The ongoing case between Craig Wright and the estate of his late business partner Dave Kleiman has taken yet another interesting turn. The controversial figure now claims that Bitcoin developers at Blockstream hacked electronic devices to backdate documents and undermine his case.
The information comes from a Joint Discovery Memorandum filed yesterday. In the document, the defendant’s legal counsel requests access to communications between various groups and individuals connected with Bitcoin’s early history and Kleiman’s brother, Ira. These include Greg Maxwell, the Twitter user with the handle “Contrarian,” Blockstream, Bitcoin Core, and mining pools mining BTC.
The defense alleges that those mentioned may have hacked Craig Wright’s electronic devices and created the backdated documents being used as evidence in the case.
OMFG. #Faketoshi actually demanded all communications between Ira Kleiman and Blockstream so he could check if we were involved in hacking him and making all the Satoshi forgeries.
I couldn't make this up if I tried. ?? https://t.co/kvOWnpnA6Y
— Samson Mow (@Excellion) December 19, 2019
Interestingly, Blockstream was founded in 2014, after Wright was already in contract with Ira. Wright is apparently claiming that the Bitcoin developer group had hacked his computer system — even before the company was founded.
The plaintiffs argue that the demand to see communication between Kleiman and Blockstream is irrelevant to the case and is simply a way of gathering intelligence on the defendant’s perceived enemies. They also state that Wright has presented no evidence whatsoever of any hack against himself.
Another objection of the plaintiffs relates to a perceived effort by Wright to hide evidence from the court. He is demanding the payment of between ?50,000 and ?125,000 to make his wife available to give evidence. Naturally, the plaintiffs do not agree with this. They write:
“[Wright] should not be permitted to hide her in a foreign country… in order to sandbag Plaintiffs at trial.”
Elsewhere in the memorandum, there is evidence of other sticking points between the defense and plaintiffs.
Wright wants immediate access to the data that can be recovered from Dave Kleiman’s electronic devices. He suspects that Ira had actually sold Bitcoin following Dave’s death to finance a new $400,000 home. However, the plaintiffs say that the origin of the funds is not directly related to the case and, therefore, the request represents an invasion of Ira’s privacy.
Finally, the plaintiffs raise the issue of Wright’s slew of diplomas, doctorates, and degrees. They state that the defendant has not turned over copies of the many qualifications he regularly boasts about. According to the plaintiffs, these, too, may have been forged and the issue is relevant to establishing Wright’s overall credibility and background. Discovery that such documents do not exist would provide evidence of a tendency towards deceitfulness in Wright and would lend support to the argument that the Satoshi Nakamoto claimant forged other documents relating to the case.
Images courtesy of Shutterstock, Trading View and Twitter.
