# Bitcoin Takeover Podcast | Bitcoin Forks: From Zcash to Ecash - Vlad Costea | Common S3nse - 2026

- Channel: [CryptoCanal](https://streameth.org/cryptocanal)
- Date: 2026-09-25
- Watch: https://streameth.org/watch/yt-VlgYdjfo7FM
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlgYdjfo7FM

## Transcript

Continuing, I would like to welcome to the stage Mr. Vlad Kostya, known for his podcast Bitcoin Take Off, he will take the stage to discuss Bitcoin forks. You can use this option. Greetings. So thank you to everyone who came to see my story. I will talk about Bitcoin forks. I hope this is n't a frame for some reason, when I converted from the standard Apple format, I think it's called Keynote, in PPT, which is what Windows uses, it was compressed like this . I have a clicker. Let's see if it looks good if it looks good . Is he working? Technical problems. Oh, I have a bigger one. Perfectly. He looks good. So, if you're wondering, I've been hosting the Bitcoin Takeover podcast for 7.5 years. And lately I've been obsessed with Bitcoin forks. I also created a supercycle pricing model, about 4 years ago, and it turned out to be more accurate than stock- flow comparisons and almost every price prediction model created by a venture capital fund. And all I did was draw a line on the graph, and it turned out to be more accurate. And last year, I also introduced the Freedom Gains Index model, and I was able to provide you with an update. This is not the official or main topic of my talk, but I want to show you that I started this in 2024, when I came back from a conference in Nashville where Trump was speaking , and I thought, " , and I thought, " Privacy has to be the next big priority, because this is absurd." We have deviated too far from Satoshi.” And this is an update from September 3rd. I grew by 175% with Monero, by 2110% with Zcash, by 101% with Zano. And I lost with NEM and with Litecoin. This is probably the biggest disappointment, if you ask me. The bottom line is that these gains are directed against BTC. So, I proved to everyone that it is actually possible to beat Bitcoin in terms of privacy. So, this is a purely ideological portfolio. I lost with two of them, but won a lot with Zcash. It was like a joker. I have high expectations. That was when I bought a few. Now there are about a thousand of them. I have to record this. If you don't have Zcash, you will be suspended. That's what they call you. Stop being detached. Anyway, let's get to the topic of forks. I am currently working on a magazine dedicated to Bitcoin forks. And it will have such a cute cover. And I have a theory that maybe Satoshi didn't give us a single network that would succeed. Maybe he gave us a plan. He gave us the original network. And Bitcoin is not just one network. This will be the ideal we will strive for. And if we want to scale this ideal for better or worse, we will have to launch forks from time to time to bring in more people to provide the features they need. And I also think that Satoshi gave us a good solution to the double-spending problem and the question of how to create an irresistible decentralized internet money. But he also didn't give us a clear path of governance. We have no idea how to upgrade Bitcoin. We don't have an official way to do this. It's just people deciding: this is better, this is worse. And if you disagree with me, I will launch my own fork, and that's been the case for the last 10- plus years since we had the Bitcoin Cash fork. So, we have two types of forks. We have a soft forks. We have a soft fork, which is optional. This means that you are going to tighten some of the rules, and those who don't want to follow them can just ignore the rules, but ultimately if everyone follows the new rules, it will turn into a hard fork because that is the nature of it. A hard fork is a mandatory update where all network participants must run a new version of the software at the same time. And if they don't, they will find themselves in a parallel chain, which is outdated. He changes the rules. It is more destructive. So more destructive. So , a fork is essentially an attempt to improve the original software. And this comes from GitHub terminology, where you create a new branch of a software repository that differs in some way from the original. So, if you want to create a Bitcoin fork, it's very simple. You just click the fork button in GitHub. You change a few parameters and then you have your own network. The question is, who will accept it? And we see here that we have orange Bitcoin, green Bitcoin, yellow Bitcoin, red Bitcoin with lots of parallel forks. We have silver Bitcoin. We have a Bitcoin zebra. We have Bitcoin D. We have Bitcoin Dog. We have all kinds of bitcoins in all shapes and colors. Why do we fork? And I think that's one of the best ideas about what forks are. We are trying to achieve the ideal of the Bitcoin white paper, but we have different ways of doing it. And in our attempts to achieve this, we fragment the implementation across multiple networks, which, in retrospect, will look terrible. You'll think, "Well, we couldn't do this one project." But if you look at it from the perspective of decentralization perspective of decentralization , as well as Cypherpunk- style permissionless innovation , it's actually pretty cool. You have multiple teams working on the same problem, and we don't know which one will be know which one will be , perhaps, the only real Bitcoin, or the one that will succeed, but we know that we are experimenting a lot , and there are actually innovations happening, and some of them are taking a bigger chunk. Some of them are fighting for the same piece of pizza. But that's okay, I think. Some of them will obviously die. I do n't know if we'll be talking about the same photos in 10 years. But we have a history of forks from Satoshi. For example, in August 2010 there was a block height of 74,638, this inflationary bug that printed 84 billion bitcoins. And someone took advantage of it. Satoshi had to conduct a hard fork to fix the problem. At that time, the project was much more centralized, so it was easy for him to decide that this was against the rules. So the rest of the participants don't have to follow it. And after Satoshi, we had mostly soft forks in BTC, such as check lock time verify, which is used to lock your coins for several years coins for several years . For example, if you don't want your coins to be spendable for, say, 100,000 blocks, you can do that. This subtype appeared in 2015 as a soft fork. But there are also forks that express political dissent. And the first of them was Bitcoin Cash. And Bitcoin Cash decided that they wanted to go down the BIP 101 scaling path, or not necessarily 101, maybe another one, but just increase the block size to improve Bitcoin. For the last few years, I think, we've had BIP 110, which was proposed as a way to temporarily limit the amount of data that can be placed on a blockchain. And now it has become a hard fork. And there will also be a BIP 300 eCash hard fork, which will launch on October 31st of this year, that is, on Halloween, which is also the birthday of Bitcoin BIP, the Bitcoin white paper. So Bitcoin white paper. So , on Bitcoin's 18th anniversary, we will get another hard fork. Bitcoin will be forked on its 18th forked on its 18th birthday. Let it sink in. And there will also be a hard fork to launch a new network without rewriting all the code from scratch. This is how Litecoin, Dash, Decred and Zcash come about. They all had different intentions. Litecoin tried to experiment with the idea of ​​faster blocks and a different type of hashing algorithm. Dash has been experimenting with master nodes as well as some shared coin blocks at the protocol level. Now they also have the Orchard pool from Zcash. Decred was unhappy with the governance process. So they created a voting system. Zcash was unhappy with Bitcoin's privacy, and they created a zero- disclosure cryptographic library called ZK-Snarks, which they are still refining. It's kind of like a map of all the forks and everything that happened, with dates and everything. And you can see that this is maybe not the best way to present it, but Bitcoin Cash was the first to fork. And then there was BSV from him then there was BSV from him . And then, later on, the creator of Bitcoin Cash actually created a fork of XCC, which has a sort of developer tax to fund the project fund the project , and that, I think, was the main reason why they disagreed and there was a fork disagreed and there was a fork . There was also Bitcoin Bitcoin Gold. Nobody talks about it anymore. And Bitcoin Diamond, Private, B2X, Super Bitcoin, Bitcoin Atom. Many of them happened in 2017 and no one talked about them anymore because they didn't survive. In BTC, we had this series of soft forks that happened about once a year or something. So, in 2012-13 we had two such hard forks, in 15, 16, 17, and then the pace slowed down after SegWit. In 2021, we got Taproot, and after that we had nothing, and that partly explains why we will have two more hard forks this year two more hard forks this year . There will be eCash from Paul Storz and Bitcoin 110, which currently uses the Blake 2b mining algorithm . And you also see all these early hard forks of the codebase, and the altcoin was actually Namecoin, which I think is a very underrated project. It never gained popularity gained popularity , but Satoshi actually suggested combining it for mining with Bitcoin. So, this was the first unified blockchain that was mined together with Bitcoin. It was the first altcoin, and it was kind of Satoshi's second project because he contributed to his advice. So you could say that Satoshi was an advisor to shitcoin. There you have it, apologists for the Church of Satoshi. So, that's what I did, but it seems this guy from the Bitcoin Cash community, Ludovic Lars, created this very impressive branch that shows all the updates. And I want to show this to explain what happened to Bitcoin Cash, because most people, when they think of Bitcoin Cash, think: well, it's just Bitcoin with bigger blocks. But what actually happened was that they had a lot of updates. For example, they have Schnorr signatures in 2019, and that was 2 years before BTC got Taproot. They had Schnorr for multi-signature, so their move to Schnorr was actually more complete than what we had in BTC. There were Sig checks. They also had large numbers with op-mul, so you could use that to multiply by larger integers. Introspection. Native tokens with Cash tokens. They also have something called cash fusion, which is used for privacy for privacy . So, there's a lot, and it's only...It's only presented until 2023. For the past 4 years, I think they've had updates every year on this schedule. They have a hard fork every year. And I think the narrative in BTC is that there was a split in the community in 2017 and the developers stayed with BTC and the libertarians and marketers left with BCH, but that's actually not true because as it turns out, the people with BCH scaled the project much better. By not only increasing the block size, but also adding the toolset needed by developers to build better second-level layers, better folding sidechains, even the Lightning Network could be more efficient on BCH. Therefore, it is useful to look at their efforts and understand what they did well and whether it can be a successful project in the long term. Because now the project is not just run by Cihan, Roger, and a bunch of other guys who were famous 10 years ago. There has been a complete update of the project, a changing of the guard with new developers, people who weren't even there during the block size war, but who are working on it. And it shows that it has a pretty good cypherpunk spirit good cypherpunk spirit , and I have no idea why BTC doesn't just copy what BCH did in a big package. I think there is a proposal, it's called "The Great Script Recovery Script Recovery " that tries to achieve this, but it's not getting much traction. eCash XEC is conducting its experiments with Avalanche before and after consensus. And it was launched in this form in 2022. The advantage is that it has faster transaction completion. And they also say that it is more difficult to attack by 51% because it is a kind of hybrid between Proof of Work and Proof of Stake. And yes, that's exactly what's happening to him. What I forgot to mention about Bitcoin Cash is that they are now talking about reducing the block time. So they want to have a new block every minute, which I think is ambitious for them and is a radical change to the design of Bitcoin, but could be useful in the context of the fact that they use a lot of zero- privacy transactions, which means you will be waiting for a block every 10 minutes to confirm your transaction and make it thermodynamically irreversible. And if you have faster blocks, that means transactions will be confirmed faster, but I think they also need to reduce the block reward by 10x to match that. So, they don't overstate the offer overstate the offer . BSV is actually considered to be this 1GB blockchain . But what's interesting, and the reason why it's not, I think, the real Bitcoin, is that it has these two hard forks for the blacklist manager and the digital asset return. This means they can confiscate UTXOs if they have a court order or something. The narrative behind this is that they want to be a chain where no crime can be committed, and if there is a crime, they can simply confiscate the funds. But, if you actually read the official Bitcoin document, it generally says that you should not be able to double- spend a transaction or change it without repeating the Proof of Work. And what BSV does is it allows someone to withdraw funds without repeating Proof of Work. Satoshi's design was specific about Proof of Work and what is final. And BSV does not adhere to this. So in my opinion, maybe you may disagree with me , we can discuss this later, but BSV no longer follows the Bitcoin philosophy. And then there's Bitcoin Gold. And the only reason I mentioned it here is because it was launched in 2018 and it changed the mining algorithm to Equihash, which I think is also used in Ethereum for GPU mining. This was something of a deal for GPU deal for GPU miners to make some quick money. I think it's extinct. I don't know of anyone using this. But it's similar to forks that branched directly from Bitcoin, and they copied the UTXO set. Subscribe to Ludovic Lars. He did an amazing job with this graph job with this graph . And I have to give him credit for that. Now in 2026 we will have two forks and I am comparing them side by side . There are BIP 1101 and BIP 301. BIP 110 focuses on censoring arbitrary data. BIP 300 is focused on moving everything to a Bitcoin fork. They want to have a sidechain for every possible use case. BIP 110 reduces the block size to 300 kilobytes, which is Luke Jr.'s idea for an ideal Bitcoin. BIP 300 eCash is a one-to-one copy of Bitcoin Core that adds sidechains for every popular altcoin. BIP 110 changes the mining algorithm from SHA-256 to Blake2b. BIP 300 eCash retains SHA-256 mining. In BIP 110, narrative and culture wars are more important than technology, and this is evident on Twitter in the way they interact. It is very important for them to appeal to purity and what real Bitcoin means to them. In BIP 300 eCash, the main thing is technology, not narratives. And again , you can see on Twitter that they're writing about trying new things, but they're not very vocal. They are not very good at marketing. So it's going to be interesting because they're kind of polar opposites. And it goes further, because in BIP 110 they claim to be the real Bitcoin and want to claim the BTC ticker. It was funny that they were listed on an exchange this week, and then they were very vocal about wanting to have a BTC ticker on the exchange, but they were delisted because they were insulting the members of that team, saying they were scammers, etc., for not giving them a BTC ticker because they were real Bitcoin, and they were delisted, as you know, the more you split, the more you learn. And they also called BIP 300 ECX The Cash. They plan to become a competitor to Bitcoin, but they don't claim to be the real Bitcoin or anything like that. This is clearly a different project. BIP 110 is supported by Bitcoin is supported by Bitcoin clubs. BIP 300 is supported by nerds and developers. The mainnet is running for BIP 110. is running for BIP 110. Any BTC holder can get 2 Blake Bitcoins today at a 1:1 ratio. I think they are worth around $100 each, so unless you have a large amount of Bitcoin, I don't think there is any point in rushing rushing . The mainnet for Bip 300 eCash launches on October 31, 2026. October 31, 2026. Anyone can get their ECX 1:1, except Satoshi, who gets half. This is what they call a half Satoshi airdrop. And this is somewhat contradictory, but if you think about it, Satoshi didn't create eCash, he created Bitcoin. And every project on this list has at some point tried to say that it is the real version of Bitcoin or a better version of Bitcoin. And eCash is trying to distance itself from Bitcoin branding. So when you think about it that way, it doesn't make sense. I mean, if I were Paul, I would just take all of Satoshi's coins and think: this will go towards funding and try something like the Ethereum Foundation, but that's just my opinion. The client for BIP 110 is called Bitcoin Knots. The client for BIP 300 is called Bit Window, and it's been called that for about 10 years, but I think they're going to change that. It is located at ecash.com, which is their domain. The most interesting thing is that Amori had already launched eCash, and then Amori created Bitcoin Cash, claiming that it was the true version of Bitcoin, according to Satoshi's vision. And now there are BTC developers launching a version of eCash launching a version of eCash , which he claims is the real eCash because he owns the domain ecash.com. So, there are several levels to this fight for someone else's name . This is very fun. Will Bitcoin die from a thousand forks? And this seems to have been a forks? And this seems to have been a popular topic of discussion in 2017 discussion in 2017 . People said, "Well, if we keep fragmenting the network fragmenting the network , it'll never get going and it'll be worthless." Fork means fragmentation of users. Communities will go elsewhere, but paradoxically, a fork means scaling. So, we are not scaling Bitcoin BTC by increasing the block size, but we have other blockchains that do what BTC can do. This also means monetary inflation. And I think some of this inflation is temporary because I do n't think all of these projects will survive in the long run. Perhaps one of them will dominate the entire market. Maybe entire market. Maybe two or three of them will compete with each other. I think having more projects like this to experiment with features is more useful than just one where people argue about people argue about what to add next. Because, you know, this 21 million meme is very powerful, but I think it's dead. We will never have a global economy denominated in 21 million coins. But I think if it's something like 500 million coins with 10 blockchains and that's it, it's a lot more fair than what fair than what we have now. So, this is not such a bad result. Experiments like Lightning and Liquid never caught on. Even Bitcoin wrapped WBTC on Ethereum is 25 times larger. I think they have about 100,000 BTC locked on Ethereum. And for comparison, it's about 3,000 in Lightning and 2,000 in Liquid. This is truly appalling, considering the marketing and effort that went into these projects into these projects . This outcome, where we have multiple blockchains but a growing coin supply, is not good for Austrian economists who will say, "Well, I didn't sign up for this. I wanted a deficit." But it's very similar to Cypherpunk because we can try everything and everyone gets the features they need. And we have markets where you can sell, buy, and exchange. This is actually pretty cool. Bitcoin—is it a network or an idea? This is another question we should ask ourselves at this point. And if you read Bitcoin white...The article describes several cryptocurrencies. If you just exclude the name Bitcoin and think about what kind of idea it is, you will conclude that yes, Litecoin conclude that yes, Litecoin is Bitcoin. Bitcoin Cash is Bitcoin. BSV is not Bitcoin because it does not follow this rule. So, did Satoshi give us an idea or just one final network that we must perfect? We have the blueprint for creating relentless online money that I mentioned at the beginning. Some people say this is the final option. Is my time up? Oh, okay. I'll finish quickly. And some people say this is the final version of money, but that's very unlikely at this point. We have a good solution to the double spending problem, but we have a governance problem, and no one knows what consensus means for solving it. In fact, there are many second-best crypto assets . I just wanted to point that out. Sorry, Sailor. Actually, don't apologize. I don't really like you. Listen to my podcast. You can scan this QR scan this QR code. I throw Pepes to every guest. and I'm interviewing them for this season. I'll move out of the way so you can scan. And I'm also working on a magazine called Bit-Bitcoin takeover forks, and this is the cover of what I'm working on. And I think most of the graphics will be watercolor, meaning hand-drawn and digitized, because, you know, in this age of artificial intelligence, art has become very cheap. So I'm trying to do something different. Thank you. Thank you very much, Vlad. Excellent keynote address. It's like you don't have Slido if someone wants to ask a quick question, right? No? Well, I have a question. Um, you mentioned, um, you know mentioned, um, you know , they're changing the algorithm. What is the main reason for their algorithm change? For example, for BIP 100, you said they were going to switch from the algorithm that Bitcoin uses to Blake 2B or something like that ? Yes, it's BIP 110. And the official narrative is that they want to fire miners because...They believe miners are evil. The reason miners are evil is because they mine transactions without permission, which means that sometimes they also mine data that these people consider to be spam. So they want to have their own miners who follow the rules they want. And they are changing the algorithm. My long-term bet on this project is that they'll decide: well, this blockchain that we're protecting now, that we're inheriting from BTC, has all this, they call it C-Sam or whatever, but the kid whatever. And they'll say, well, we don't want to support this anymore because it's been in the chain for a long time. And I think they'll start a new chain from scratch, but that's just my guess. And very quickly, since you, for example, made a list and basically outranked everyone, I do n't... Not everyone. It's a shame I did n't go all-in n't go all-in on Zcash right away. Retrospective review Retrospective review will always say something, but at least you did, you know, you had a thesis, you tested it, and Well, you did well you did well . So maybe there's something else for next year? I will update this because people have told me that it is impossible to beat BTC because it is the leader, has institutional acceptance, and everything else acceptance, and everything else is shitcoin. Yes. And then I did it, and people told me, "Oh, you're going to be poor, you've lost your generation of wealth generation of wealth ." That's what they say. And I'm like, "Okay, buddy. "We'll see how this all plays out." And now they tell me, "Oh, they gave up." "They're like, 'Oh, look, it used to be higher at this point.'" "And I'm like, ' point.'" "And I'm like, ' I didn't buy when it was at its all- time high.'" "I bought it when it was down." when it was down." “They’re like, ‘It doesn’t matter. "It should look like a Bitcoin chart." " Bitcoin chart." " Yes." And we all need to, you know, draw perfect lines on graphs, and if we don't, then, you know, we're not holy enough, right? If you choose a specific time frame, you will see frame, you will see that Tron outperforms Bitcoin. And that's true. Tron is always in