DLNews: ‘Inside Craig Wright’s $5.2bn legal war against Bitcoin devs’
“Craig Wright has been testifying in a London court that he is Bitcoin founder Satoshi Nakamoto.
The Australian-born computer scientist’s claim that he authored the Bitcoin white paper is at the heart of a high-stakes court battle with the nonprofit Cryptocurrency Open Patent Alliance.
Wright’s eccentricity and the mystique surrounding Satoshi make this one of crypto’s strangest cases.
But Wright is also involved in another case that may prove stranger still — and even more consequential for Bitcoin.
This case — Tulip Trading Ltd vs Van der Laan— will be heard in the UK this year.
It will decide not only Wright’s potential access to a staggering amount of Bitcoin, but the future of the cryptocurrency as we know it.
But Tulip’s argument must withstand one test in order for the case to be tried. According to a court document, Tulip must prove that it owns the two wallets in question.
If Tulip succeeds and the case goes to trial, that will test its central contention — that Bitcoin developers owe a fiduciary duty to the users of their software.
If Tulip won, that would be very, very bad for Bitcoin, advocates like the Bitcoin Legal Defence Fund say.
Crypto developers have never had to shoulder that kind of liability. Given the open-source and decentralised nature of their work, they don’t even know who or where their users are.”