Craig Wright Doesn't Have Keys To $8 Billion of Bitcoin (decrypt.co) 39
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.
Me too (Score:5, Funny)
"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.
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Study this guy (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Indeed. Pretty obvious by now. A con-man that got in over his head.
Games like these (Score:2, Offtopic)
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make Bitcoin appear so professional
Unlike the suitcases full of $100 bills that pass back and forth in Washington DC.
Re: Games like these (Score:2)
Yeah, I was about to ask why anyone invests in this??
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Re: Games like these (Score:2)
What about all the times he’s claimed other (Score:3)
So who has the keys to those addresses? (Score:2)
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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.
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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
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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.
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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)
Re:I am (Score:5, Funny)
List of Fakeries (Score:3)
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.
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So BitCoin's plagued by the same crap as coinage? (Score:2)
Faketoshi is fake news (Score:2, Interesting)
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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.
What does Craig have? (Score:2)
Re:What does Craig have? (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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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?
What a surprise (Score:2)
Genuine digital scarcity matters! (Score:1)
I hope they stay locked up forever (Score:2)
...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.
El Dorado (Score:2)
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".
Craig Wright is NOT Satoshi. (Score:1)