Craig Wright to Return to Court after ‘Failing’ to Pay Settlement

Craig Wright, a controversial Australian computer scientist and supporter of Bitcoin SV (BSV), appears to have defaulted on the payment of a settlement fee he agreed with the estate of his former partner, Dave Kleiman.

In September this year, Wright agreed to a settlement following an August ruling by an American judge who ordered him to pay 50% of his pre-2014 Bitcoin holdings and intellectual property to the Kleiman estate.

However, it seems he has now reneged on this, and Kleiman’s estate has instead filed a legal document with a Florida court, stating that although Wright had “represented he had the means to finance a settlement” in September, the estate had been “informed [Wright] could no longer finance the settlement and was “breaking” the non-binding settlement agreement.

The estate claims it was informed of this development “on October 30, without any advance notice” and that Wright made the announcement “without good cause.”

The estate states that it was Wright who had originally sought an out-of-court settlement to resolve the case. Kleiman’s estate is thus hopeful that the case will return to court in the next few days.

Wright has already been charged with contempt of court as part of the proceedings, and magistrates are unlikely to look kindly upon his case unless he can come up with solid legal grounds for “breaking” the terms of the settlement, if that indeed is what has taken place. Judges have reportedly accused him of attempting to “deceive” the court in the past, and have allegedly “rejected” his testimony.

Kleiman, Wright’s former business partner, died in 2013, and his estate has claimed that Wright then illegally took control of Klieman’s Bitcoin holdings and sold them.

Wright has made a name for himself as one of the many people claiming to be Satoshi Nakamoto, the author of the original Bitcoin white paper – leading many in the crypto-verse to nickname him “Faketoshi.”

At pixel time (07:04 UTC), BSV trades at c. USD 127.7 and is down by 3.5% in the past 24 hours and it’s the worst performer among the top 10 coins by market capitalization.