The Plot &The Beginning

Ever wondered who Satoshi Nakamoto was and why he/she/they quietly left the marvel of an invention called Bitcoin. Well, eBitcoin also had a developer pseudo-named satoshi21 who originally envisioned creating a tokenized version of Bitcoin on Ethereum before a sea of inspired e-Tokens and copycats swarmed the crypto space. Just after the start of the project calling itself “eBTC a tokenized version of Bitcoin on Ethereum”, Satoshi21 realized that he had made an honest mistake in the smart contract enabling him the possibility to create an unlimited supply of tokens. Realizing the situation, Satoshi21 got overwhelmed and silently left the project and the community by handing over the keys to the contract and some digital funds to the then newly formed eBTC community Foundation.

Disclosure: This is a Sponsored Article

The reference to the genius of Nakamoto is particularly relevant here because eBTC as a project was solely envisioned to revisit the digital currency part of Satoshi Nakamoto’s vision in a more optimized fashion: implement a peer-to-peer decentralized electronic cash and payment system unbounded by any state, jurisdiction or despot but with a faster, more flexible and smarter outlook.

Instead of conducting an ICO to fund the eBTC project, Satoshi21 chose to evenly airdrop 95% of the 21 million tokens to the newly instituted eBTC community but ended up giving around 98%. Soon after the discovery of the bug in the smart contract and the ordeal with Satoshi21, the reformed eBTC community foundation decided to conduct a 1:1 contract swap on a “hold and receive basis” and thereafter executed it as planned on October 30, 2017.

After the successful token swap, the eBTC community foundation decided to strategically rebrand herself as eBitcoin Foundation and its token is currently being traded with eBitcoin (eBTC) ticker symbol.   

The Case for Crypto Plagiarism-cum-Copycatting & the Manufactured Doubts  

In general, plagiarism is considered seriously unethical and inappropriate but in the world of crypto and open source it is not considered that alarming; after all what open-source is for and eBTC project was initiated under the MIT license. Although eBitcoin Foundation is appreciative of the fact that so many “e” versions followed the tokenized model of eBTC but plagiarizing even the text from eBTC web sources clearly crossed the morality fit for the whole ecosystem. Imagine defending that before Andreas M. Antonopoulos.

After the Satoshi21’s sequel and the contract bug controversy, the eBTC foundation and the community exhibited attributes of synergy and antifragility in the waves of extreme bashing and uncertainty, but the team and the community seemed to have stood adamant and found more cause to progress and develop. This is more easily discernable when one looks at eBitcoin’s 400+ page discussion on the Bitcoin Talk Forum within just a period of two months.

eBitcoin is not owned by anyone; it belongs to the community and all which would ever be accomplished would be initiated by and belong to the community. This appears to be the mantra of their vision according to one of their core team members who commented while making the core team identities public for garnering greater transparency and trust for the eBitcoin ecosystem.

“eBitcoin has passed the test of time and has moved on, thanks to the strong committed team and its amazing community support. eBitcoin is now laying down strong foundations to build upon.”, commented the core team member.

The Gap and the Philosophy Fuel

In an era of persistent Bitcoin forks and the ensuing money-making frenzy, it sometimes becomes hard to make sense of it all. What purpose Bitcoin was set to achieve and where we have arrived in the meanwhile.

It is no secret that Bitcoin’s evolution over the years has transformed it into a lucrative store of value mechanism or digital gold more than a practically viable currency due to its slow block times and ever-growing transaction costs. eBitcoin was solely created to fill this gap: serve as a completely decentralized digital currency where users could instantaneously exchange value over the decentralized space by leveraging Ethereum’s foundational layer. While eBitcoin is not a groundbreaking technology innovation like Bitcoin or its successor Ethereum and is just an ERC20 compliant token, but its ecosystem surely is a modernization attempt to bring the idea of Bitcoin on Ethereum as a viable digital currency option for the masses allowing faster transaction speed, lower transaction cost and ability to work with a myriad of smart contracts.

The question here entails why not invoke an immutable and unchangeable smart contract and tell it to function as fast, cost-effective and smart digital money on Ethereum just like Bitcoin was brilliantly put to work in 2009 which inspired the way for Ethereum and other blockchain ecosystems currently in existence.

eBitcoin’s Whitepaper details how Nakamoto’s vision of enabling trustless micropayments is becoming more of a challenge within the Bitcoin ecosystem where higher transaction costs make it practically imprudent to transact such small transactions. Imagine buying a coffee or an online gadget with Bitcoin. The white paper further outlays eBitcoin’s strategic vision  “As an electronic cash and payment system, eBTC aspires to sustainably represent the core attributes of Bitcoin on the Ethereum blockchain without experiencing the hassles of slow block times, higher transaction costs, centralized mining and continuous forks while also providing the support for smart contracts.  With Ethereum’s smart contract capabilities, eBTC strives to implement all the available use-cases such contracts offer in furthering eBTC’s adoption as a truly global and everyday-usable digital currency and payment mechanism.”

In essence it appears as though the failure of banks and fiat-based institutions fuelled Bitcoin’s original philosophy as digital money, whereas the slow block time, higher transaction cost and the excessive forks of Bitcoin ecosystem is currently empowering the core philosophy behind eBitcoin offering a more efficient and cost-effective digital money option for the masses.

In the sea of countless ERC20 tokens enabling various blockchain utilities, eBitcoin sets itself apart to be recognized as the first Bitcoin-inspired, fork-resistant and Ethereum-enabled digital currency and store of value mechanism, and aspires to be a strategic asset for Ethereum’s overall ecosystem in the years to come, as condensed from their whitepaper.

eBitcoin Ecosystem and the Future Ahead

In complying with its core endeavour of modernizing Bitcoin as digital money and implementing all the available use-cases of a globally-accepted payment system into eBTC, eBitcoin Foundation has achieved few milestones ahead of its published roadmap in the recent weeks. One of their recent achievements was the partnership with ProxyCard: a hybrid wallet portal enabling mass adoption of Ethereum for everyone, users & merchants alike. ProxyCard has a ready-to-work Hybrid Wallet that when fully integrated (scheduled to be released in January 2018) will enable a user-friendly interface that would allow eBitcoin holders to easily and securely send, receive, and store their eBTC tokens, and would hopefully empower Point-of-Sale mass adoption.

eBitcoin’s roadmap streamlines social action through enthusiastic community participation to achieve steady evolution of its global adoption. They are currently working on eBTC use-cases and solutions and have plans to start the development of android, web and hybrid wallets next year, one of the core team members commented. Global awareness and marketing, merchant integration, online portals & payment solutions for Magento, Shopify, 3d Cart & Miva among others and major exchanges are also in the pipeline, further added the team member.

The team seems to be seriously progressing towards their set milestones and it was amazing to see what inspires them to work without any monetary incentive; “ we want to relive the soul of a distributed blockchain ecosystem and are happy to be a positive force changing the world for better” responded the core team member.

While elaborating the structure of eBitcoin Foundation, the core team member responded: “As a community-driven ecosystem, we are a diverse global team of volunteers amassing 200 years of diverse tech, blockchain and industry experience, and working on new partnerships with promising technologies that will help increase mass adoption and realize our vision and roadmap as set out in the official documents”.

Taking this opportunity, the core team members also voiced their appeal to the world: “we would like to reach out to and encourage the wider crypto-community, blockchain developers, serious investors, marketing agencies, major crypto exchanges such as Bittrex, Binance and above all, people with great business ideas to come forward and join forces with us to build a truly decentralized community-driven ecosystem through which we may change the very fabric of how we evolve the conduct of distributed financial transactions.”

Would eBitcoin’s vision come to fruition and would they become the Bitcoin’s only alternative on Ethereum? Only time will tell. But one thing is sure; eBitcoin is an interesting and serious project driven by active community. Who knows what they evolve into within no time!