Critics Push Back Against Developer’s Plan to Reassign Satoshi’s Coins in eCash Fork

Paul Sztorc, co-founder and CEO of LayerTwo Labs and a Bitcoin developer, has unveiled plans for eCash, a hard fork scheduled to launch in August 2026. The plan’s treatment of coins linked to Satoshi Nakamoto has sparked backlash across X. What Sztorc Proposed for the Bitcoin eCash Hardfork In a post, Sztorc revealed that eCash’s L1 node will be a “near-copy of Bitcoin Core.” The chain will use SHA-256d mining with a one-time difficulty reset. “I am helping create a **new Bitcoin Hardfork** — dropping this August, called ‘eCash’. Your coins will split. For example, if you have 4.19 BTC, then you will get 4.19 eCash. You may sell your eCash — or keep it. Or ignore it!” Sztorc wrote. Follow us on X to get the latest news as it happens The Layer 1 (L1) network will activate Sztorc’s BIP300 and BIP301 proposals via soft fork. Seven drivechains are already in development, including Truthcoin for prediction markets and CoinShift as a decentralized exchange (DEX). Other L2s include BitNames for identity, BitAssets for non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and Photon for quantum resistance. The team will also release a coin-splitter tool. Sztorc framed eCash as a permanent fix, unlike the 2017 Bitcoin Cash (BCH) split, which focused on increasing the block size. A notable aspect involves the planned allocation of a portion of coins attributed to Satoshi Nakamoto. “Satoshi has 1.1M coins in the so called patoshi pattern. We will be manually reassigning some of these coins (fewer than half) to investors today. This will no doubt be a controversial decision. But I think it is necessary, and in fact, ideal,” he added. In a separate post, the developer clarified that the process does not involve taking any BTC linked to Satoshi Nakamoto. Instead, it would assign 600,000 newly created eCash tokens to Satoshi on the forked chain, less than the 1.1 million coins typically attributed to those holdings, but more than allocations seen in other networks. “Our coins are not named BTC; they are...