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Paul Sztorc’s eCash hard fork of Bitcoin went live on Oct. 29, handing holders who controlled their private keys at block 973,728 an equivalent balance of the new chain’s ECX token, Cointelegraph reported. Accessing the coins and being able to sell them are separate problems: the token is not listed on major exchanges, and liquidity is thin.
Sztorc, founder of LayerTwo Labs and the advocate behind the Drivechain proposals BIP300 and BIP301, positioned the fork as a way to revive development on Bitcoin’s codebase rather than change Bitcoin itself. Trading the new asset remains the practical sticking point for holders.
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Key facts
- The fork was mined at Bitcoin block 973,728; users who held their own keys at that block received ECX equal to their BTC, per LayerTwo Labs.
- Five sidechains launched with the eCash mainnet — BitNames, BitAssets, Thunder, Truthcoin and zSide — with Photon and CoinShift still to come.
- NeoxEX opened native ECX deposits, withdrawals and trading on Oct. 29 with ECX/USDT, ECX/USDC and ECX/BTC pairs; CoinW said it will distribute ECX but did not set a trading date.
- CoinMarketCap put ECX at $32.63 with roughly $355,000 in 24-hour volume as of Nov. 5; CoinGecko carries it as a preview listing without a price, and Kaiko does not track it.
Claiming coins carries replay risk
Self-custody holders need a wallet that supports eCash and must follow its splitting process. Because the two chains share transaction history, LayerTwo Labs warned that an ordinary BTC spend can be replayed on the ECX network and advised holders to move ECX first and never spend unprotected BTC before separating the balances. Replay protections exist in the protocol, the company said, but the sequencing advice stands. Holders who left coins on centralized exchanges depend on the venue’s distribution policy and should check whether a payout has been announced.
The company said early ECX trading ranged between $40 and $50 but did not supply order book depth or volume figures, directing users to the Orca pool’s total value locked instead. Orca, a Solana decentralized exchange, offers swaps from USDC into wrapped ECX, which gives exposure to the token without native trading on the eCash chain. Sztorc said liquidity would look very different if the fork matched even a fraction of Bitcoin Cash’s early performance, and told those worried about thin markets to hold and decide later. Local tax treatment of fork distributions also varies by country, which holders may need to check before filing.
Why it matters
Fork windfalls have historically been awkward for Bitcoin holders: the asset arrives, but venues, custody support and price discovery lag. eCash repeats that pattern. It gives Sztorc’s Drivechains thesis its first live mainnet and hands developers a place to build payment, privacy and prediction-market sidechains, while the market measures the token almost entirely through one small pool and a placeholder listing. Sztorc has framed customer uptake and transaction fee revenue as the project’s success measures for its first year, and dismissed concerns that miners could coordinate to drain sidechains.
What to watch
The next readable signals are CoinW’s trading launch and any additional exchange listings Sztorc’s team announces, along with the scheduled launches of the Photon and CoinShift sidechains. Liquidity and volume figures will be the clearest test of whether ECX holds attention beyond the initial claim window.
This article is not financial advice. Crypto markets are volatile and uncertain, and token prices can change quickly.
Reported by Cointelegraph.
Source: Cointelegraph