Bitcoin Gold soars 173% as traders may be buying the wrong BTG
Investors could be mistakenly linking the bank with the 2017 Bitcoin hard fork, causing a spike in price and trading action. A long-forgotten Bitcoin (BTC) hard fork has surged almost 200% in a week — simply because traders are buying the wrong altcoin.
Bitcoin Gold (BTG), a relic from the 2017 forking season, traded at $113 on April 9 — the highest price since February 2018 — after 30% daily gains as trading volumes topped $250 million.
Bitcoin Gold piggybacks to 173% weekly gains
A curious contrast to an otherwise lackluster cryptocurrency market, Bitcoin Gold’s success appears to be not wholly genuine — but also not the fault of its holders or developers. As Cointelegraph reported on Tuesday, a new Bitcoin fund from Brazillian investment bank BTG Pactual moved a step closer to launching this week after teaming up with the Winklevoss twins’ Gemini exchange for custody management.
While having nothing to do with Bitcoin Gold, the biggest Brazilian investment bank does share the altcoin’s ticker — and the coincidence was good enough for hungry buyers.
After the Gemini news broke, Bitcoin Gold saw a flurry of demand which at the time of writing shows no sign of abating. This, reactions argued, showed that the cryptocurrency industry was still very much in its nascent phase. “We're so early that people buy Bitcoin Gold BTG, because there is a new fund called BTG Pactual,” podcast host Anita Posch warned Twitter users.
“No, it's not a cheaper Bitcoin!”
By contrast, Bitcoin Gold announcing an actual partnership in late March did hardly anything for price action.
Nothing to do with Bitcoin
Bitcoin Gold came about as one of the multiple hard forks of Bitcoin in 2017, the year that also spawned Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Bitcoin Diamond (BCD) and others. Unlike their parent, the forks have achieved only limited success. As Cointelegraph recently reported, despite the broad uptick sweeping through altcoins more broadly, BCH, for example, continues to lose value in BTC terms.
Some of their proponents have adopted an aggressive marketing stance which positions the fork as Bitcoin itself, a misleading move which has likely also contributed to demand.
Cointelegraph reiterates that buying Bitcoin Gold, Bitcoin Cash or any cryptocurrency with a ticker other than BTC means that one holds an altcoin, not Bitcoin itself.
Top Cryptocurrencies with Price Predictions
| # | Crypto | Prediction | Accuracy | CVIX | Price | 24h | 7d | Market Cap | 7d price change | |
| 1 |  BTC |
Bitcoin predictions | 83.6% | 20 | $101 701.81 | 1.69% | 2.07% | $2 013 246 996 833 |  |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 |  ETH |
Ethereum predictions | 69.2% | 63 | $3 915.40 | -0.05% | -2.15% | $471 597 924 366 |  |
|
| 3 |  XRP |
XRP predictions | 60.4% | 90 | $2.47 | 5.89% | 1.39% | $141 142 112 565 |  |
|
| 4 |  USDT |
Tether predictions | 91.2% | 1 | $1.000042 | -0.01% | -0.14% | $140 139 591 223 |  |
|
| 5 |  SOL |
Solana predictions | 77.6% | 34 | $225.66 | -0.24% | -4.29% | $108 098 878 749 |  |
|
| 6 |  BNB |
Binance Coin predictions | 72.4% | 60 | $728.99 | 2.96% | -1.69% | $104 980 392 576 |  |
|
| 7 |  DOGE |
Dogecoin predictions | 77.6% | 45 | $0.410083 | 0.70% | -5.78% | $60 360 933 009 |  |
|
| 8 |  USDC |
USD Coin predictions | 94% | 1 | $0.999956 | 0% | 0% | $41 989 588 944 |  |
|
| 9 |  ADA |
Cardano predictions | 62.8% | 74 | $1.11 | 0.75% | -8.74% | $38 938 221 420 |  |
|
| 10 |  TRX |
TRON predictions | 57.6% | 93 | $0.294798 | 1.75% | -10.07% | $25 424 946 533 |  |
|
| 11 |  AVAX |
Avalanche predictions | 68.8% | 65 | $52.49 | -1.10% | 0.78% | $21 502 759 836 |  |
|
| 12 |  LINK |
Chainlink predictions | 59.6% | 87 | $29.57 | 0.59% | 14.33% | $18 538 470 003 |  |
|
| 13 |  SHIB |
SHIBA INU predictions | 69.6% | 68 | $0.000029 | 2.81% | -6.07% | $16 940 665 280 |  |
|
| 14 |  TON |
Toncoin predictions | 69.2% | 69 | $6.31 | -0.68% | -7.62% | $16 085 252 236 |  |
|
| 15 |  DOT |
Polkadot predictions | 60.4% | 78 | $9.01 | -0.51% | -15.10% | $13 775 503 688 |  |
