Cyber Attack Mars Launch of Rival Cryptocurrency
The latest rival to bitcoin has suffered a major cyber attack on its launch, crashing the new cryptocurrency’s website.
The digital currency, called Bitcoin Gold, is a “fork” of the main bitcoin network, designed to make it easier for normal people to mine the online currency.
However as soon as it went live its website came under a sustained distributed denial of service (DDoS) cyber attack.
These attacks involve a network of compromised computers, known as a “botnet”, which flood a website’s servers with page view requests, leaving legitimate traffic unable to get through.
Bitcoin Gold was launched as part of a “hard fork” from the original bitcoin network. In theory, it means that everyone who owns bitcoin is given an equivalent amount of Bitcoin Gold, although most people who store their coins on online exchanges do not reveive it.
Bitcoin, which is currently priced at more than $5,550 (£4,180) to one bitcoin, has split once before as rival developers and traders try to move the currency in a new direction. That split in July led to Bitcoin Cash, which is currently priced at around $325.
Mining bitcoin involves a user contributing computing power to generate more of it. Currently, only those with dozens of powerful computers and graphics processing units (GPUs) are able to profitably mine bitcoin.
Bitcoin Gold is designed so that more people can participate, a move designed to democratise the currency. On Wednesday afternoon Bitcoin Gold was trading at around $150, according to CoinMarketCap.
The attack hit early on Tuesday morning, with Bitcoin Gold issuing a statement saying their website was under a sustained attack of more than 10 million hits per minute, preventing legitimate users from accessing the site.
Bitcoin Gold’s website was back online on Wednesday, however futures had fallen 60pc trading at around $147. The attack on the new cryptocurrency is not the first cyber attack to target new digital currencies.
One currency, dubbed CoinDash, saw its website hacked over the summer and $7m worth of cryptocurrency transferred into anonymous digital wallets and stolen.
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