Earlier this year we witnessed an unprecedented event in the cryptocurrency industry. In August, when Bitcoin users split the Bitcoin into Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin, it was one of the most notable events in the cryptocurrency’s nine-year-old history. Since this event, both currencies have recovered and flourished, with Bitcoin reaching record-breaking highs of $6,000 just last week. However, only four months after the historic split, another one seems to be looming in the near future.

The Bitcoin Gold (BTG) hard fork is scheduled to take place tomorrow. Within the next 24 hours, Bitcoin investors will be able to choose between Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, and Bitcoin Gold. As cryptocurrency exchange platforms and investors alike are bracing for the change, much disagreement as arose in the crypto-community on whether the latest Bitcoin project deserves any support at all.

The Bitcoin Cash project came about as users wanted to implement an increasing transaction throughput. The Bitcoin Gold project, however, hopes to tackle the issue of decentralization with their modified blockchain.

Currently, the algorithm which enables coin mining on both Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash has mostly been monopolized by an elite few who can afford the specialized and expensive hardware required for the process. Essentially this means that the average user has no opportunity to utilize this code with their average home computer. To address this, Bitcoin Gold will employ a different algorithm, known as "Equihash” which will allow users to utilize their graphical processing units (GPUs) to mine coins. Since GPUs are found in common gaming hardware, it will be a much more publicaly accessible cryptocurrency.

The fork is scheduled to occur tonight at midnight. At Bitcoin block 491,407, BTG will take a snapshot of the Bitcoin network and unfollow the main blockchain. This will signify that the fork has officially taken place. Every user who has Bitcoins will then receive a mirror balance in BTG. This is scheduled to take place tonight, the 24th of October.

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However, the code will be unavailable for the public until at least the 1st of November, possibly later. Once the code is public, it will be possible to mine it on the new blockchain, according to the Bitcoin Gold developers via their Slack channel.

This delay could be problematic for the currency, as people are likely to lose interest after a week of no economic activity or mining. During the Bitcoin Cash fork, their first currency was mined hours after the split. Currently, Bitcoin Cash is trading at $315 per Bitcoin Cash coin, which pales in comparison to Bitcoin’s value of $6,000.

Many experts have speculated that Bitcoin Gold will likely have a harder time to become profitable. Several factors have contributed to many users, as well as many exchanging platforms, being critical of the latest fork. Criticisms include an overly ambitious timeline and a lack of public code.

One of the world’s largest exchanges, Coinbase, has confirmed that they won’t immediately offer support for Bitcoin Gold, stating that the public code is still not available. Coinbase has deemed this as a security risk. Trezor, a Bitcoin wallet hardware manufacturer, as well as Kraken, a cryptocurrency exchange platform, have both also declined to provide public support for Bitcoin Gold.

Despite the confusion and skepticism, the fork is still scheduled to continue. In addition to the three forks, there is another Bitcoin fork scheduled for November called the Segwit2x fork.

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