Bitcoin developer Paul Sztorc provided further clarification regarding the eCash hard fork and dismissed accusations of "stealing" coins from Satoshi Nakamoto.
To clear things up:
— Paul Sztorc (@Truthcoin) April 27, 2026
— We do not take any of Satoshi's BTC
— We **gift** Satoshi 600,000 eCash, instead of gifting 1.1 M
— That is **600k more** than Satoshi got from Litecoin, Ethereum, Solana, Tether, etc (ie, 0)
— Our coins are not named "BTC", they are named eCash. BTC…
"We are not taking Satoshi's bitcoins; we are gifting him 600,000 eCash. The balances will remain untouched," he wrote.
Previously, the programmer suggested restarting the first cryptocurrency while maintaining the core network architecture. Owners of digital gold would receive an equivalent amount of eCash.
However, Sztorc plans to distribute the coins presumed to belong to Nakamoto differently: from 1.1 million BTC, he intends to allocate 600,000 eCash to the Bitcoin creator and direct the remaining 500,000 towards ecosystem development.
According to him, this approach will help avoid a "zombie project" scenario, where a fork exists without real support from participants and developers.
The community criticized the idea, arguing that asset redistribution contradicts property rights. Sztorc countered that this concerns not real coins but merely the emission rules in the new blockchain.
He also acknowledged that a significant portion of early bitcoins may be permanently lost, as they haven't been moved in over a decade. The developer added that in the "heated" discussions surrounding this topic, misinformation sometimes spreads.
Recall that in mid-April, Bitcoin developer Jameson Lopp and a group of experts presented a draft of the controversial BIP-361 proposal, which suggests freezing coins vulnerable to quantum computers.