We have seen multiple Bitcoin hard forks throughout 2017. Some of these have been successful, whereas others have been quickly forgotten about. It seems that more forks will be launching in the near future. If Chandler Guo is to be believed, there will be a fork known as Bitcoin God. How the community will respond to this development remains to be determined. It is another airdrop of free tokens to Bitcoin holders, though, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
Bitcoin God is Apparently a Real Thing
Not to be confused with Bitcoin Jesus, Bitcoin God is an actual alternative form of Bitcoin which will be created on December 25th. The goal is to introduce this fork at block height 501,225 on the Bitcoin network, which is expected to be mined around Christmas Day. Given that Bitcoin’s mining difficulty will increase in a few hours from now, that date may be off by a few hours or even days. It all depends on how many miners will stick around.
The news regarding Bitcoin God is brought to us courtesy of Chandler Guo. He doesn’t appear to be the main creator of this fork, though, as he simply shared a message from a chat conversation explaining this concept to non-Chinese Twitter users. There are a lot of different opinions about how Bitcoin should operate, and the Bitcoin Core camp is shrinking pretty quickly, by the look of things. So far, though, none of the hard forks have even made a dent in Bitcoin’s overall market position.
Whether or not Bitcoin God can make an impact in this regard remains to be seen. For all of its issues during its launch, Bitcoin Gold turned out to be rather valuable in the end. In fact, it is still the eighth-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, even though its value has dwindled as of late. Bitcoin God will face similar challenges, and it remains to be seen if this altcoin will ever gain traction. We don’t know too much about its technical aspects either, which is a bit worrisome.
Bitcoin God (GOD) will be forked off the main bitcoin chain at the block height of 501225, which will happen on December 25h to be symbolic of me giving candy to all Bitcoin Holders. The total amount will be 21 million. No pre-mine. pic.twitter.com/4T2lwojYTr
— Chandler Guo (@ChandlerGuo) December 4, 2017
From what little information we do know about Bitcoin God, it seems there will be 21 million GOD in circulation at its peak. There will also be no pre-mine, which makes it very different from Bitcoin Gold. So far, no exchanges have confirmed support for this new fork, nor have any wallets committed to providing support at this time.
One question people are asking themselves right now is whether or not there is any point in creating even more Bitcoin hard forks. We have seen quite a few attempts to use the Bitcoin name for marketing purposes, and none of them have seemed worth paying much attention to. Bitcoin Cash is the lone exception in this regard right now, although its long-term success is not guaranteed either. It is an interesting situation, but one that will also confuse a lot of novice cryptocurrency users, unfortunately.
Whether or not forks are a good or bad thing for Bitcoin overall is a question that has proved difficult to answer. After all, every fork seemingly takes away some attention from Bitcoin itself, yet the Bitcoin value keeps soaring despite these hurdles. On the other hand, this is a very precarious ecosystem which can easily be disrupted. Until we see an official GitHub repo for Bitcoin God, it is doubtful a lot of people will pay attention to this particular project.
