Bitcoin developer Paul Sztorc provided further clarification regarding the eCash hard fork and dismissed allegations of “stealing” Satoshi Nakamoto’s coins.
To clear things up:
— 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…— Paul Sztorc (@Truthcoin) April 27, 2026
“We are not taking Satoshi’s bitcoins, but gifting him 600,000 eCash. Balances will remain untouched,” he wrote.
Earlier, the programmer proposed relaunching the first cryptocurrency while preserving the network’s basic architecture. Holders of digital gold would receive an equivalent amount of eCash.
However, Sztorc intends to distribute the coins presumably belonging to Nakamoto differently: from 1.1 million BTC, 600,000 eCash would be allocated to the Bitcoin creator, with the remaining 500,000 directed towards ecosystem development.
According to him, this approach would help avoid a “zombie project” scenario, where a fork exists without genuine support from participants and developers.
The community criticized the idea, arguing that asset redistribution contradicts property inviolability. Sztorc countered that the discussion concerns emission rules in the new blockchain, not real coins.
He also suggested that a significant portion of early bitcoins might be irretrievably lost, as they have not been moved for over a decade. The developer added that in the “heated” debate surrounding this topic, misinformation sometimes spreads.
Back in mid-April, Bitcoin developer Jameson Lopp and a group of experts presented a draft of the controversial proposal BIP-361, which suggests freezing coins vulnerable to quantum computers.