Australia's Wright Launches Lawsuit Over $5.7 Billion Bitcoin Haul (reuters.com) 52
An Australian computer scientist who alleges he created bitcoin has launched a London High Court lawsuit against 16 software developers in an effort to secure bitcoin worth around 4 billion pounds ($5.7 billion) he says he owns. From a report: In a case that was promptly labelled "bogus" by one defendant, Craig Wright is demanding that developers allow him to retrieve around 111,000 bitcoin held at two digital addresses that he does not have private keys for. In his second London lawsuit in three weeks, Wright alleges he lost the encrypted keys when his home computer network was hacked in February 2020. Police are investigating.
Wright, who is bringing the case through his Seychelles-based Tulip Trading firm, concedes he is a controversial figure since alleging in 2016 that he wrote the bitcoin white paper -- which first outlined the technology behind the digital assets -- under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008. The claim is hotly disputed. The Australian, who is autistic and lives in Britain with his wife and two of his three children, alleges in his latest lawsuit that developers have breached their duties to act in the best interests of the rightful owner of globally-traded assets.
Wright, who is bringing the case through his Seychelles-based Tulip Trading firm, concedes he is a controversial figure since alleging in 2016 that he wrote the bitcoin white paper -- which first outlined the technology behind the digital assets -- under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008. The claim is hotly disputed. The Australian, who is autistic and lives in Britain with his wife and two of his three children, alleges in his latest lawsuit that developers have breached their duties to act in the best interests of the rightful owner of globally-traded assets.
If he is Satoshi Nakamoto (Score:5, Insightful)
If he truly is Satoshi Nakamoto, there is several thousand bitcoin in a account under that name. He should have the wallet and the pass code to unlock it.
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Then I guess he should have had a proper back up and my statement still stands.
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He's a scammer
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Of course he is a scammer, that or Satoshi Nakamoto is an idiot. Which we all know isn't true. So to get the money he produces the wallet. It is simple as that.
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Let him fight it out in court, it will be fun, I would bet dimes to dollars by the time the case is fought out in court, bitcoin will be worth a whole lot less, capitalism as a religion can only last so long, I mean the value of bitcoin based purely upon the faith in the value of bitcoin, a religious belief, fundamentalist capitalism or what. You can see it playing out, dragging on and on and then the religion really starts to falter and people wake up to the reality an infinite number of crypto currencies
Re:If he is Satoshi Nakamoto (Score:5, Informative)
Someone has signed the following message: "Craig Steven Wright is a liar and a fraud. He doesn't have the keys used to sign this message..." with cryptography keys he pretended to own...
https://finance.yahoo.com/news... [yahoo.com]
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Someone has signed the following message: "Craig Steven Wright is a liar and a fraud. He doesn't have the keys used to sign this message..."
...Then minted the signed message as a NFT, and auctioned it for millions at Sotheby.
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For my private keys to get truly lost you would have to...
- Bring down Google
- Bring down Microsoft
- Bring down Mega
- Bring down the password manager I use
- Blow up my computers
- Blow up my phones
- Make me lose the master password, which is a checksum.
And I don't even USE them for anything. This guy is lying through his teeth.
WTF Does This Mean (Score:2)
From the last sentence "..alleges in his latest lawsuit that developers have breached their duties to act in the best interests of the rightful owner of globally-traded assets.". Could someone please explain just what he _THINKS_ here. Is he actually demanding the Bitcoin dev group should work extra hard to somehow lookout for his best interest...seriously.
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Hard forks for this kind of reason are incredibly controversial and defeat the whole purpose behind Bitcoin (that you can't roll back transactions and that accounts are secured via mathematics rather than laws).
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This would be a trivial change. He could do it himself - particularly if he is legit. All he needs to do is add a few lines to the transaction validation routine to override the script return value when it recognizes his (new) key. That would let him spend whatever transactions he thinks are his.
And of course, no one would use his patched version. And if he wins, and a court orders that change made to the source code, no one would use his patched version.
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That is part of what I'm wondering. Who in their right mind is going to honor what the court says?
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People who don't like being held in contempt of court.
An who is going to enforce such order, dumbass? Please inform us how London court is going to hold miners in China, Taiwan, Russia, Korea, and over 200 other countries in contempt. A majority of the people in all these countries has to agree that a transaction is valid before it becomes valid. The very nature of the blockchain is designed to prevent the shit that this lawsuit is trying from happening.
Re:WTF Does This Mean (Score:5, Insightful)
An WTF does he think is going to happen if he does win? Not like the rest of the block chain is going to honor whatever the judge pulls out of his ass. It comes down to this, he isn't in possession of the wallet so tuff titty. He can pound sand.
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My understanding is he hopes that bitcoin developers will be forced to write a special case in their code that will allow him to spend Satoshi's bitcoin.
Of course, that's not enough. Even if he legally forces all the developers everywhere, he will also have to get 51% of the bitcoin computers to use that special case on their computers.
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> he will also have to get 51% of the bitcoin computers to use that special case on their computers.
Exactly; when it comes to things like thing, there is no court in the world with the power to levy such a judgement.
Even attempting to do so would be laughable.
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Worth mentioning, even if he did somehow manage to get 51% of the people to do what he wanted, the other 49% wouldn't have to go along with it. Bitcoin would be split in that case.
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That's a hard fork, and most likely the version of the fork with backdoor code corrupting integrity of the Satoshi addresses would get rejected and die off --- having such a special case would create a major stability threat to the network and it would set a precedent that would undermine users' faith in the reliability of the BTC blockchain.
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No, the play is that if they can't modify the blockchain in the way he wants, they'll have to pay him in fiat instead.
Re: WTF Does This Mean (Score:2)
Faketoshi (Score:2)
If there was any doubt that this guy is a con artist it is now long gone.
So if I claim to be Satoshi Nakamoto... (Score:5, Funny)
So if I claim to be Satoshi Nakamoto I can sue for billion$$$?
I am Satoshi Nakamoto!
If we Spartacus this thing, can we split the take? Or do we all get crucified?
Slipping Jimmy (Score:2)
I dropped a twenty dollar bill at the bar. Who do I sue?
Tulips? (Score:5, Funny)
This is a joke, right?
If I was the judge (Score:2)
I'd grant the guy his wish, then I'd order a sizeable portion of his monopoly money be seized to pay for the taxes he avoided by setting up a company in a tax haven.
This guy may have a case, but he gets zero sympathy from me because of the Seychelles bit.
Craig Wright the Fraud (Score:5, Interesting)
For those who may not know about Craig Wright's documented lies, there's a great series of articles at Modern Consensus [modernconsensus.com].
Very worth checking out for the background on this shyster faketoshi.
New Money... (Score:5, Insightful)
What Billionaire only has one copy of the keys to their money?
--
All I ask is the chance to prove that money can't make me happy. - Spike Milligan
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What Billionaire only has one copy of the keys to their money?
A hacker only needs to steal one copy of the key, not all the copies.
Car analogy: Making a duplicate key for your car will not prevent your car from being stolen.
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As I understand it, the coins are still at the original addresses and haven't moved. That means the key would still be able to access them.
Using the car analogy, if you made a duplicate key for your car, you can still use that key to get into your car as long as a thief hasn't stolen it and disassembled it for parts to be used in other cars.
Re: New Money... (Score:1)
Wrong car analogy. He shouldâ(TM)ve made a duplicate of his car, then even if it was stolen, his key would still work.
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Still wrong - he should have made a duplicate key, so should the original *key* be stolen he can still access the car. The cars right where he left it, he's just missing the key.
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"His" money hasn't been stolen though, it's in the original wallet and he just can't access it. If he had made a backup there would be no problem.
Re:Living overseas - he isn't australian..... (Score:5, Informative)
I say this as an Australian...
If he's living overseas, and doesn't want to bother living in the country, then no he shouldn't be classes as an Australian citizen....
the reason I say this - the amount of "Australian citizens" since about March 2020 - whom have had ample time and repeated warning to come back to Australia because of the lockdowns have done jack shit about it.
but they repeatedly whinge the government hasn't given them a free tax payer funded return trip to get to Australia.
didn't want to live in Australia - now wanting to come back to Australia because elsewhere the viruses are running rampant - but not in Australia....
Speaking as an Australian myself, I think you need to rethink your attitude here. In March 2020, Australian living overseas were told by the Australian government to remain were they were if they had jobs. Nobody knew how long the pandemic would last; at the time people though it would be over by July. Then ScoMo, displaying his christian values for all the world to see, closed the boarders and refused to let people fly back. The airlines responded by dropping flights, and suddenly people couldn't get home if they wanted to. As the pandemic wore on and people lost their jobs, they couldn't get home unless they forked over exhorbident amounts for 1st class tickets (and even then they were being gazumped).
Next was the hotel quarantine debacle. Now we have that prize cunt ScoMo threatening people with jail and massive fines if they try to enter the country.
Australian living overseas did as they were told, and are now being punished for it.
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I like to think think that there's an alternate timeline where the USA plays cricket and rugby, has a Parliament, the Queen is the head of state and that has sensible gun control laws, because they lost the War of Independence.
Who is autistic... (Score:3)
What is up with people making their various diagnosis public?
"The Australian, who is autistic and lives in Britain"
As well as Elon
"First person with Asperger's syndrome to host..."
I'm an Elon fanboi, but really? Was that some sort of set-up for a future legal defense? ala the Twinkie or Foxitis defenses?
The latest excuse (Score:5, Informative)
In February 2018, the estate of David Kleiman sued Craig Wright for billions as it believed Wright controlled 1.1 million BTC that belonged to a partnership between Wright and Kleiman. According to Wright he did not have the cryptographic keys at the time as they were to be delivered to him via "bonded courier" in January 2020. So the court waited until this courier arrived. It was no surprise after February 2020 when the information Wright provided to the estate turned out to be fictitious and invalid. The estate demanded to question the courier for more information. Wright then said they cannot question the courier as the courier is an attorney and covered under attorney-client privilege.
After years of not being to provide any evidence he is Nakamoto, his latest excuse is "he was hacked and his keys were stolen from him." This guy is one excuse after another.
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After years of not being to provide any evidence he is Nakamoto, his latest excuse is "he was hacked and his keys were stolen from him." This guy is one excuse after another.
The silly part about this excuse is that this doesn't entitle him to money. If I break into your house and steal all the cash you have in your pillowcase, you can't just get the courts to force everyone else to accept that you have more money than you actually do.
The US Government Knows (Score:1)