Bitcoin Gold (BTG) is set to be delisted by South Korea’s largest cryptocurrency exchange Upbit on Jan. 23, 2025, the exchange announced in a press release posted Dec. 24, 2024. The move comes nearly a year after the asset has been scrutinized and labelled a cautionary product because of its high range of trades.
According to a notice published by Upbit, trading support for BTG will cease at 14:30 KST on Jan. 23. The BTG will be available on withdrawal until the Feb. 22, 2025 deadline. During this time, withdrawal processing times may greatly increase.
Upbit Terminates Bitcoin Gold Support and Services
As a result of this delisting, all BTG buy and sell orders on the platform will automatically cancel. On top of that, Upbit will end support for BTG-related services, including airdrops, wallet upgrades, and hard forks.
Upbit itself warned on Dec. 10 of Bitcoin Gold, a virtual asset to which it issued the warning that has been labeled by it as one undergoing “caution.” During the following weeks, Upbit checked BTG’s fitness against criteria including operational transparency, disclosure practices, business reality, and sustainability.
“Upbit determined that the reasons for designating Bitcoin Gold as a subject of caution have not been resolved and decided to terminate trading support in accordance with the policy for designating digital assets as subject to caution and terminating trading support,” wrote the exchange.
After the announcement, Bitcoin Gold has experienced a sharp market downturn. BTG’s value is down 25% in the past 24 hours alone. However, this has been part of a significantly wider downward streak where the token has lost 35 percent of its value in the past week and 63 percent in the past month.
Today, Bitcoin Gold is ranked 346th by market cap and traded around $226 million with a 24-hour volume of $147 million.
Bitcoin Gold was launched in 2017 as Bitcoin’s open-source Bitcoin hard fork, part of which was intended to decentralize cryptocurrency mining by using the Equihash Proof of Work algorithm. With this approach, mining can be run with standard Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) rather than with specialized and expensive application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs).
Though it initially appealed to users as a user-friendly alternative to Bitcoin, Bitcoin Gold has been unable to hold its own in a competitive market.
After the delisting date, withdrawals will remain available for 30 more days, which means for 60 days total, on Upbit. But the exchange has warned the withdrawal processing times could be delayed after Feb. 22.
The announcement caps a series of challenges faced by cryptocurrencies that do not meet the operational and market stability standards. This delisting of Bitcoin Gold questions its long-term viability in an incredibly crowded and increasingly competitive crypto land.
