Craig Wright ‘to Pay Billions’ as Judge ‘Rejects’ His Testimony

Tim Alper
Last updated: | 2 min read

Craig Wright, a controversial Australian computer scientist, supporter of Bitcoin SV (BSV), dubbed Faketoshi due to his claim that he is Satoshi Nakamoto and general lack of any sort of proof, could be set to lose a whopping 50% of the BTC tokens he mined (around BTC 1.1 million, or USD 11.2 billion in total) with his now-dead business partner David Kleiman. (Updated on 06:05 UTC: updates in bold).

Source: iStockPhoto/Chris Ryan

A Twitter user claiming to have attended the latest court hearing in the case said that the presiding judge delivered a scathing verdict on Wright’s testimony. Later, Wright confirmed the news in an interview with Modern Consensus, saying that “if the court makes an order, I will comply with the order. And the court has made an order. It’s that simple.”

The hearing, held in Florida on August 26, was part of a larger case that will decide the custody of the accumulated Wright-Kleiman fortune. Kleiman’s estate has claimed that Wright effectively stole Bitcoin holdings belonging to Kleiman after the latter’s death in 2013.

The user claims the judge, Bruce Reinhart, had “rejected all [of] Wright’s testimony,” and believed Wright had committed perjury, and “falsified documents.”

And the same person went on to comment that not only the judge, but also both sets of attorneys had openly referred to Wright as “Satoshi Nakamoto,” the so-called creator of Bitcoin.

The bitter legal fight is far from over. Reinhart was presiding over a Motion for Sanctions/Contempt ruling, but the main Kleiman estate-Wright trial is still forthcoming. Court documents show the proceedings took 2 hours 30 minutes.

Reinhart’s Florida federal court colleague Judge Beth Bloom earlier this month dismissed a motion challenging the court’s jurisdiction, hinting that she believed Wright was attempting to “deceive” the court.

Wright has been labeled “Faketoshi” by some of his more vocal critics. A wide range of other people claiming to be the “real” Satoshi Nakamoto keep on coming forward.

Earlier this year, Wright filed registrations for Bitcoin copyrights with American authorities – drawing scorn from many detractors.

At pixel time (03:55 UTC), BSV trades at c. USD 129 and is down by more than 4% in the past 24 hours. Majority of other coins from the top 10 by market capitalization are registering losses of c. 2% today. Wright claims that the recent court ruling won’t affect BSV.
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Read more: The Faketoshi BTC 550K Saga – Where Do We Go From Here?