This public revelation is another serious blow to the credibility of the technopreneur. Wright is currently embroiled in a lawsuit with Ira Kleiman, the brother of his former business partner.
Craig Wright, an Australian technopreneur who publicly claims to be Satoshi Nakamoto (the mysterious creator of Bitcoin), has been publicly challenged over the accounts and wallets he asserts ownership of.
A list of Bitcoin addresses that Wright had presented in a pending lawsuit as assets he controlled was accidentally disclosed by the plaintiffs on May 21 of this year. Although the list was only briefly accessible, 145 of those addresses were used to sign a public message asserting that Wright was a “fraud,” making it clear the signer did not actually own or have access to them.
The lawsuit was brought by Ira Kleiman, the brother of Wright’s former business partner David Kleiman, seeking half of 1.1 million bitcoins (roughly $9.6 billion) that the pair are alleged to have mined in the early days of the leading cryptocurrency. The case also concerns intellectual property and hinges on whether Wright can prove he genuinely controls the cryptographic keys to the funds.
Although the list was quickly sealed by Kleiman’s legal team, it remains accessible via Court Listener, and another individual was able to use it to claim possession of the keys associated with those addresses. That person signed a message with the keys and accused Wright of being a “liar” and a “fraud.”
“Craig Steven Wright is a liar and a fraud. He does not possess the keys to sign this message. The Lightning Network is an important achievement. However, we must continue to work on improving on-chain capacity. Unfortunately, the solution is not simply to change a constant in the code or to allow powerful participants to force others. We are all Satoshi,” read the message.
The message was first discussed publicly on Reddit, with commentators noting that the addresses appeared to have been mined in 2009 and had remained untouched since then.
Wright had told the court that his billions in Bitcoin were held in “Tulip Trusts,” but he said he could not prove access to the keys because of attorney-client privilege. The judge accused Wright of abusing that privilege to withhold more than 11,000 documents and to obstruct proceedings.
In August 2019, Wright was also found to have acted in bad faith, to have submitted false evidence, and to have personally committed perjury.