The court case between Faketoshi Craig Wright and Ira Kleiman came to an end with a jury verdict. Craig is acquitted of most charges but must pay a $100 million fine. So is this a victory for Craig or for the other side? And does the verdict, either way, prove that Craig is Satoshi after all?
What is written in a news story often depends more on who writes the news than what actually happened. This becomes abundantly clear when you look at who is reporting what on the Craig Wright trial.
Craig Wright, the Australian pseudo-Satoshi and captain of the rather languishing cryptocurrency Bitcoin SV (BSV), has been on trial in Miami for almost two years. The brother of Dave Kleiman, Craig’s alleged partner in the founding of Bitcoin, is suing him for about 550,000 bitcoins – half of the 1.1 million bitcoins attributed to Satoshi – that the latter withheld from his late brother.
Craig is, in short, arguing with the vengeful ghost of someone he posthumously enlisted in his charade over a billion-dollar Bitcoin hoard that Craig doesn’t even own. Now a jury’s verdict has decided this ghost case, and a trial that has dragged on painstakingly for years is coming to an end.
After his resounding trial WINs in the Kleiman case today, a word from CraigWright (SatoshiNakamoto) to his supportersSatoshi Bitcoin CraigWrightisSatoshi pic. twitter.com/oS6UbglGN8
– Jimmy Nguyen (@JimmyWinSV) December 6, 2021
Jimmy Nguyen, known as Craig’s right-hand man and babysitter at public appearances, calls the verdict a “WIN”. A “remarkably good result” agrees Craig Wright. He has never been so relieved in his life, he says. His lawyer, Andres Rivero, even talks of a “complete victory”, of “one of the loudest resounding victories in the history of American litigation. We finished them off … it’s a complete defeat for the other side. “
Andres Rivero (Craig’s lead lawyer) is lying to the press. The verdict the jury returned is higher than any settlement offer Craig ever made. Just like his client, Andres seems to be more comfortable lying than confronting the truth. https://t.co/KZM6M6tIqw
– Kyle Roche (@KyleWRoche) December 7, 2021
The other side, attorney Kyle Roche, who represented Dave’s brother Ira, accuses Rivero of lying. “Much like his client, Andres seems more comfortable lying than facing the truth.” Apparently, the court case has not yet satisfied the two parties’ need to argue.
But which of the two is right – if you can even say that?
No partnership, but appropriation of intellectual property
An enormous amount of money was at stake. About, according to Andres Rivero, “600 billion dollars plus penalties”. That’s how much Ira Kleimann apparently wanted because Craig Wright, who appeared here as the inventor of Bitcoin, had embezzled this sum in Bitcoins from his brother. Since the beginning of the trial, it was about the relationship between the two (allegedly), and indirectly about whether Craig Wright really is Satoshi, as he claims.
The trial went back and forth. Insane amounts of data were examined, arguments and allegations were exchanged, numerous witnesses and experts were summoned. Now a jury has reached a decision. As CoinGeek – Craig Wright’s home and court magazine – explains, the jury found Craig innocent of six out of seven charges. Ira’s lawsuit was largely invalid because there was no provable business relationship between Dave and Craig.
Craig was found guilty only of “conversion” – arguably because he used intellectual property on which Dave Kleiman’s company W&K Information Defense Research held a patent. Or so. The actual case is not easy to understand.
Overall, the jury probably concluded, according to CoinGeek, “that there was no partnership between Dr. Wright and Dave Kleiman, but that Dr. Wright appropriated Dave Kleiman’s property without his consent.” For this offence, Craig Wright must pay $100 million in damages to W&K Information Defense Research.
“We are immensely proud that our client, W&K Information Defense Research LLC, has won $100,000,000 for Craig Wright’s unlawful misappropriation of W&K’s Bitcoin-related assets,” explain plaintiff attorneys Kyle Roche and Andrew Brenner, “Many years ago, Craig Wright told the Kleiman family that he and Dave Kleiman had developed intellectual property based on Bitcoin. Despite this admission, Wright has refused to give the Kleimans a fair share of what Dave helped create … “
Even more debt to the ex
At first glance, it seems oblique to call a $100 million fine a “victory”, even when numerous billions were actually at stake; even the plaintiffs’ obtaining of that fine could hardly be called a “complete defeat”. Neither Ira Kleiman nor his lawyers were likely to have seriously believed that they would be able to push through the maximum demand, which was presumably used more as a threat to make an already gigantic penalty – the 100 million – seem small.
If Ira Kleiman sees the penalty as a victory, however, it contains a fly in the ointment: allegedly W&K Information Defense Research – writes CoinGee – is 75 per cent (or two-thirds) owned by Craig Wright’s ex-wife Lynn Wright (or companies associated with Craig), while the Kleiman family holds only 25 per cent, or one-third. This means that Ira Kleiman’s profits are already shrinking, while Craig now, as he puts it, only has to pay more money to his ex-wife. However, this fact as a whole does not seem to be clear yet, and the details of the split differ depending on the statement and publication (they are different at Coindesk than at Coingeek, for example).
For sure, Craig Wright got away with less damage than would have been possible. But whether that constitutes a victory? After all, Ira Kleiman and his lawyers managed to get Craig fined $100 million, which is still a lot of money even if the plaintiff side only gets a third of it. On the merits, that would probably be more of a victory.
The Nakamoto Question
In strange parallel to money and the legal arguments, another question has been at the forefront of the whole process: is Craig Wright Satoshi Nakamoto, as his ever-shrinking band of followers claims? Or is he an impostor and liar, as 99.99 per cent of the crypto scene believes?
As far as I have observed, Ira Kleiman’s lawyers have fired sharply at this question in places. With the help of the Bitcoin scene, they found gaps and holes in Craig’s Satoshi story and drilled their fingers into them. Perhaps they hoped at the time that Craig would, if only pressed enough, agree to a lucrative settlement to avoid his charade being unmasked in court.
But this did not happen, despite damning revelations of forgeries by Craig’s side in places and ridiculous gaps in knowledge, for example on Satoshi coins, despite bare contradictions, claims that did not materialise and naked lies. Those who believe Craig is Satoshi are no longer intimidated by this sort of thing – it’s all been discussed up and down – and those who don’t believe it don’t need a court case or further proof. Sometimes it is completely irrelevant whether knowledge is made official by a court or not.
Anyway: In court it was never about that. It could not and should not have been about whether Craig is Satoshi. Because that was the basis of the lawsuit. This gave the whole process a kind of postmodernity, better than writers and philosophers can dream up, a kind of ironic climax to the whole Bitcoin saga: Craig tries to enrich himself by pretending to be Satoshi, and then his supposed partner, Dave Kleiman, rises from the grave and takes him to court. Craig’s own invention is suing him!
For Craig, it would have been an easy way out of the lawsuit to admit to being a fraud, while Ira’s lawyers had to fear sawing off their own branch if they convicted Craig too much of lying and falsifying documents.
The jury probably paid respect to this situation. If it dismissed most of the charges, it also dismissed the usual Craig-Satoshi story. To convict Craig, she would have had to believe his story. And this had never become so implausible as during this trial. One statement contradicted another, lie built on lie, hoax replaced hoax, document after document proved to be forged. After the preliminary hearing, one of the judges called Craig’s story “an interwoven web of lies.”
For Craig’s supporters, however, it is clear: their Satoshi won the case. This is proven not least by the fine of 100 million dollars. It proves that Craig is Satoshi. Because reality is always a matter of point of view.
