Bitcoin: The Man Who Pretends to Be Satoshi Nakamoto Will Have to Prove Him Before a Tribunal

Craig Wright, the man who claims to be the creator of Bitcoin and hides behind the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto, faces the possibility of a trial to 10 billion dollars (8.22 billion euros), in the state of Florida in the United States. This lawsuit was requested by the brother of Dave Kleiman, the man Craig Wright claims to have helped develop Bitcoin.

Although Craig Wright easily managed to convince some recognized members of the Bitcoin community such as Jon Matonis and Gavin Andresen, the Australian computer scientist finally gave up the cryptographic proof of his connection with the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto, following the a media storm reporting the involvement of a public relations agency in this story. In the past, Motherboard reported that the cryptographic keys used to connect Craig Wright to Satoshi Nakamoto were backdated, suggesting that it was an intox.

A $ 10 billion lawsuit

This new lawsuit is based on the fact that Craig Wright would have imitated signatures and backdated documents in order to obtain billions of dollars in Bitcoins as well as the intellectual property of the cryptocurrency that was supposedly shared between Craig Wrigth and Dave Kleiman. Court documents suggest that Craig Wright used a digital font to imitate Dave Kleiman's signature on documents.

The exact amount of Bitcoins that Craig Wright claims to have recovered remains unknown but will need to be assessed during the trial. "To develop this scheme, he drafted and antedated at least three contracts in order to create written records stating that part of Dave Kleiman's Bitcoins and intellectual property rights were to be transferred, sold and / or returned to him", may read in the minutes. A Wired report, dating from late 2015, indicates that Craig Wright may also have backdated blog posts that have been used as evidence of his connection to the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto.

Evidence of no detention of Bitcoins?

For the moment, Craig Wright has not provided cryptographic evidence stating that this is Satoshi Nakamoto. In fact, there is a lot of evidence to suggest that this whole story is just a hoax. According to an online article by the security firm Bitcoin WizSec, this trial could even further reduce the tenuous links between Craig Wright and Satoshi Nakamoto. After analyzing the case file, Kim Nilsson of WizSec realized that most of the Bitcoin addresses mentioned were never owned by Dave Kleiman or Craig Wright. In reality, these are addresses known to have had a large amount of Bitcoins at a given time. "It's not a story of robbery, but of a guy who, looking at a list of Blockchain fortunes, chose a few random addresses and said he was the owner, without any evidence , with the exception of a few awkwardly backdated documents. This evidence can never be approved by an expert, "says Kim Nilsson in an article.
In fact, most addresses that would have belonged to Dave Kleiman and Craig Wright are addresses of the Mt.Gox trading platform, which is now inactive. In fact, WizSec became known for taking part in the survey that uncovered MT Bitcoins. Gox until another exchange, BTC-e.

While Craig Wright has managed to draw attention to the fact that he may be Satoshi Nakamoto, he still has not brought cryptographic evidence. As Vitalik Buterin, the creator of Ethereum, pointed out shortly after Craig Wright's claims, the latter still has to provide evidence, and if he has not managed to do so far, it is for the simple reason that it is not about Satoshi Nakamoto.