The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida denied Craig Wright’s motion for summary judgment in Kleiman v. Wright. A hearing is set for January 4, 2021.
🎇BREAKING: Federal court DENIES Craig Wright’s motion for summary judgment completely.
🔥🔥Kleiman lawsuit over more than a billion dollars in bitcoin over heads to trial.
🧐🧐🧐It’s a 93 page decision! I’m going to tweetify the tasty bits, so strap in. 👇 pic.twitter.com/XsVWBtcDrK
— Palley (@stephendpalley) September 21, 2020
Summary judgment entails ruling in favour of one side if the claim is shown to be baseless. Wright argued that the statute of limitations had long expired, that the plaintiff could not prove an oral agreement, and that the United States court lacks jurisdiction in the matter. The court rejected all six of Wright’s arguments.
In February 2018, Ira Kleiman, the brother of the late computer forensic scientist and mathematician Dave Kleiman, filed suit against Craig Wright. The plaintiff accused Wright of misappropriating 1.1 million BTC, allegedly belonging to Dave Kleiman, who is linked to the creation of Bitcoin.
At the same time, WizSec researchers found that the Bitcoin addresses mentioned in the suit had never belonged to either Kleiman or Wright.
Kleiman v. Wright and the Illusory Bitcoins
In August 2019 the court ordered Wright to pay 500,000 BTC under a settlement of claims. He later refused to perform, and the dispute was resumed. Initially the court scheduled the trial for July 6, 2020, then postponed to October 13, and then — and to 2021.
In May 2020, 145 early Bitcoin addresses signed a statement accusing Wright of fraud and perjury. He claimed that those addresses belonged to him.
In June 2020, Wright’s and Kleiman’s lawyers submitted a list of 36 witnesses. Among them were Bitcoin early developer Gavin Andresen and cryptocurrency evangelist Andreas Antonopoulos. In his testimony, Andresen did not acknowledge Wright as the creator of Bitcoin and suggested that he might have been misled.
More on the Kleiman v. Wright case can be read at the link below.
Swearing, technical nonsense and tears: how Craig Wright described his shame over Bitcoin and his willingness to give up 1 million BTC
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