eCash (XEC)
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Price of eCash today in real time
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Historical price evolution of eCash
Daily historical data. Updated automatically.
eCash (XEC) has its roots in the first fork of Bitcoin, led by Amaury Séchet on 1st August 2017. This split gave rise to Bitcoin Cash (BCH) with 8 MB blocks, with the objective of maintaining Bitcoin's original vision as low-cost digital cash. However, in November 2018 a new split occurred within Bitcoin Cash when Séchet's team (Bitcoin ABC) separated from Craig Wright's group (Bitcoin Cash SV) in a hash war, giving rise to Bitcoin Cash ABC (BCHA) as the surviving chain.
On 15th November 2020, BCHA forked definitively from Bitcoin Cash at block 661,648, triggered by disagreement over the protocol's funding model. On 1st July 2021 at 12:00 UTC, BCHA was rebranded as eCash (XEC) through a redenomination that fixed 1 BCHA = 1,000,000 XEC, reducing decimals from 8 to 2. This was not an exchange operation, but rather maintained the same blockchain with a different presentation.
Technical developments accelerated in the following years. On 15th November 2023, native reward staking was activated on mainnet, making eCash the first Bitcoin implementation to offer non-custodial staking with a minimum of 100 million XEC and Bitcoin ABC node with Avalanche enabled. In 2024 several important milestones occurred: on 4th April the Chronik indexer was published, integrated directly into the Bitcoin ABC node, eliminating dependence on external indexing software and adding native support for the eTokens protocol.
On 11th April 2024 eCash halving took place at block 840,000, reducing the block reward from 6.25 million to 3.125 million XEC, which left the annual inflation rate at 0.83%. On 15th November 2024 the Heartbeat upgrade was implemented, which introduced a second real-time difficulty adjustment algorithm over the main DAA to smooth block times and prevent switch mining on minority hashrate PoW chains. During 2024 Agora was also launched, a decentralised and permissionless DEX for on-chain trading of eTokens and NFTs directly from the Cashtab wallet.
On 15th November 2025 Avalanche Pre-Consensus was activated on mainnet (block 923,347), allowing for the first time on a Proof-of-Work blockchain for transactions to obtain irreversible finality in less than three seconds. On 25th April 2026, Bitcoin developer Paul Sztorc announced an independent Bitcoin hard fork which he also called eCash, generating brand confusion with XEC and a largely negative reaction from the community.
XEC functions as the native token of eCash, a layer 1 blockchain that evolves Bitcoin's original design through a dual consensus architecture. At its base layer, it uses the same Proof-of-Work system with SHA-256 algorithm as Bitcoin, which allows existing Bitcoin miners to participate in the network without changing their hardware. This layer maintains the fundamental characteristics of Satoshi's protocol: it produces blocks, guarantees the immutability of the transaction record and preserves both the halving mechanism and the limited maximum supply.
Above this base operates eCash's Avalanche protocol—a proprietary development unrelated to the AVAX blockchain—which adds a second consensus layer that functions both before and after traditional consensus. Nodes that possess sufficient XEC stake can reach agreement on the validity and order of transactions even before the corresponding block is mined, reducing finality time to less than three seconds. This staking operates in a non-custodial manner, without locking funds or applying penalties for misbehaviour, unlike other traditional staking protocols.
The system incorporates several features oriented towards practical usability: it uses the "bit" as base denomination (equivalent to 100 satoshis) with only 2 decimals instead of Bitcoin's 8, facilitating calculations in everyday payments. 8% of each block reward is automatically allocated to finance protocol development through the Coinbase Rule. The network also allows the creation of custom tokens both fungible and non-fungible (eTokens) and implements protocol upgrades in a scheduled manner twice a year, on 15th May and 15th November.
Data verified against external sources. Some values may have changed since the last update.