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Bitcoin

Craig Wright Doesn't Have Keys To $8 Billion of Bitcoin (decrypt.co) 39

Posted by msmash from the meanwhile-in-bizarro-world dept.
An anonymous reader shares a report: Craig Wright's lawyer confirmed to Decrypt late last week that Wright does not possess -- nor even claim to possess -- the private keys that can be used to spend $8 billion of Bitcoin that Satoshi Nakamoto mined in Bitcoin's early days. Wright filed a statement in the Southern District of Florida late Tuesday asserting that he had received information to unlock an encrypted file of thousands of public Bitcoin addresses that he claims to own. Wright had previously said, under oath, that an "encrypted file" exists, containing both the list of public addresses and private keys. Many took that to mean that when a courier arrived Tuesday with a file, that at last Wright had received the private keys. But his lawyer said today that that was not the case. "The file that he's received did not include private keys," Andres Rivero, partner at Rivero Mestre law firm, told Decrypt. However, Wright still expects that he will receive the keys at a later date. Rivero said the keys may come either whole or split into parts, but declined to discuss further the particulars around who has the keys and when they might arrive.
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Craig Wright Doesn't Have Keys To $8 Billion of Bitcoin

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  • Me too (Score:5, Funny)

    by nospam007 ( 722110 ) * on Monday January 20, 2020 @10:13AM (#59637240)

    "Wright still expects that he will receive the keys at a later date."

    I expect to be a billionaire at some later day too.
    Hopefully.

  • Study this guy (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MrLogic17 ( 233498 ) on Monday January 20, 2020 @10:25AM (#59637274) Journal

    He's a case study of a boastful lair who's lies got just a little too big, and now he's trapped.
    His complex story get more convoluted with each round, and the stakes get bigger each time.

    It would have been so easy to come clean early on, but now it would require saying that basically his whole life is a lie.
    This will not end well for him, on both a personal and professional level.

    • There’s actually a case I know about with John Spano [espn.com] who tried to buy a NHL team but didn’t have the money and all the shenanigans he pulled. “Oh the check was only $30,000 and it was supposed to be $30 million? I don’t know how that happened.”

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Indeed. Pretty obvious by now. A con-man that got in over his head.

  • Games like these (Score:2, Offtopic)

    by Holi ( 250190 )
    Because games like these really make Bitcoin appear so professional.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by PPH ( 736903 )

      make Bitcoin appear so professional

      Unlike the suitcases full of $100 bills that pass back and forth in Washington DC.

    • Yeah, I was about to ask why anyone invests in this??

    • But that is an association that you are making. Someone with cash can also lie about the money they have in a secret bank that they don’t have and look like a jerk. You don’t blame that unprofessionalism on the cash. Many here have pointed out the numerous flaws in Wright’s claims before. He tried to pull another scam with the “a courier is delivering my secret money later” but with a new twist on technology.
    • How many professional orgs lose a huge chunk of assets when the only guy with the password written down in his head dies?
  • To the surprise of few, he didn’t have evidence to back up his latest claims. Shocker. However didn’t he tell everyone including a judge that he’d have the keys when the courier arrived. How will he answer the judge now, “See what had happened was . . .”
  • This seems like a dangerous lie. If he has provided 16,404 valid bitcoin addresses that he claims are his anyone who has the private keys to those addresses should be able to call him out. Even more, since he claims he doesn't have the private keys, any transactions with inputs from those addresses would prove he is a liar. So either he is the owner or he some how knows that the true owner won't call him out.
    • From what I know they are Nakamoto’s early coins and have not been spent yet. And Nakamoto has essentially disappeared and no knew who he was really. So Wright lying that he had the keys were of less risk as Nakamoto would not likely resurface just to call him out.
      • How does he know they are Nakamoto's addresses? If the addresses only have freshly mined coins there is no linking them to any other accounts. Nakamoto or the group of people behind Nakamoto, would have to be very careful about spending the coins so as not to reveal themselves.
        • There’s no way for sure to know; however, they were the early coins and Nakamoto is the most likely person to have mined them.

        • I want to know who has that much self control. Sure the wallets are worth billions but you can't ever cash them out all at once (and before you screech about tulips the real stock market is the same way). Say you need a new roof or a new car, why not just dip into one wallet? Just one of the Satoshi wallets has 66,000 BTC or over a half BILLION dollars currently. Imagine sitting on that and knowing you can never even have a taste.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Zocalo ( 252965 )

            I want to know who has that much self control.

            A corpse? Seriously, other than something like lost keys, there's no reason why Satoshi couldn't dip into some of the wallets, and provided that they didn't get too greedy I'd expect that doing so would actually drive the price up as the true believers and speculators would go insane if they thought Satoshi was back and might get involved again. However, a single "Satoshi" that created Bitcoin but is now dead would explain a lot of things - and it would also

            • There's another option. Satoshi mined the coins as part of the proof-of-concept for Bitcoin then *deleted the keys*. They weren't actually worth jack shit back then, and he couldn't have known they'd be worth a lot of money one day.

          • If Nakamoto generated them and then discarded them (not at all plausible during development of what was then a somewhat abstract exercise), then they're lost. Coming forward would invite all sorts of demands for money from people who refuse to believe the keys are lost.

  • I am (Score:4, Funny)

    by Arthur, KBE ( 6444066 ) on Monday January 20, 2020 @10:42AM (#59637324)
    Sato^H^H^H^HSpartacus.

  • List of Fakeries (Score:3)

    by bill_mcgonigle ( 4333 ) * on Monday January 20, 2020 @11:31AM (#59637488) Homepage Journal

    Here's the page that tracks his shenanigans:

    https://craigwright.online/ [craigwright.online]

    Some people want a hero so desperately that they'll believe anything. Beware of cults.

  • Faketoshi is fake news. Seriously, why is that scammer even being reported on?

    • Real judge is real news, Faketoshi is gonna go to real-jail. He's already on the hook for over half a million American buckeroonies just for legal fees that followed from his bullshit.

      I'm sure his courier will arrive with his keys any day, and he'll bring his new friends with him when he escapes.

      The purpose of the story is to laugh at Faketoshi. What did you do, click the bait? D'oh! Don't do that.

  • I'm sure the list of things that Craig does not have is rather long. We can make a much shorter list of the things that Craig actually has and we know that a giant pile of bitcoin is not on the list. So, who cares? Actually, I'd love for someone to access these old coins and crash the market with them.

    • Re:What does Craig have? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by DontBeAMoran ( 4843879 ) on Monday January 20, 2020 @01:48PM (#59638168)

      If anyone were to access those old coins, they would exchange them for privacy-oriented coins, then back to Bitcoin and then sell a few dozen coins per day, forever.

    • I'm sure the list of things that Craig does not have is rather long. We can make a much shorter list of the things that Craig actually has and we know that a giant pile of bitcoin is not on the list.

      Does it include the $650,000 in legal expenses that the Judge already ordered him to pay?

      Does he have a "prison cell phone" to bring with him?

  • Now credit where it is due: the guy does not know the meaning of the word 'shame'.

  • ...because it will teach people that you don't fucking rely on one person to keep the only password in his head because he may die at any time.

  • I'm surprised he hasn't disappeared, "committed suicided" or had a nasty car accident in Paris.
    Reading this it looks like Kleiman's lawyers went for the forced reveal of Wrights digital assets instead of proving a partnership existed first which makes more sense.
    I think that implies they don't have much evidence to win the later and instead tried for a quick settlement by forcing Wright to disclose what he has, or doesn't.
    The internet now has its very own "El Dorado".

  • He is absolutely not Satoshi. --Philip Zimmermann

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