Craig Wright Ordered by Court to Give Back $5 Billion Worth of BTC

The self-declared inventor of Bitcoin Craig Wright has been ordered by a Florida judge to transfer to the estate of his late business partner, Dave Kleiman, $5 billion worth of his Bitcoin holdings.

Judge Bruce E. Reinhart has stated that he does not believe Wright was being truthful in his court testimony and may have faked documents. Because of this, he ordered Wright to hand over an estimated 500,000 BTC which is estimated at $5 billion at time of writing.

“During his testimony, Dr. Wright’s demeanor did not impress me as someone who was telling the truth. When it was favorable to him, Dr. Wright appeared to have an excellent memory and a scrupulous attention to detail. Otherwise, Dr. Wright was belligerent and evasive. He did not directly and clearly respond to questions. He quibbled about irrelevant technicalities.

When confronted with evidence indicating that certain documents had been fabricated or altered, he became extremely defensive, tried to sidestep questioning, and ultimately made vague comments about his systems being hacked and others having access to his computers. None of these excuses were corroborated by other evidence…

For purposes of this action, it is established that Dr. Wright and David Kleiman entered into a 50/50 partnership to develop Bitcoin intellectual property and to mine bitcoin.

Any Bitcoin-related intellectual property developed by Dr. Wright prior to David Kleiman’s death was property of the partnership. All Bitcoin mined by Dr. Wright prior to David Kleiman’s death (“the partnership’s bitcoin”) was property of the partnership when mined.”

It has yet to be determined if Wright’s claims of being Satoshi Nakamoto, the anonymous creator of Bitcoin, are true or not.

After news of the court order reached media, Wright stated in an interview that he will obey with the order. But in his court case, he said that he couldn’t come up with the entire list of all his early Bitcoin addresses, as he gave it to his former partner, Kleiman, who died in 2013. Wright claims that without his partner’s information he couldn’t access the addresses.

“The judge won’t rule on whether I’m Satoshi. But the partnership is. So when Dave Kleiman passed, the partnership transferred to Ira.

BSV, it won’t [be affected]. But the judge ordered me to send just under 500,000 BTC over to Ira. Let’s see what it does to the market. I wouldn’t have tanked the market. I’m nice…

They might have to convince Ira not to dump it. I can’t convince him not to dump it. Ira has to do what Ira has to do. And it wouldn’t have been me. And I don’t need it. He does.”-stated Wright.

Featured image: Crypto Potato