Not Your Tulip Trust? Message Calling Craig Wright 'Fraud' May Unlock the Case

pubblicato su by Cointele | pubblicato su

Infamous cryptocurrency figure Craig Wright faces newfound legal challenges over more than 1 million Bitcoin after addresses listed in the Tulip Trust were used to sign a message labeling him a fraud.

The case essentially rests on the ability of either proving or disproving that Wright is in possession of various private keys to early wallets that are believed to belong or have been used by Satoshi.

The Tulip TrustWright's assertions that he is Satoshi Nakamoto have been intrinsically tied to his ongoing legal battle with the Kleiman estate since 2018, which is demanding half of over 1 million BTC that Wright and David Kleiman had mined together in the early years after Bitcoin's inception.

Wright lost access to the holdings - a list of addresses in an encrypted file - when David Kleiman died but said that the various private keys that are needed to unlock the BTC held in the trust would be delivered by a bonded courier at the beginning of 2020.In the months leading up to that, Wright had been ordered to deliver addresses that contained some of the BTC holdings of the Tulip Trust.

Wright did supply a number of blocks that potentially belonged to him in the Tulip Trust with the help of nChain midway through 2019.

The address itself is weaved into the Wright vs. Kleiman legal battle, as it is one of the addresses provided by Wright in the preliminary list of addresses of the Tulip Trust.

Wright has since denied moving the coins on May 20, while claiming the address was not among those given to the court in January 2020.Wright was thrown another curveball just days later, as a message calling him a "Liar and a fraud" was signed alongside a list of 145 addresses and their corresponding signatures.

"This information pretty much confirms what many industry pundits have thought all along: Wright is not Satoshi. This turn of events will negatively impact Wright's claims. In order for Wright to continue asserting that he has control of these addresses, he will need to argue that either he sent the messages calling himself a fraud or he will need to argue that his accounts were hacked. Either argument is unbelievable to anyone familiar with how crypto works."

As Kelman elaborated, there is far more to the story that needs to be considered and that Wright has potentially cornered himself in this dispute because of his assertions that he is Satoshi Nakamoto, adding that "The backstory to this dispute is more complicated than what we see in court papers." Kelman believes that Wright went along with the case for the sake of keeping nChain and BSV afloat while also hoping to eventually settle, but once damages began to pile up, it no longer became an option.

"If it is ultimately determined that Wright perjured himself by providing the court with knowingly false information, Wright can face severe legal consequences, including the possibility of criminal action. Perjury is considered a serious offense and is treated as a felony. If Wright is convicted on such a charge, he may be imprisoned up to five years and face hefty civil penalties."

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