity of the coin.