The inception of Bitcoin has been probably the best story in the cryptocurrency space however that has additionally been tangled up in multiple controversies. This included the infamous claims made by Dr. Craig Wright, who said that he was the real Satoshi Nakamoto
Wright or ‘Faketoshi’ had recently made news when he claimed that he had the private keys to access the $8 billion belonging to the original Satoshi Nakamoto. Yet, yesterday, the story took a new turn when the computer scientist’s lawyer revealed that there were no private keys at all.
Wright had before filed a statement in the Southern District of Florida last Tuesday where he repeated that he had information about the billions worth of BTC addresses. The general consensus in the cryptocurrency industry was that only the real Satoshi Nakamoto would possess these details.
The nChain Chief Scientist had told the court that the private keys would come via courier well before the court proposed the deadline of February 3. Despite the arrival of the courier, Wright’s lawyer said that he was still not able to access the millions of BTC that were supposedly his.
The legal battle between Wright and Ira Kleiman, brother of the late Dave Kleiman has been ongoing for a year now. The case hinged on the fact of whether Kleiman was cheated of his Bitcoin earnings because of Wright and his claims of being the sole miner in their partnership.
Andres Rivero, a partner at Rivero Mestre and the Wright’s attorney stated:
“The file that he’s received did not include private keys. The critical thing about the ruling is that it allows us to go to trial to prove that no partnership existed. The prior ruling by the magistrate judge that was vacated determines the facts of the case. A district court judge has vacated those rulings and has left those questions open now to the jury.”
The lawyer argued that his team had interviewed and questioned multiple people close to Kleiman to get to the bottom of the issue. According to Rivero, nobody had backed up Ira Kleiman’s version of David Kleiman being the co-inventor of Bitcoin.
As the situation gets more and more tense, there was another development in the Bitcoin space directly related to it. On January 15, Whale Alert reported that a million BTC worth $8.7 billion was transferred from ‘Craig’s imaginary wallet’ to Huobi.
This occurred right after Wright’s initial claims that he could prove he was the owner of the Private keys. Later analysis of the transfer showed that it was not actually Wright transferring the money but rather was Bitfinex refilling its hot wallet.