To say that Craig Wright has been a controversial figure in the cryptocurrency industry would be something of an understatement. To say that he’s a man who’s sought to turn the space upside down would probably be more accurate to some analysts and observers.
Wright: Nobody Can Touch My Coins
Wright recently emerged to say that his alleged bitcoin fortune – which may or may not exist – is likely to remain locked for some time. Recently, a lawsuit outcome required that Wright forfeit roughly $3 billion of his alleged BTC fortune to Ira Kleiman, the brother of the man who allegedly helped Wright build his crypto-based empire Dave Kleiman.
The lawsuit took place in August of this year, though it boasts roots in 2018. Ira claims that Dave was potentially cheated out several million bitcoins by Wright. Dave passed away in 2013 and was reportedly one of Wright’s primary developers.
A U.S. magistrate judge named Bruce Reinhart in West Palm Beach Florida ruled four months ago that Wright had submitted false documents during the hearing and that he submitted false or faulty testimony. He was later ordered to hand half his BTC fortune over to the Kleiman estate. At the time of writing, it is estimated that the cryptocurrency owed to Dave’s kin is anywhere between three and four billion dollars.
But according to Wright, a lot of this money is untouchable at press time. More specifically, he claims that the private keys necessary to access the funds in question would not become available until next month or even later.
He commented:
I do not intend to dump my family’s BTC as some people suspect or want, as this would hurt many people in the industry.
Wright’s big claim to fame is the development of the new currency bitcoin SV, which emerged through a hard fork of bitcoin cash in late 2018, which was also a hard fork currency to come from bitcoin during the previous year.
Bitcoin SV has been at the center of many harsh events to occur within the crypto space. For one thing, bitcoin SV is widely blamed for the nasty fall that bitcoin incurred in November 2018. Up to that point, bitcoin had spent most of its time hanging around the $5,000 or $6,000 range.
A Man’s Reputation Rises
Following the fork that brought SV to prominence, however, the world’s number one cryptocurrency by market cap fell during the Thanksgiving holiday to the mid-$3,000 range, where it remained for roughly five months (until April of 2019).
Bitcoin SV also pitted several cryptocurrency experts against each other, most notably Roger Ver – the “Bitcoin Jesus” – and Craig Wright. The latter claimed that SV was the closest thing to Satoshi Nakamoto’s original bitcoin vision, while Ver argued that all the power of crypto lied with bitcoin cash.
