According to court documents freshly re-leaked on Twitter, Craig Wright has given two widely diverging stories on his history of mining Bitcoin in the early at the turn of the last decade.
Quick note on Craig Wright, mining & trusts.
ATO hearing Feb 18, 2014:
Mining throughout 2011, trusts in Singapore & Seychelles.
Court Florida 2019:
Mining till 2010, trusts in Panama & Seychelles.
Beats me… ?♂️
Source:https://t.co/TZ6IiHpyNm pic.twitter.com/sa4GKZH6Mn
— Arthur van Pelt – Dragon Industries (@MyLegacyKit) July 9, 2019
Craig Wright’s 2011 Story
When Craig Wright was investigated by the Australian Tax Office, which later entailed a raid of his offices Downunder, he told authorities he had stopped mining in 2011. He told the ATO that he had not liquidated any of his funds and that they were held in trusts based in Singapore and Seychelles.
That was 2014.
Now, years later, Wright changes the important part of the story: when he stopped mining. Wright is on record as telling a federal court in Florida that he quit mining in 2010.
The other part of the story, the location of the trusts that hold his massive Bitcoin wealth, can be explained: perhaps one of the trusts was moved in the meantime.
He also insists that he cannot, under any circumstances, access his Bitcoin hoard before 2020.
Crypto Twitter is abuzz after reading Craig Wright’s testimony.
Based on the transcripts I have read, I really hope netflix picks up the whole Craig Wright story and turns it into a drama, it may be the only way Wright ever pays off all his legal costs.
— Sarah Jamie Lewis (@SarahJamieLewis) July 4, 2019
Non-Answers And Nonsense
Wright reportedly cried, threw objects in the court, and risked a contempt charge during his testimony. At one point Wright insisted that there is no such thing as a “public” Bitcoin address.
Stating again that Florida has no jurisdiction over Craig Wright according to the defense!
Trying to make sense of the hearsay, stolen emails, information from unreliable websites and improperly leaked transcripts from the of secret Australian government investigative interviews pic.twitter.com/wS4TmJQKsU
— oudekaas (@oudekaas3) July 10, 2019
It’s a reasonable track for Wright to assume that a judge and other outsiders might not have an understanding of blockchain technology. Though, the plaintiffs can call experts to explain why this testimony is patently incorrect.
While saying something absurd is not the same thing as lying or perjury, some suspect the whole charade was a blatant attempt to non-answer questions.
Reading the court transcript from June 28th hearing kinda makes me wish I could have been there just to see that live. Craig Wright appears to try to avoid responding to questions at all cost. pic.twitter.com/PlnIOhQSdf
— Mark Karpelès (@MagicalTux) July 3, 2019
Bitcoin is based on what’s called “public key cryptography” or asymmetric cryptography. In this scheme, a public key corresponds to a private key.
Without the private key, nothing sent to the public key (address) can be manipulated. The same scheme is used in e-mail and other systems.
Therefore, to claim that “public addresses” are non-existent is a beyond weird flex.
If Wright stopped in 2010, as he’s telling the court in Florida, that means he likely has substantially less BTC than the Kleiman estate may presume.
If he stopped in 2011, it’s conceivable that at least a few billion in BTC was mined.
Most estimates of the Satoshi hoard put it around 1 million BTC.