A group of 12 Bitcoin developers from the UK has pushed back against a lawsuit by Craig Wright, the self-proclaimed Satoshi Nakamoto, who accused the group of not helping him get access to the 111,000 BTC that his company – Tulip Trading – owned. The Bitcoins were lost to the infamous hack on the Mt Gox crypto exchange in 2020.
The tokens will be worth approximately $2.89 billion at current rates.
Craig Wright, who is the founder of Bitcoin Satoshi Vision (BSV) – a fork of Bitcoin Cash (BCH), which is another fork of the original Bitcoin network – sued the developers in 2021, alleging that they refused to build a backdoor mechanism that would have allowed Tulip Trading to seize back control of the Bitcoin he claims to have owned and lost.
Craig says the hack caused immeasurable losses to his company. In the court filing, his lawyers said the developers failed in their “fiduciary duty” by refusing to help Tulip Trading reclaim its rightfully owned assets.
Bitcoin Developers Sue Craig Wright For Fraud, Forgery, And Dishonesty
Now in a stunning revelation, lawyers of the 12 developers have made a court filing at the U.K. High Court stating neither Craig nor his company owned the 111,000 BTC they are trying to seize. The developers allege that Tulip Trading “fabricated” documents to fraudulently prove ownership of the tokens to gain control over the funds.
The group accused Dr. Wright of having a long history of fraud, forgery, and dishonesty and manipulating the English courts to use it “as an instrument of fraud”. They also allege that there is no evidence to suggest that Wright or his company ever owned the wallet that held the Bitcoin in question.
Bitcoin Legal Defense Fund, a policy organization supported by Jack Dorsey, the co-founder of Twitter, Bluesky, and Square, helped the developers sue Craig Wright and shared details of the filing on social media.
Craig’s History Of Litigations Related To Bitcoin
Craig has a long history of litigating disagreements in relation to Bitcoin. Since the time he declared himself to be Satoshi Nakamoto – the father of Bitcoin – the crypto community has called on him to prove his assertions. They even challenged him to access Satoshi’s real wallet containing 1 million BTC, which he has failed to do. This led to him being picturized as a fraudster seeking fake recognition.
Just last month, a U.K. court dismissed a case he had filed against crypto exchanges Kraken and Coinbase, alleging that the companies infringed on his copyright by using the name “Bitcoin” for promotions.
In 2019, the Australian computer scientist sued YouTuber Peter McCormack over a series of tweets in which he said Wright was a fraud and not Satoshi. Craig claimed that McCormack’s opinions led to him being defamed, costing him his reputation among academics. However last year, a high court judge dismissed the case after ruling that Craig had “deliberately” given false evidence. For his desperate efforts, the court awarded him 1 pound in damage.
Currently, the BSV founder is facing three separate lawsuits in Norway, the U.K., and the U.S.
Craig and his associates developed the Bitcoin SV or Bitcoin Satoshi Vision (BSV) blockchain in 2018. The main goal of the network was to restore Bitcoin’s original protocols as mentioned in the whitepaper. He notes that the Bitcoin network had steered far away from its real purpose, which Satoshi (he) had envisioned, and BSV would help restore Bitcoin’s past glory.
The true identity of Satoshi remains clouded in mystery.
At the time of writing, Bitcoin (BTC) is trading at $26,038.80 – up 0.1% in the last 24 hours. Meanwhile, Bitcoin SV is trading at $30.40 – down 2.1% since yesterday.
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