Craig Wright wins dispute over $50B in Bitcoin | Hacker News Reader

Craig Wright wins dispute over $50B in Bitcoin

marketwatch.com

34 pointsg42gregory18 comments

I'll believe he's satoshi when he moves a single coin from any of those early blocks. He can't. Why not? Because he doesn't have access to them. It's really quite straightforward.

There is a massive PR campaign to misrepresent this verdict.

Wright was found to be civilly liable for stealing $100 million in intellectual property from his dead friend's company. Wright conducted the theft by suing the company and fraudulently presenting himself as a representative of the company in court, where he conceded the lawsuit. It's easy to see why the jury found against him on this mark.

The plaintiffs also attempted to demand billions from Wright, half of the value of the of the bitcoin that Wright claimed to own with his friend in a multitude of wright-provided (forged) documents. It appears that the jury wasn't tricked into thinking Wright had any Bitcoins at all so they awarded nothing there.

In any case, $100 million will be enough to completely bankrupt Wright many times over-- at least until he sucks some more funding out of his victims. So it's not clear that awarding billions would have really made any difference.

I totally agree with the skepticism that he is Satoshi Nakamoto. But the fact alone that he owns 1.1 million Bitcoin? How do we explain that? This make me curious, to say the least.

I'm confused by this too. Sounds like he's only believed to be the owner of the original 1 million BTC. I think until he actually moves 1 coin, most people remain very skeptical. Can someone correct me? I guess that would bring into question what he was being sued for if there wasn't definitive proof.

It's pretty interesting for him because there's no way to prove that he doesn't own them (have the private key for those wallets), so it to dispel the court case he would have had to testify that he's a fraud.

Nobody believes he owns any of those Bitcoins except easy victims and paid shills (and they merely pretend to.)

He testified that he owns that bitcoin, but we don't really know that he does.

He doesn't own them, he's a fraud. He may own some smaller amount from mining, but even that isn't certain.

He doesn't.

Wright has claimed to, but when the court ordered him to provide a list of his Bitcoin and it was made public parties owning thousands of bitcoin on his list produced a digitally signed message with those key stating that Wright was a fraud and did not control those keys.

https://cswarchive.info/csw-filed#145-Signings

Wright has also provided sworn statements in another court cases (COPA v Wright) that he does not have access to any early Bitcoin keys. He made a sworn statement in another court case (Wright v McCormack) that he is funding his activities by obtaining loans underwritten by his eventual access to early bitcoin.

...and he is currently suing a dozen former and current Bitcoin developers (including myself) demanding that they publish a backdoored version of bitcoin that reassigns bitcoins to him that he has "lost" the keys for, or -- failing that -- pay him about $7 billion in damages.

These are not the actions of a person that actually has access to a substantial amount of Bitcoin.

I think he can't move bitcoins because he has them in multisig wallet or Satoshi group has them in multisig wallet. So all or more than one member must sign their keys in order to move bitcoins from joint wallet.

That is entirely inconsistent with his sworn statements in court proceedings. And if you're going to adopt the premise that he's lying in court, why accept any thing he claims?

Moverover, I think you missed my point: It's not just that he can't sign, but also that other people can sign addresses that he claims are his. There isn't just negative evidence (absence of expected proof) but positive evidence (conclusive proof he doesn't control at least some of the coins he says he does).

I didn't follow the case in details but private keys can get lost or stolen so you might own particular wallet addresses in the past but now you are not in control of those private keys anymore therefore wallet addresses as well.

The same thing can happen with your state issued ID card which might get lost or stolen so then you need to report it to police for security reasons and to the government to get a new one. Unfortunately you can't do that with Bitcoin pk/sk wallet address. If you lose your private keys or if they get stolen there is no way to obtain control again of your wallet addresses unless police and court does that for you. I read Craig wants to do exactly that by reorging the Bitcoin chain but that is not happening because if it happens Bitcoin price would go to 0 and his million and something bitcoins would become worthless.

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