Craig Wright sues Bitcoin Core developers to recover “stolen” coins [pdf] | Hacker News Reader

Craig Wright sues Bitcoin Core developers to recover “stolen” coins [pdf]

ontier.net

34 pointswp38164040 comments

A developer should create a fork of the bitcoin repo on github, implement a patch that gives Craig whatever he wants and then send Craig a link to the forked repo.

This would be the perfect response. Then all he needs to do is get the entire network to adopt the new chain, but that's on him not the developers.

Insanity. He's demanding a hard fork (the only way to move bitcoins out of that wallet) so he can recover bitcoins in an address that he has no proof that he owns.

Re: the 1FeexV6bAHb8ybZjqQMjJrcCrHGW9sb6uF address Craig Wright is claiming, others believe the coins in it were stolen from Mt Gox: https://cointelegraph.com/news/former-mt-gox-ceo-mark-karpel... https://blog.wizsec.jp/2020/06/mtgox-march-2011-theft.html

I think it's genius. I'm glad scumbags like this is exist. They make our systems more robust.

Not always. Sometimes they get elected into positions of power and do far greater damage than could have been imagined.

As it becomes normalized to make any claim with no proof, and to gather followers who believe you, we regress as a civilization.

Gee I don't know who you're thinking about :-)

Yes, when Craig Wright first came along it was great because you could tell from Bitcoiners' reactions how susceptible to hype/bullshit they were. Either you accepted obvious truths about how crypto works, or you didn't. Knowing this about members of that community in particular was hugely helpful. (Now even the grifters, hype artists and clowns have had enough of Craig's bullshit.)

If Tether and Craig Wright were smacked down propmtly they might make our systems more robust, but letting their bullshit drag on for years and years hurts the ecosystem IMO.

If I'm reading this right, he's asking the "Block Chain" not to process coins that are labeled as stolen.

In the physical world and the US receiving stolen goods is a crime. I mean it would be nice to be able to mark stolen coins or coins used in ransomware as unusable...

I don't see how this works in "decentralized" bitcoin universe. Also signing documents with the name of you LLC is a thing now?

Is this Craig Wright (FakeToshi) a real Computer Scientist? After reading the PDF I get the impression that he (or the lawyers) have zero clue about blockchain. Or this is just an attempt to troll (Tulip Trading Ltd)?

What am I missing?

He definitely has some level of IT knowledge but I have a feeling he's just a confidence trickster who's been making his way through life telling an escalating series of lies until he finally bit off more than he could chew by claiming he was Satoshi and by defrauding the Kleiman estate. The reason I say this is because around that time courts became involved (in Australia and Florida) and you could see the lies unfold in real time and you could see him scrambling to recover ... by weaving more lies into his tale.

There is no way any of this ends well for Craig Wright.

Any article?

Even better, this episode sums the entire thing up well: https://m.soundcloud.com/alabpodcast/episode-3-faketoshi-the...

Thanks

Is this Craig Wright (FakeToshi) a real Computer Scientist?

He does (as of a couple of years ago) have a PhD from the Computing and Mathematics department of a real University if that's what you mean.

Is that the one that came under scrutiny a while back because large portions of it appeared to be plagiarised? Or was that another one, because he seemed to like collecting doctorates...

Seems his degree is legit, so I don't know what am I missing here. It's not like the Bitcoin devs can do anything.

The title is incorrect. No Bitcoin Core developers have been sued. Those emails threaten legal action. But so far, they're just emails.

At the risk of entering the "what is money" rabbithole...

"Money", banks, and the financial system broadly are a system of laws, contracts, and faith.

Bitcoin can clearly exist outside the modern financial system as a thing that manages a distributed ledger, but any time it attempts to become "money" it is going to smash into one or more of those.

This is an example of "any regulated financial industry will need to enforce these laws, regardless of how offensive those laws are to math."

This specific issue may or may not have merit, but in the long run regulation of things that can be regulated inevitable (exchanges, things that have a physical address in countries with laws, etc).

Politicians and judges aren't really swayed by "it's MATH, bitch!" and in fact most of society isn't really run that way either.

For anyone not familiar... Here's a quick rundown of my understanding of the situation. Craig Wright has been claiming to be Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonym of the person/people that wrote the original Bitcoin whitepaper. To my knowledge he hasn't done anything to definitively prove his claim and has come up with a number of explanations as to why he can't prove it. One explanation he's offered is that he put the private keys to his hoard of BTC in a trust and that the trust didn't give him access until a certain date. Multiple dates he's said have come and gone with no significant developments.

He's been spending most of his time promoting BSV (Bitcoin Satoshi Vision) which is a hard fork of BCH (Bitcoin Cash) which is a hard fork of original Bitcoin (BTC). The main purpose of BSV is to support fast, cheap microtransactions. Essentially, pay someone $0.00001 for reading their web content or watching their video instead of watching an ad. He's also been filing a ton of patents and sending threatening letters to people demanding they take down "his" Bitcoin whitepaper from their website.

One reason all this matters is BSV may be extremely undervalued if he is really Satoshi ($204 per coin vs BTC $49,767).

Pretty on point except everyone is tired of his stupidity at this point.

His opinion is that BTC (the original) is not Bitcoin, but his twice forked shitcoin is the really real actual bitcoin.

Not your keys, not your coins Craig. You aren't Satoshi and you'll never be able to prove it and _EVERYONE_ is laughing at you buddy.

Send me Satoshis billions while you’re at it.

This whole thing reads like a troll. Tulip Trading? Hard forking the main chain?

Even if he could somehow make the developers fork the code, I highly doubt that the network would just silently accept that.

At this point all Bitcoin core developers are millionaires, they won't be afraid of legal threats.

We have to thank Mr. Wright for providing neverending entertainment.

Dear Craig,

Thanks for for making me smile like crazy.

Bye

Developer

Cue naive bitcoiners: "you can't move bitcoin if you don't have the address key LOL"

Naive bitcoiner here.

So what's the deal here? Would this essentially just require everyone to collectively agree that he owned the coins?

Yes it would require a hard fork of bitcoin, which of course would also mean that everyone using bitcoin would have to agree to adopt the new forked version.

Which of course would mean that the entire foundation of bitcoin gets called into question (if courts can move it around against owner's wills) and the value likely takes a big hit.

Really it would be more of getting the developers to settle since they wouldn't be able to make everyone adopt the new fork version.

Right, that’s the only way to make sense of the litigation threats. Squeeze a few hundred thousand out of each dev, settle for a fraction of a penny on the pound.

>The current value in sterling of the digital assets at the Addresses is approximately £3.65bn, ...

I can't wait for the legal system to start interfering with crypto coins. The effects will be interesting to say the least.

Sounds like that could be fun to try an enforce.

Even reading that would be, in my opinion, a waste of time. However, just out of pure curiosity, has any poor soul been tempted enough to skim this piece of odorless excrement and can tell me how he claims the bitcoin devs did him wrong?

He's claiming hackers stole the keys to the Satoshi addresses on Feb 5 of 2020, and "to prevent fraud" they are requesting control to the _Bitcoin Cash_ private keys for those addresses.

Craig is a scammy piece of shit. Send the lawyers and demand letters this way next, please.

Thank you, sir ;)

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