A hard fork of the bitcoin blockchain has created a new cryptocurrency, Bitcoin Gold.

According to CoinDesk, the recent hard fork follows a process that started in July this year aiming to address the problem that miners as a group have significant leverage over the direction of the bitcoin network. The technical team behind the project has taken a “snapshot” of the bitcoin blockchain, thereby creating the new cryptocurrency at block 491,407 on the original blockchain.

“Bitcoin Gold is a fork of the Bitcoin blockchain... At the predetermined block height, Bitcoin Gold miners will begin creating blocks with a new proof-of-work algorithm, and this will cause a bifurcation of the Bitcoin blockchain. The original Bitcoin blockchain will continue on unaltered, but a new branch of the blockchain will split off from the original chain. The new branch is a distinct blockchain with the same transaction history as Bitcoin up until the fork, but then diverges from it. As a result of this process, a new cryptocurrency will be born,” according to Bitcoin Gold website.

While the process has been initiated, the users cannot claim their funds yet. The Bitcoin Gold network is expected to launch publicly on November 1st.

A number of cryptocurrency startups have issued official statements on the fork and their support (or lack thereof) for Bitcoin Gold:

Bittrex: “At this time, the information and codebase presented by the Bitcoin Gold team is not in a functional state and Bittrex will not commit to opening a Bitcoin Gold trading market.”

TREZOR: “Yes, TREZOR (the device) supports bitcoin gold. As previously mentioned, at the moment of the fork, if you have bitcoins on your TREZOR, you will also receive bitcoin gold on your TREZOR (both new and legacy accounts are supported in bitcoin gold). If you simply wish to hold BTC and BTG, there is no further action required from you. Bitcoin Gold’s codebase is, at the moment of the writing, incomplete. Most importantly, it lacks replay protection. For this reason, TREZOR Wallet will not support bitcoin gold yet, as it would endanger your bitcoins.”

Coinbase: “At this time, Coinbase cannot support Bitcoin Gold because its developers have not made the code available to the public for review. This is a major security risk. Coinbase's current priority is to add support for Segwit2x, followed by Bitcoin Cash.”

bitFlyer: “it is not finalized that we will credit customer assets with BTG at the time of the hard fork. If the BTG [Bitcoin Gold] split is deemed by bitFlyer to be permanent and secure in regards to customer assets, we will credit users with BTG, and purchase, sale, depositand withdrawal services will be made available to customers.”

Coincheck: “We are planning to provide Bitcoin Gold if a Bitcoin gold split occurs. However, if any of the following happens and we determine it’s difficult to protect customers assets or difficult for us to provide stable service we may not be able to provide Bitcoin Gold.

– In a case when we judge replay attack protection is not sufficient.
– When there’s not enough miners and process of block creation is unstable.
– In a case when there’s vulnerability, and there’s no adequate measure for it.
– In a case when we decide listing of Bitcoin Gold is inappropriate.”

Zaif (as quoted by Bitcoin.com): “we have decided not to grant [access to] BTG, [including] deposits, withdrawals, and transactions at this time,” adding that “when all the possibilities of concerns have been resolved, the handling of BTG will be considered at our discretion just like other currencies.” It said that it will neither move the new cryptocurrency nor exchange it for other currencies “for purposes other than storage.”