BTG Pactual

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 Friday — 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 it 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, BCH, for example, continues to lose value in BTC terms.

Some of their proponents have adopted an aggressive marketing stance that positions the fork as Bitcoin itself, a misleading move that 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.