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Craig Wright to appeal court ruling
It comes as no surprise that Craig Wright will appeal the recent court ruling. The ruling has sent commentators into a frenzy with heated often nasty arguments proliferating across twitter and YouTube. Wright is a figure that many within Bitcoin BTC have a disdain for. Supporting or evening considering the case that Wright could be Satoshi is considered idiotic by many. I personally have taken a stance of looking closely at the facts and working through the evidence and discuss this in the attached video. I flew to a Bitcoin BSV conference to meet him to help in my understanding of Bitcoin BSV and his claim to be Satoshi. Subscribe here to see that interview this week. I discussed the case with Wright in the interview and saw genuine sadness in him having to go through this.
The Court Case
The case began in 2018 when Ira Kleiman, the brother of Wright’s late business partner Dave Kleiman, sued Wright. Wright told me he had tried to contact the family after Dave’s death but had not been able to. Ira Kleiman alleged that Wright “concocted a scheme to claim ownership of all bitcoins owned by Dave” by falsifying a paper trail of backdated and forged documents. The original claim by Ira Kleiman was for 10 Billion dollars.
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Wright’s defense team, which claimed that Kleiman had relinquished all claims to bitcoin mined by the duo before his death in 2013, was rejected by magistrate Judge Reinhart. The judge found Wright had “intentionally submitted fraudulent documents to the Court, obstructed a judicial proceeding, and gave perjurious testimony.”
The judge who ruled on the Kleiman case made these points.
“Dr. Wright’s story not only was not supported by other evidence in the record, it defies common sense and real-life experience,” Reinhardt wrote. “Consider his claims.”
1. “He designed Bitcoin to be an anonymous digital cash system with an evidentiary trail.”
2. “He mined approximately 1,000,000 bitcoin, but there is no accessible evidentiary trail for the vast majority of them.”
3. “He is a latter-day Dr. Frankenstein whose creation turned to evil when hijacked by drug dealers, human traffickers, and other criminals.”
4. “To save himself, he engaged David Kleiman to remove all traces of his involvement with Bitcoin from the public record.”
5. “As part of his efforts to disassociate from Bitcoin and “so that I wouldn’t be in trouble,” he put all his bitcoin (and/or the keys to it – his story changed) into a computer file that is encrypted with a hierarchical Shamir encryption protocol.”
6. “He then put the encrypted file into a “blind” trust (of which he is one of the trustees), gave away a controlling number of the key slices to now-deceased David Kleiman, and therefore cannot now decrypt the file that controls access to the bitcoin.”
7. “His only hope is that a bonded courier arrives on an unknown dated [sic] in January 2020 with the decryption keys.” If the courier does not appear, Dr. Craig Wright has lost his ability to access billions of dollars worth of bitcoin, and he does not care.”
The Judge also stated “Dr. Wright’s demeanor did not impress me as someone who was telling the truth. When it was favorable to him, Dr. Wright appeared to have an excellent memory and a scrupulous attention to detail. Otherwise, Dr. Wright was belligerent and evasive,” wrote the judge. “I completely reject Dr. Wright’s testimony about the alleged Tulip Trust, the alleged encrypted file, and his alleged inability to identify his bitcoin holdings.”
This does seem a difficult position for Wright in any appeal, but many of these comments are flawed and seem to lack knowledge of Bitcoin.
Craig Wright and the Tulip Trust
Ultimately what is known as the Tulip Trust, which is said to hold 1.1 Million BTC will be available to Wright in just four months. Should the Judge’s recommendation be upheld or Wright loses his appeal it will be very interesting to see the market’s reaction. January 1st looms large as a huge date in Bitcoins history. I would estimate 90% of people in Bitcoin/Crypto do not think Wright is Satoshi. Will that change in the coming months? Will the market get spooked by any thoughts of Wright or Kleiman’s Estate liquidating large amounts of BTC. What are the ramifications of 50% ownership of IP going to the Kleiman estate? Could any IP ruling affect what is happening at Bitcoin SV?. Bitcoin SV hard forks to an unlimited blocksize early next year. I have been fascinated by this prospect and early indications are the IP issue with the Kleimans won’t affect that project but it is something I’m following closely. These are all big questions and we will follow this daily over the coming weeks and months.
Whatever your position on Wright’s claims to be Satoshi this will be a fascinating few months ahead. I’m sure there will be many twists and turns. In the attached video I discuss Craig Wright’s claims and the reaction of many within the community. Please share your thoughts in the comments below.
