Bitcoin Gold, the cryptocurrency with the sixth-largest market cap, has been the target of yet another hacking attack. The Bitcoin Gold official wallet, which was available for download on the BTG downloads page and GitHub, had been infected with two “suspicious files of unknown origin”.
Bitcoin Gold posted a “critical warning” against the scam on November 26th. The files were allegedly being downloaded along with the wallet for a 4.5-day period between November 21st and November 25th. The warning said that although the files do not trigger any antivirus software, they should be treated as though they were “created with malicious intent.”
As such, the warning tells possible victims to operate with extreme caution. Anyone who used the file should thoroughly check their machine for malware and viruses, and “any Cryptocurrencies with wallets accessible on that machine should be moved to new wallet addresses immediately.”
Bad Circumstances, Naivety, or Both?
The hack comes just a week after the revelation of the MyBTGWallet scam, a phishing scam that asked for BTC users' private keys with the promise that they would receive the corresponding amounts of Bitcoin Gold that they were entitled to after the BTG fork.
Some argue that the plague of BTG scams is a sign of the coin’s immaturity and the developers’ ill-preparedness to suddenly be at the helm of such a high-profile coin. The identities of some of the coin’s contributors have still not been disclosed since the October launch of the cryptocurrency - in the world of cryptocurrency, this can be a sign of unprofessionalism (at best) or even malicious misdealings (at worst). The coin has also received criticism for its lack of high-profile advisors.
In an interview with International Business Times, Crypterium co-founder Austin Kimm said: “They [the developers] haven’t been very transparent and there are questions about their coding capabilities.” However, he still has some faith in the project: “Overall, what they’re trying to do is a great idea. They just could have done it a little bit better.”
Logically speaking, the concepts that Bitcoin Gold was based on make it a viable candidate for a strong network. Bitcoin Gold was the result of a Bitcoin hard fork that took place in late October, and was created as a cryptocurrency with more equal opportunities for crypto miners.
Relative to BTC, BTG’s mining difficulty was decreased, making it possible to mine without a roomful of thousands of dollars’ worth of equipment. The lowered mining difficulty also makes the process of transaction confirmation faster, causing the BTG network to be more scalable than the BTC network.
The Future is Unclear
Still, Bitcoin Gold has yet to prove itself to the world as a stable network, one that isn’t so vulnerable to hackers. The wave of attacks is contributing to a trend of pessimism about the coin’s future. Pamela Paige, founder of Crypto Roundtable chat, told IBT that Bitcoin Gold is a “sh*tcoin through and through” that mining energy shouldn’t be wasted on.
In any case, the response of Bitcoin Gold’s team of developers to the recent troubles that the coin has been facing are critical at this moment in time. The coin is currently trading around $300, about $50 below the price before the revelation of the latest hack. As for the coin’s future? We will have to wait and see.
