In Miami, a trial has begun in the case of the self-proclaimed Bitcoin creator Craig Wright and the family of his former partner Dave Kleiman. CoinDesk reports this.
On November 1, a 10-member jury was empanelled. Over three weeks they are to hear arguments from both sides and render a verdict.
According to the publication, in his opening statement, the plaintiff’s representative Kyle Roche pointed to contradictions in Wright’s claims. The attorney demonstrated emails in which the defendant repeatedly called Dave Kleiman his “partner” and “business partner” up to his death in 2013.
According to Roche, in 2018 Wright began denying that he ever had a partner other than his wife Ramona Watts.
“He [Kleiman] was never my partner. I hate the whole concept of partnership,” the publication quotes Wright’s testimony from April 4, 2019.
His defence, in turn, rests on two points: a diagnosed autism spectrum disorder and the absence of a written agreement with Kleiman. The defendant’s attorney Amanda McGovern said that due to autism her client and Kleiman understood the word ‘partner’ differently.
But Roche noted that Wright’s diagnosis was made after 2018 ‘over the phone and without a personal meeting’. The conclusion was made by Dr. Ami Klin — a defence witness.
In February 2018, Ira Kleiman, the brother of the late computer forensics expert and mathematician Dave Kleiman, filed a lawsuit against Craig Wright.
The plaintiff accused the latter of misappropriating 1.1 million BTC, reportedly belonging to Kleiman, who is linked to the creation of the first cryptocurrency.
At the same time, WizSec experts found that the bitcoin addresses mentioned in the suit had never belonged to Kleiman or Wright.
In August 2019, the Southern District of Florida ordered Wright to pay 500,000 BTC. The self-proclaimed Satoshi Nakamoto declined to participate in the settlement agreement. The proceedings were resumed.
In May 2020, 145 early bitcoin addresses signed a statement accusing Wright of fraud and perjury. He claimed that these addresses belonged to him.
In June of the same year, Wright and Kleiman’s lawyers presented a list of 36 witnesses. Among the experts were early Bitcoin developer Gavin Andresen and crypto-philosophy evangelist Andreas Antonopoulos. In his testimony, Andresen did not acknowledge Wright as the creator of the digital gold and suggested that he could have been misled.
In September 2020, the court dismissed Wright’s motion for expedited proceedings. Earlier he claimed that the statute of limitations had run and the plaintiff could not prove an oral agreement.
In February 2021 Wright demanded from the Bitcoin Core developers restore access to two Bitcoin wallets. One of the addresses is linked to the Mt. Gox exchange hack.
Earlier in June, London’s High Court ruled in favour of the self-proclaimed Bitcoin creator in the case against the owner of the Bitcoin.org site under the alias Cobra.
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