How to Buy eCash (XEC)
Beginner’s Guide
What Is eCash (XEC)?
eCash (XEC) is a digital currency based on blockchain technology, designed to be a fast, secure, and low-cost way to make online payments. It was created by the team at Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and is based on the same codebase, with the aim of providing a more scalable and efficient version of Bitcoin. The eCash network uses a proof-of-stake consensus algorithm to validate transactions and secure the network, which means that users who hold XEC can earn rewards by participating in the network.
The cryptocurrency’s developers have set their sights on three main improvements:
- Scaling transaction throughput from 100 transactions per second to more than five million transactions per second
- Improving the payment experience by reducing transaction finality time
- Extending the protocol and establishing fork-free upgrades
How to Buy eCash Summary
- Get a eCash wallet (e.g. Ledger, Trezor ,Guardia, Exodus , AtomicWallet)
- Find an exchange that sells eCash (e.g. Binance, Kucoin, Gate, OKX, ByBit)
- Deposit money and make the trade
- Withdraw the eCash to your wallet
Buying eCash in 3 Simple Steps
Step 1 – Get a XEC wallet
eCash (XEC) Hardware Wallets
As of my knowledge cutoff in September 2021, there are no hardware wallets available for storing eCash (XEC) as it is a relatively new cryptocurrency. However, users can securely store their eCash in software wallets that support the Simple Ledger Protocol (SLP) standard used by the eCash network.
The best option for storing any cryptocurrency would be to use a hardware wallet. These are pieces of hardware that store the private key to your coins offline.
Today, there are two leading hardware manufacturers to choose from – Ledger and TREZOR. Both companies have different models of hardware wallets that will get the job done.
If you want deeper insights on specific models, you can read my Ledger Nano X review or my TREZOR Model T review.
eCash (XEC) Software Wallets
Since eCash (XEC) is a relatively new cryptocurrency, there are currently no software wallets specifically designed to support it. However, users may be able to store eCash in a software wallet that supports multiple cryptocurrencies, such as Exodus or Atomic Wallet. It’s important to do your own research and carefully review the features and security measures of any software wallet before using it to store eCash or any other cryptocurrency.
Hardware wallets cost money, so if you’re not sure how serious you are about cryptocurrencies and just want to get a taste of what they feel like, perhaps you would be better off starting with a software wallet.
A software wallet is a free program that lets you store your coins on your computer or mobile phone.
The easiest Oasis Network software wallets to get started with are undoubtedly Exodus, AtomicWallet and Guarda . Both wallets are very intuitive. Exodus is available on desktop for Windows, Mac and Linux, as well as on mobile for both iOS and Android. Edge on the other hand is only available on mobile, with both iOS and Android apps available. If you want more information you can read my Exodus, AtomicWallet and Guarda review.
Step 2 – Find an eCash (XEC) Exchange
Buy eCash through Binance
- Binance is a cryptocurrency exchange which is the largest exchange in the world in terms of daily trading volume of cryptocurrencies. It was founded in 2017 and is registered in the Cayman Islands. Binance was founded by Changpeng Zhao, a developer who had previously created high frequency trading software.
Buy eCash through Kucoin
- Kucoin is a global cryptocurrency exchange for numerous digital assets and cryptocurrencies. Launched in September 2017, KuCoin has grown into one of the most popular crypto exchanges and already has over 8 million registered users from 700+ countries and regions. According to Alexa traffic ranking, KuCoin’s monthly unique ranking is in the top 5 globally. Known as the “People’s Exchange”, KuCoin operates in Seychelles, providing users with multi-language and 24/7 customer service. Meanwhile, KuCoin has established local communities all over the world in South Korea, Japan, Spain, Italy, Vietnam, Turkey, Russia, India, and other regions, providing users with the most local services. Currently, 1 out of every 4 crypto holders in the world is with KuCoin.
Buy eCash through Gate.io
- Gate.io is a crypto exchange founded in the fall of 2017. The platform is a part of Gate Technology Inc corporation, and has a registration address in Virginia, USA. The platform does not have an official license. Its interface is available for working in three versions: English, Chinese and Japanese.
Buy eCash through Okx
- OKX (Chinese: 欧易), formerly known as OKEx, is a Seychelles-based cryptocurrency exchange and derivatives exchange. It was founded by Star Xu (徐明星) in 2017. OKX is owned by Ok Group, which also owns crypto exchange Okcoin. It is not available to US based investors. The company’s CEO is Jay Hao and CMO is Haider Rafique. Initially headquartered in Beijing, China, OKX is now under a blanket ban by Chinese regulators. On October 13, 2021, it issued a “Notice on Regulatory Policy in Mainland China”, announcing that it would continue its policy of “withdrawing from the Chinese mainland market” and would not establish an office or team in the region. However, according to Caixin, although the exchange officially announced that it would no longer set up an office in Mainland China, it still has a large number of R&D staff working in the region, including engineers, who continue to work for OKX in the form of third-party outsourcing companies.
Buy eCash through Bybit
- The exchange prides itself on delivering multilingual online support to its customers and is committed to providing a transparent and efficient trading experience. The products on the platform include BTC/USD, ETH/USD, LTC/USD, and XRP/USD perpetual contracts. A perpetual contract resembles a traditional futures contract in many ways. Its main difference, however, is that it doesn’t have an expiry date. Hence, traders are allowed to hold their positions for as long as they need to.Moreover, the exchange boasts a 100,000 TPS state-of-the-art matching engine. While many of its competitors have suffered from repeated overload problems, this high-performance matching engine makes it possible for Bybit to stand above the competition.The Bybit cryptocurrency broker platform is operated by the Bybit Fintech Limited which is registered on the British Virgin Islands, with headquarters in Singapore. The company was launched in March 2018, making it a fairly young player on the market.
Step 3 – Withdraw Your eCash (XEC)
Once you decide on an exchange, open an account and buy your eCash. Make sure to withdraw the eCash from the exchange to your personal wallet. Never leave coins on an exchange, as you risk losing them all if that exchange gets hacked or shuts down (which has happened in the past).
OVERVIEW
Who Are the Founders of eCash?
eCash is a decentralized digital currency, so there are no founders in the traditional sense. The project is maintained and developed by a team of anonymous contributors who have chosen to remain anonymous, similar to the creator of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto. The project’s source code and development plans are available to the public, and anyone can contribute to the project’s development or use the currency for transactions. The eCash project was created in 2013 as a fork of Bitcoin with an aim to provide a more scalable and efficient payment system. eCash (XEC) is led by its lead developer Amaury Sechet, who was the lead developer of Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and forked that blockchain to establish the predecessor of eCash, Bitcoin Cash ABC (BCHA). That fork happened on November 15, 2020. Sechet then decided to rebrand Bitcoin Cash ABC to establish a new brand identity for eCash, explaining that a reduction of decimal places would help with the adoption of the coin:
“No other money has eight decimal places. Why should crypto? Cryptocurrencies with a lower unit price also enjoy higher bull market appreciation. Because the eCash team is incentivized by both tech and price improvement, this improvement was a no-brainer.”
Sechet was highly active in the development of Bitcoin Cash, leading its initial fork away from Bitcoin in August 2017, its continuation after Bitcoin SV (BSV) was forked from it in November 2018, and its most recent fork from Bitcoin Cash in November 2020. Before his involvement in cryptocurrencies, he was a software engineer at Facebook and a lead developer at Stupid D Compiler.
What Makes eCash Unique?
The developers of eCash (XEC) intend the coin to support Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM)-compatibility and to be interoperable with the decentralized finance (DeFi) sector on Ethereum (ETH). For the coin to become successful, eCash’s developers intend to fulfill five core missions:
- Ensuring anonymous transactions
- Ensuring the immutability of transactions
- Guaranteeing that transactions remain almost free
- Enforcing globally secure transactions with a finality of fewer than three seconds
- Designing the coin’s infrastructure as a public good, funded via its social contract
To achieve this, the developers of eCash have laid out an ambitious roadmap, with plans to have:
- Canonical transaction ordering to enable scalable block processing
- Schnorr Signatures to enable batched signature validation
- Faster block propagation through graphene or other
- UTXO commitment with blockchain pruning and faster initial sync
- Merklix-Meta Tree to enable scalable block processing
- Adaptive block sizes to support market-driven growth to 1TB blocks
These highly ambitious solutions would propel eCash to 50 transactions per user per day for up to 10 billion users.
How Many eCash (XEC) Coins Are There in Circulation?
There is no tokenomics of eCash (XEC) but it follows many of the same rules already established for Bitcoin (BTC). It shares Bitcoin’s supply and distribution model, meaning that every 210,000 blocks, approximately every four years, miner rewards are cut in half. ECash has the same supply cap as Bitcoin of 2.1 quadrillion satoshis, yet instead of those 2.1 quadrillion SATS being divided by 100 million to yield 21 million BTC, it was divided by 100, yielding 21 trillion XEC. The reason for this is simply that it is easier for users to mentally grasp integers and this decision aligns with the coin’s goal of mass adoption.
How Is the eCash Network Secured?
In contrast to the Bitcoin Cash ABC (BCHA) network, which is secured using a proof-of-work (PoW) consensus mechanism, the developers of eCash plan to add proof-of-stake (PoS) in order to speed up transactions. What they term “Avalanche post-consensus” would see enhanced security and fork-free upgrades and allow for advanced opcodes thanks to enhanced script capability. The Avalanche layer will be added on top of the existing PoW in order to leverage the benefits of both.
XEC is not an ERC-20 token, it is its own blockchain similar to Bitcoin (BTC).