The original EIP-918 mineable token, Bitcoin's proof-of-work on Ethereum
Historical Significance
0xBitcoin codified proof-of-work token mining on Ethereum into EIP-918, the first reusable mineable-token standard. Its design — a 21M cap, halvings at 50% of supply, and epoch-based difficulty adjustment — was more economically sound than the earlier independent PoW tokens (Love, HashToken) and became the canonical reference implementation copied by over 130 subsequent contracts. The no-ICO, no-premine, fully-mined launch made it the clearest expression on Ethereum of Bitcoin's original distribution principles. It reached a $50M market cap in 2022 before mining halted in May 2023 when production cost vastly exceeded market value.
Context
Deployed nearly two years after the first independent Ethereum proof-of-work tokens (Love in March 2016 and HashToken in June 2016), 0xBitcoin's developer Infernal_toast almost certainly did not know about those precursors — the idea of replicating Bitcoin's mining mechanic on Ethereum was obvious enough to surface independently. Its February 2018 launch coincided with peak ICO mania, and the no-premine framing was a deliberate counterpoint to that environment.
Token Information
Key Facts
Description
0xBitcoin (0xBTC) is the first mineable ERC-20 token to formalize proof-of-work distribution into a reusable standard (EIP-918). Deployed in February 2018 by a developer using the handle Infernal_toast, the contract closely mirrors Bitcoin's economic model: a 21 million token cap, halving events at 50% of supply, and epoch-based difficulty adjustment that responds to changes in aggregate hash rate.
Every token in circulation was distributed by mining. The launch had no ICO, no airdrop, no premine, and no founder reward — a deliberate counter-positioning against the ICO mania of 2017 and 2018. Miners called mint() with a nonce that produced a hash below the current target; valid solutions were rewarded with newly minted 0xBTC.
0xBitcoin reached a $50M market cap in 2022. Mining stopped in May 2023 at difficulty 8.44 billion, when the electricity cost per token exceeded its market price by a factor of roughly 11,000. As of 2026 the token still trades, with roughly $410K market cap and daily volume.
The contract spawned over 130 EIP-918 clones — copies of the same template with different names and parameters — most of which were deployed and never mined.
Heuristic Analysis
The following characteristics were detected through bytecode analysis and may not be accurate.
Byzantium Era
First Metropolis hard fork. Added zk-SNARK precompiles, REVERT opcode, and staticcall.