The mining of Bitcoin Gold, as mentioned above, is carried out by means of GPU’s using equihash as an algorithm. Compared with bitcoin and bitcoin Cash, both using ASICs machines for mining, this is a dramatic change aimed again at decentralising bitcoin. The thing is that not even the mining community has fallen in love with this new altcoin.
One of the first to have voiced criticism was the founder of the first bitcoin pool, a prominent influencer, Marek Palatinus (slush pool) questioning on twitter the actual reason for the decentralization of bitcoin gold's algorithm, given that there are only two companies that produce relevant GPU chips. (AMD, NVidia).
If you decide to mine (in spite of the outlined shortcomings) take one of the following pools:
The two aforementioned official pools are among the first to have gained support.
and some more that followed...
A next one (updated) is available at the official website here.
To be able to mine, you will need powerful GPU chips made by NVidia/AMD. What might be of your interest is the fact that the prices of shares of the two companies have dramatically grown. This is likely due to the increasing demand for GPU cards to be used for mining cryptocurrencies in 2018 and beyond.
Right now, the most frequently mentioned cryptocurrencies in association with GPU chips are: ethereum, monero, zcash, hush, komodo and some more. The same setup allows mining of BTG.
Along with hardware, you will need some software. Popular software packages include:
Depending on the hardware, first of all you will have to decide how big your rig should be and then buy the adequate number of cards. Most frequent rigs are of 6, 8, 12, 13, 19. The most popular combination used by beginners is an 8 GPU mining rig.
Hardware suitable for BTG mining is identical with that needed for the mining of ZCash and Zclassic, ZenCash, Hush, Komoda. You can test all the coins to choose the one that offers the biggest yield.
The yield or profit largely depends on the size of a rig, on the applied hardware, the exchange rate of the altcoin, and current electricity costs. Moreover, you must consider the difficulty rate of the network increasing with each mined block.
In the light of the above, you must be flexible in responding to all aspects leading to profit and adjust your mining strategy accordingly.
The proof-of-work system/protocol which is used by Bitcoin Gold, was first used in the mid-1990's for fighting spam emails. The idea never found a truly useful cause until 2009 when bitcoin was created. Bitcoin itself utilizes this protocol in its transaction blockchain and thanks to this we can witness the growth in bitcoin mining.
The base idea of this lies in a challenge and proof (or response). The challenge is a transaction, which is a specific cryptographic puzzle. The proof is that a miners computer cracks the puzzle, so the transaction goes through. And that is proof of the miners' work and him providing his hardware for the validation of transactions. The more hash power a miner can provide for validating transactions, the bigger his Bitcoin Gold reward for the service is.
The problem with PoW is that mining has become so large that miners are investing into giant A.S.I.C. hardware which is highly energy consuming. Many mining farms are built around the globe as bitcoin has risen in value.
