Paul Sztorc isn’t trying to move Satoshi Nakamoto’s bitcoin — but his proposed fork is touching a raw nerve. What’s happening - eCash is a planned Bitcoin fork slated to activate at block height 964,000 in August. Like previous forks, it would copy Bitcoin’s ledger up to that block and give BTC holders equal balances on the new chain: hold 4.19 BTC, get 4.19 eCash. - That’s the familiar fork playbook used by Bitcoin Cash (2017) and Bitcoin SV. What sets eCash apart is what it proposes to do with coins attributed to Bitcoin’s pseudonymous creator. The Satoshi question - Roughly 1.1 million BTC are associated with Satoshi addresses — long-dormant outputs often tied to the so-called Patoshi pattern, an early mining fingerprint widely believed (but never proven) to be Satoshi’s. - On a straightforward one-to-one fork, those addresses would receive about 1.1 million eCash. Sztorc’s plan instead would assign roughly 600,000 eCash to those addresses and redirect the remaining ~500,000 eCash to investors who fund the project pre-launch. Why people are outraged - Critics frame the move as a moral breach even if no BTC on the original chain would be touched. For many in the Bitcoin community, Satoshi’s untouched holdings symbolize that the protocol’s rules apply equally — even to its creator. Selling claims on a forked-chain version of those holdings to finance a project reads like expropriation to opponents. - “Any proposal that seeks to evolve or improve [Bitcoin] by violating the property rights of the creator of that network is such a serious ethical misstep,” Beau Turner, CEO of mining firm Abundant Mines, told CoinDesk. - The debate is amplified by recent conversations in the community about freezing or restricting old, quantum-vulnerable coins — including addresses linked to Satoshi — putting immutability and social intervention back in focus. Property rights vs. pragmatic fixes - Voices warning against setting precedents are loud. Vijay Selvam, author of Principles of Bitcoin, argued that allowing exceptions for dormant coins would damage Bitcoin’s core monetary promise: confidence that holdings remain safe and immutable across generations. “If you set a rug-pull precedent for Bitcoin, you’d forever kill its claim to being durable and immutable digital gold,” he wrote on X. - Sztorc has pushed back against theft accusations, saying he is not trying to move Satoshi’s BTC. But the dispute is essentially a property-rights fight happening on a new chain’s ledger — an ethical and social contest more than a technical one. Bigger context: Drivechains and leverage - Sztorc, CEO of LayerTwo Labs, is a long-time advocate of Drivechains (BIP300/BIP301), a proposal to add sidechains to Bitcoin. The Bitcoin Core community has not adopted Drivechains; eCash functions as both an exit strategy and pressure tactic. Sztorc has said he would call off the fork if Drivechains are activated before August — there’s no sign that will occur. Why it matters even if eCash fizzles - Most Bitcoin forks haven’t displaced BTC economically, but they do test Bitcoin’s social assumptions. The eCash proposal forces a clean, stark question: can a fork claim Bitcoin’s moral inheritance while reallocating the most famous untouched balance on the copied chain? - Even if eCash never becomes economically relevant, the controversy could leave a lasting mark on debates about immutability, property rights, and what counts as the social contract of Bitcoin. Read more AI-generated news on: undefined/news