Before we get into the latest news here, let’s have a very short, crisp recap:
Criag Steven Wright, a computer scientist and a businessman by profession, is the man who’s now claimed to be the major founding hand of now the high-valued cryptocurrency; Bitcoin backing which, he submitted a document to his interviewer representing an article from a digital database of an academic journal JSTOR dated January 5th, 2008 under the name of Satoshi Nakamoto. (The name being a fake name which Criag claims to have come up with where Satoshi means intelligent and Nakamoto referring to the actual Tominaga Nakamoto, who’s been dated to have lived between 1715 to 1746, dubbed as the Japanese Adam Smith who’s regarded as the father of modern economics.
Now let’s have a look at the progress and the proceedings of the case.
- The Judge overlooking the case, Judge Beth Bloom (1) in the US Southern District of Florida has ordered Criag Wright that he should produce the necessary documents as proof backing his claims and justifications by 17th April, 2020.
- The Judge has now overruled Wright’s objections and obligations which were an argument from his side that there in fact, were no evidences or concrete proof provided that testify to the statement that the documents submitted by his lawyer are false as testified by the court and that, the fact that some documents that were submitted to the court previously which turned out to be forged shouldn’t affect the screening of the document submitted currently.
- Beth Bloom has enjoined the self-proclaimed Bitcoin developer Criag Wright the he produce authentic documents that will adequately back his claims by the 17th of April.
- The objection that Criag had made based on “attorney-client privilege” stating that the protestation “was not contrary to law or clearly erroneous” as he had stated and alleged. The result to which the command to produce the documents needed for proof is neither illegal nor erroneous.
- Proceedings are the latest expansions in the Kleiman-Wright case which has been running for quiet a long time now, since the 18th of February filed by the brother of a former business client of Criag’s, the late Dave Kleiman. The lawsuit filed by Kleiman claims that Wright owes them half of all his cryptocurrency ( Estimated $10 billion) as Kleiman alleged that Wright and I quote, “connected a scheme to claim ownership of all bitcoins owned by his brother Dave”.
- The case is pivoted on the fact that weather Wright can or cannot access the “Tulip Trust” which is a trove which contains 1 million Bitcoins that Wright who claims to be Satoshi Nakamoto, had mined purportedly in earlier days of the invention of the cryptocurrency. Hence based on the evidence produced, Judge Beth backed Judge Reinhart, another judge who’s proceeding the court that, he was right to conclude that the defendant had not established an attorney-client relationship.
- Beth further stated that the court was confused and found it strange that Wright had argued with Judge Reinhart that he must “blindly accept the items produced by [the] Defendant”, and that while evaluating the freshly submitted documents, the court shouldn’t rely on the past experiences with Wright, which also included is history of producing forgeries for proof and giving deceptive testimonies. It’s even been reported that in the ongoing case, Wright has been ordered to pay off $165,000 in attorney fees for the falsified claim of establishing the attorney-client relationship in an order that took place in the court on 17th March.
- This case isn’t the only one that Wright is involved in. He’s also filed lawsuits against Roger Ver where Wright was ordered to pay all of Vel’s legal fees. Wright also allegedly had a libel lawsuit against Ethereum’s Vitalik Buterin, a podcast host Peter McCormack and an anonymous Twitter user named Hdlonaut. Recently though, on the 11th of April, various reports noted that Wright had lost the case against yet another person Adam Back, CEO of Blockstream and was ordered to pay a legal fee of $8,400.
- Further proceedings regarding the case will take place on 17th April when Wright submits proof backing the fact that he is indeed Satoshi Nakamoto. This case will be pivotal in the matter of the usage of the bitcoin. Wright had also claimed that he has found a private key which will clarify his ownership and the value of his bitcoin holding on a more solid front.