Bitcoin developer Paul Sztorc has proposed a hard fork that would reassign some of the earliest coins on the original crypto network—widely believed to belong to pseudonymous creator Satoshi Nakamoto—to investors in a new project.
The co-founder and CEO of LayerTwo Labs, Sztorc announced the project, called eCash, on Friday. The plan would "manually reassign" about 500,000 of the roughly 1.1 million Bitcoin associated with the so-called "Patoshi pattern," a mining pattern some researchers believe is linked to Nakamoto.
"This will no doubt be a controversial decision," Sztorc wrote on X. "But I think it is necessary, and in fact, ideal."
Sztorc would not—and could not—move the Satoshi-linked coins on Bitcoin itself. Instead, eCash would create a separate blockchain that copies Bitcoin's history and modifies the ledger to assign all but 600,000 of those coins to new owners. Current on-chain Bitcoin (BTC) holders would also receive coins on the eCash network equivalent to their holdings at the time of the fork.
"Your coins will split. For example, if you have 4.19 BTC, then you will get 4.19 eCash," Sztorc wrote on X. "You may sell your eCash—or keep it. Or ignore it!"
The project shares its name with cryptographer David Chaum's early digital money initiative, one of crypto's earliest concepts. The original eCash used cryptographic "blind signatures" to enable private electronic payments, but DigiCash, Chaum's company developing the project, filed for bankruptcy in 1998 after failing to gain widespread adoption.
Not everyone is convinced the proposal is serious. Jameson Lopp dismissed the move as a publicity stunt, calling it "clever outrage marketing." According to Lopp, such a reassignment could only happen on Bitcoin itself if the broader network of developers agreed to adopt the fork.
"If the entire Bitcoin ecosystem decided to migrate to a hard fork that reassigned Satoshi's coins to keys that other people controlled, then sure, it's theoretically possible," Lopp said.
Sztorc has said the reassignment would allow early supporters to invest in the project before its planned August launch. He has argued the move is necessary to prevent the chain from becoming a "zombie" project without sufficient capital or contributors.
Bitcoin has split before. Bitcoin Cash launched in 2017 following a dispute over scaling, creating a new network in the process. Ethereum split in 2016 after the DAO hack, with most network participants choosing to reverse the transactions involving stolen funds, while Ethereum Classic preserved the original chain. Both Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and Ethereum Classic (ETC) have remained far less valuable and popular than their respective original coins and networks.
The eCash website states that the chain is expected to launch in approximately 119 days and will include "Drivechain" scaling network support, with seven sidechains currently in development.
"The upside is enormous: global scalability, privacy, competition, rapid improvement, and adoption," Sztorc wrote on the eCash website. "In fact, it may be a matter of life or death for Bitcoin. The downside is small: some drama, plus every Bitcoiner gets some free money."
Why it matters
The Patoshi pattern is a pattern some researchers believe is linked to Nakamoto, without cryptographic certainty—meaning the coins targeted for reassignment may not actually belong to Bitcoin's creator, making the proposal both technically and symbolically contentious.
Because eCash would be a separate blockchain rather than a change to Bitcoin itself, existing BTC holders would not lose their coins; they would simply receive a parallel set of eCash coins at the time of the fork, which they can sell, keep, or ignore.
The history of Bitcoin Cash and Ethereum Classic shows that hard forks can create new networks but have consistently remained far less valuable and widely used than the original chains they split from.
