Will Bitcoin Split Again? The Final Question Raised by Satoshi, eCash, and the Quantum Era

The History of Bitcoin Hard Forks: From Satoshi’s Genesis Block to eCash and the Quantum Era

※ This article is being published in its current draft form and will be updated to the final Daily Crypto Times (DCT) format in two days.

Why Bitcoin Has Split Before — And Why It May Split Again

Since the Bitcoin genesis block was mined in 2009, the network has never stopped.
Yet over its 17-year history, Bitcoin has split multiple times, and each split was far more than a mere technical fork — it was a collision of philosophy, politics, and economics.

Recently, Bitcoin developer Paul Sztorc proposed a new hard fork called eCash,
which would redistribute Satoshi Nakamoto’s 1.1 million BTC on a new chain.
With that, the debate over Bitcoin hard forks has flared up once again.

At the same time, the era of quantum computing is approaching faster than many expected.
Bitcoin now stands at yet another structural crossroads.
Analyses suggesting that over 34% of all Bitcoin is vulnerable to quantum attacks
point to what may be the most fundamental security threat in Bitcoin’s history.

For a deeper technical background and structural analysis of this issue,
see the earlier article “34% of Bitcoin Addresses Are at Risk — The Structural Weakness Quantum Computers Could Break” .

In this article, we revisit the history of Bitcoin hard forks through three lenses:

• 1) The origins of Bitcoin and its major hard forks (Satoshi, BCH, BSV)
• 2) The eCash proposal
• 3) The possibility of a hard fork in the quantum computing era

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1) The Origins of Bitcoin and Its Major Hard Forks — Satoshi, BCH, BSV

① Satoshi Nakamoto and the Genesis Block — Bitcoin’s Philosophical Ground Zero

Bitcoin began on January 3, 2009,
when Satoshi Nakamoto mined the genesis block (Block 0).

• Block reward: 50 BTC
• Embedded message: “The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks”
• Meaning: A critique of the existing financial system and a declaration of an alternative

After that, Satoshi is believed to have mined roughly 1.1 million BTC,
yet those coins have remained untouched for more than 15 years.

Within the Bitcoin ecosystem, these coins are seen as:

• A historical symbol
• Evidence of immutability
• An almost untouchable sacred zone

This philosophical foundation has become the reference point for every hard fork debate that followed.

② The BCH Hard Fork — The First Great Schism Over Block Size

In 2017, Bitcoin experienced its first major split:
the birth of Bitcoin Cash (BCH).

The core conflict was block size.

• BTC: Keep 1 MB blocks → prioritize decentralization and node accessibility
• BCH: Increase to 8 MB → prioritize higher transaction throughput

This philosophical clash led to a technical separation,
and Bitcoin split into two chains.

Today, BCH is:

• Significantly smaller than BTC in ecosystem, developer base, miners, and community
• Holding only a minor share of the market
• Mostly remembered as a symbol of the “scalability vs decentralization” debate

③ BSV — A Split of a Split

In 2018, BCH itself split again.
The result was Bitcoin SV (BSV).

BSV’s main claims:

• To carry the “Satoshi Vision”
• To increase block size from 128 MB up to 2 GB
• To focus on large-scale enterprise transaction processing

Today, BSV is:

• Extremely small in market share
• Delisted from many major exchanges
• Left with a shrinking community and ongoing controversy

Both BCH and BSV took the Bitcoin brand,
but failed to capture Bitcoin’s network effect.

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2) Paul Sztorc’s eCash Proposal — The Taboo of Redistributing Satoshi’s 1.1 Million BTC

In 2026, Bitcoin developer Paul Sztorc proposed a new hard fork called eCash,
aiming for a split in August 2026.

The core elements of eCash:

• Create a new chain by copying Bitcoin’s existing codebase
• At the fork point, airdrop an equivalent amount of eCash to all BTC holders
• Structurally similar to previous forks like BCH and BSV

But the real core of the proposal lies elsewhere:
the redistribution of Satoshi’s 1.1 million BTC.

On the eCash chain, Sztorc suggests that
Satoshi’s coins should be reassigned.

This directly challenges Bitcoin’s foundational principles:

• Property rights
• Immutability
• Resistance to censorship and confiscation

The community’s reaction has been overwhelmingly negative:

• “This undermines Bitcoin’s core philosophy.”
• “Satoshi’s coins are off-limits.”
• “There is virtually no chance this will succeed.”

Sztorc has been advocating for changes to Bitcoin since 2015,
but the community has consistently pushed back.
The eCash debate has once again highlighted how strongly the Bitcoin community
is aligned around property rights and immutability.

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3) Can Bitcoin Hard Fork Its Way Into the Quantum Era?

34% of Bitcoin Is Already Quantum-Vulnerable — The Question Raised by BIP‑361

As quantum computing advances faster than many anticipated,
Bitcoin’s security model is, for the first time since 2009,
undergoing a fundamental re-examination.

① Why Is 34% Quantum-Vulnerable? — The Structural Weakness of “Used Once” Addresses

Bitcoin does not use an account-based model; it uses the UTXO model.
In this structure, what matters is what gets written to the blockchain when you receive coins,
and what gets revealed when you spend them.

• When receiving: Only the hash of the public key is stored → relatively safe
• When spending: The full public key is revealed on-chain along with the signature → target for quantum attacks

This means that any address that has ever sent Bitcoin becomes quantum-vulnerable.
Early P2PK outputs, old exchange wallets, and many user addresses fall into this category.
Developers worry that a significant portion of the total Bitcoin supply
is locked in such quantum-exposed addresses.

② BIP‑361 — The First Formal Procedure to Retire Quantum-Vulnerable Addresses

The goal of BIP‑361 is not to define a new post-quantum (PQ) address format,
but to propose a procedure to phase out quantum-vulnerable addresses
and prepare the ground for a future PQ transition.

The proposed three-phase roadmap:

• After 3 years: Block new transactions that send coins to quantum-vulnerable addresses
• After 5 years: Reject ECDSA signatures from those vulnerable scripts
• In the future: Discuss recovery options for coins that have not migrated to PQ-safe addresses

In short, BIP‑361 can be seen as Bitcoin’s first structural cleanup step
in preparation for the quantum era.

③ So, Is a Quantum-Era Hard Fork Actually Possible?

This question is less about engineering and more about philosophy and consensus.

1) Technically, it is possible

• Introduce PQ signature schemes
• Extend Script and adjust block size limits
• Design migration procedures for quantum-vulnerable addresses

All of this is, in principle, within the scope of what a hard fork can implement.

2) But socially, it is extremely difficult

Bitcoin must satisfy two conditions at the same time:

• Global consensus among nodes, miners, companies, and users
• No violation of existing holders’ property rights

When you start “cleaning up” quantum-vulnerable addresses,
you inevitably run into questions like:

• What about owners who have disappeared?
• What about lost private keys?
• What about Satoshi’s coins?

These are not just technical questions —
they strike at the heart of Bitcoin’s identity and philosophy.

3) Conclusion: Possible in theory, but politically the hardest fork in Bitcoin’s history

As the BCH and BSV episodes showed,
when consensus breaks, chains split.

A quantum-era hard fork would require
the largest and most delicate consensus-building effort in Bitcoin’s history.

To summarize:
“A quantum-era Bitcoin hard fork is technically possible,
but its philosophical and political difficulty would be unprecedented.”

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Conclusion — Bitcoin Stands at Another Crossroads

The history of Bitcoin is, in many ways, a history of hard forks.

• BCH emerged from a scalability debate
• BSV emerged from a philosophical split
• eCash emerges from a property rights and Satoshi-coin debate
• The quantum era demands a redesign of Bitcoin’s security model itself

The next decade of Bitcoin will hinge on
how, and under what kind of consensus, it transitions to post-quantum security.
And in that process, Bitcoin may once again
find itself splitting into multiple paths.

Younchan Jung
Researcher exploring structural shifts in AI, blockchain, and the on‑chain economy.

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