Paul Sztorc's eCash hard fork is set to launch in August 2026, with a plan to reassign roughly 500,000 dormant Bitcoin (BTC) coins linked to Satoshi Nakamoto.

eCash Fork Mechanics

Sztorc, co-founder of LayerTwo Labs, announced the project on April 24. The fork will activate at Bitcoin block 964,000.

Every Bitcoin holder will receive eCash tokens on a 1:1 basis at the snapshot. Holders may sell, keep, or ignore the new coins.

The new chain copies Bitcoin Core and runs on SHA-256d mining. Sztorc's BIP300 and BIP301 proposals will activate seven Drivechain sidechains, including Truthcoin for prediction markets and CoinShift as a decentralized exchange. A coin-splitter tool will ship before launch.

The funding model is what split the community. Sztorc plans to manually reassign fewer than half of the 1.1 million coins tied to the so-called Patoshi pattern, leaving 600,000 untouched on the forked chain. The reassigned coins, worth nearly $40 billion at current prices, would go to early investors before the fork goes live.

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Peter McCormack Reacts

Sentiment on X has tilted heavily against the plan, with roughly 80% to 85% of top replies opposing the proposal. Bitcoin advocate Peter McCormack called the move "theft and disrespectful."

Josh Ellithorpe, chief technology officer at Pixelated Ink, warned the precedent could expand. He said today's target is Satoshi, but the same logic could apply to any dormant wallet later.

Sztorc maintains that no actual Bitcoin is touched, since holders need BTC software and private keys to move BTC.

This marks the first Bitcoin fork attempt to alter Satoshi's holdings. The 2017 Bitcoin Cash split, the 2018 Bitcoin SV chain, and Bitcoin Gold all left those coins intact, drawing a sharp line that eCash now proposes to cross.

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