The court case accusing Craig Wright, the biggest supporter of Bitcoin SV, of stealing Bitcoins from Dave Kleiman, a computer scientist, has taken a new twist.
Judge Bruce Reinhart of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida has ruled that Wright should forfeit 50% of the Bitcoins he mined with Kleiman in the period between 2009 and 2011. In the said period, the two are alleged to have mined over one million Bitcoins.
Wright intentionally swore a false oath
Additionally, Wright has been ordered to forfeit half of Bitcoin’s software property rights to Kleiman. Unfortunately, the Court has also accused Wright of intentionally swearing a false oath and providing the Court with falsified documents.
According to Kleiman’s lawyers, the mined Bitcoin was held in a trust known as the Tulip Trust. The case began in February 2018, with Kleiman being represented by Kyle Roche and Velvel Freedman while Rivero Mestre LLP represented Wright.
The ruling comes only days after Judge Beth Bloom pointed out that Wright’s testimony and documents provided in Court were inconsistent. In her ruling, Bloom said, “In weighing the evidence, the Court simply does not find the Defendant’s [Craig Wright] testimony to be credible.” Additionally, Bloom considered that some emails purportedly exchanged between Wright and Kleiman and presented as evidence were “extremely speculative.”
The case is not yet over; procedural issues need to be ironed out
Notably, although Reinhart’s ruling has addressed the major issues in the case against Craig Wright, the case will remain open to address procedural issues such as collection. However, despite the judge poking holes in the credibility of Wright’s presentation, he did not provide a ruling on whether Craig Wright is Satoshi Nakamoto.
The crypto community is divided
However, at ChainNode- a popular Chinese forum, the Chinese cryptocurrency community is divided on the implications of the ruling. Some were worried about what to make of the “BSV fans” while others claimed that the decision “is not to prove that he [Wright] invented Bitcoin. Just [meant] to give the partner some income.”
Additionally, other Bitcoin SV supporters considered that it was a conspiracy by the Bitcoin core camp who bribed Judge Reinhart.
