Craig Wright in court: Who owns $ 67 billion worth of Bitcoin?

Craig Wright, perhaps known to many as “Faketoshi Nakamoto”, has three since November 1st Weeks to clear up the unanswered questions in his process. In this he has the opportunity to convince a team of ten jurors from the court in Florida of his existence as Satoshi Nakamoto. The head behind Bitcoin SV has been accused since 2019 by the relatives of David Kleiman, who died in 2013. The content of the indictment is the “Tulip Trust”, which contains 1.1 million BTC. That’s $ 67,877,590,000 at the time of writing. The Kleimans claim that the wallet belonged to Wright and Kleiman equally and that they are entitled to half of the Bitcoin it contains. Wright says that Kleiman transferred ownership to him.

The Australian computer scientist Wright claims to have been the inventor of Bitcoin since 2016. He would have had a joint venture with David Kleiman in the past, W&K Info Defense Research LLC. This would have been used for Bitcoin mining. However, Kleiman would have completely transferred the joint intellectual property to Wright. In addition, Wright claims that he never entered into a real partnership with Kleiman because he “hates” partnerships.

The lawyer for the Kleimans, Kyle Rosch, in his opening speech. He presented the events of the past chronologically and described the relationship between the two. He first showed emails in which Wright referred to David Kleiman as his “business partner” and “partner”. Only after his death would Wright have distanced himself more and more from these stories and created false facts. In doing so, they (again) raised allegations of forgery and fraud. Allegedly, Wright forged and manipulated emails. For example, Kleiman’s sentences were added or deleted and the data changed.

Also, Rosh pointed out that, as reported by BTC-Echo , a settlement agreement was reached in 2019. According to this, Wright should have paid out 500,000 BTC to the Kleimans. However, the Australian would never comply with the agreement. According to a blog post that was deleted today, he would not have been able to do this for personal reasons. In February 2020, he then refused to disclose the documents necessary to clarify the property. Statements by the alleged courier of the private keys ultimately fell under attorney secret. The academic career and also the qualification of the Keynesian attorney was documented by Wright by means of his information in the LinkedIn account. As BTC-Echo informed, the then judge did not allow this “evidence”. As a result, he decided so far only that the Kleiman family’s legal fees must be borne by Wright, valued at $ 165,000.

This is the amount only a small number compared to the dormant 1.1 million Bitcoin in the Tulip Trust, which supposedly belonged to W&K Info Defense Research LLC. So far, the payment of this has apparently failed due to the lack of private keys. So it will be exciting to see whether the current process will clarify whether Wright is actually in possession of this, whether he is really Satoshi Nakamoto or whether these stories are bogus.

Author of the Item is Marlene Müller.