Mr Wright appears to be saying that he owns a huge fortune but cannot prove it because he claims hackers deleted his keys. First question - where and what is his proof? Arm waving and loud shouting is not going to impress the judge, he is going to have to produce something tangible as clear evidence. Second question - why did he not have an offline backup of the keys on read-only media? For something that important, only an idiot would not keep multiple secure copies.

> Second question - why did he not have an offline backup of the keys on read-only media?

He did but they too were accidentally thrown out with his collection of Napoleon memorabilia.

"He did but they too were accidentally thrown out with his collection of Napoleon memorabilia."

I see, and was that was next to his extensive slide collection of 20th century telegraph poles?

I'm an idiot. Well, someone who mined a bunch of coins waaay back in the day. Then forgot about them because at the time, they weren't worth anything, or anything much. So they're consigned to the great bit bucket in the sky. Which is apparently the fate of a lot of the original coins. And also I guess one of those general economic bits of fun. At least banknotes get periodically updated and reprinted, kind of removing lost money from the system.

I have as much evidence that the coins belong to me.

how much bitcoinSV does he claim ownership of? Is it £16m worth or $4.5b worth? or are these valuations for different things?

And does he claim ownership over any BTC? Or do the coins he claims ownership of predate BTC?

The odd thing is that I'd have expected the inventor of crypto currency to have a working knowledge of the downsides of their design, e.g. keeping your keys and wallet secure is quite important.

...Also if he is the computer wizz that he claims to be how come his computer was so easy to hack?

From what I heard, police raided his home and business offices.

He could have simply said they had stolen the keys.

Since "BitcoinSV" is a fork of Bitcoin, and the "Satoshi" wallet in question came from the original Bitcoin block chain, then the keys for both would be the same.

If Wright could claim ownership of the key for the BitcoinSV wallet (worth $16M), then it would allow him to claim ownership of the key for the bitcoin wallet (which is worth $4.5Bn).

It wouldn't actually get him that key, though, so he wouldn't be able to "spend" or move that balance, but he might then claim that whoever does have access to it, if they can be identified, should hand it over, and claim that they are hackers.

Most people in the crypto community do not think Wright is Satoshi Nakamoto, so that wallet is most likely not under the control of hackers, and Wright would appear to be undertaking legal manoeuvres to try to steal it by "legal" means.

Like any real blockchain developer he stored his keys in the chain,

And not under the doormat outside the front door?

The doormat is too obvious. That's what those hollow stone key frogs are for

Film Plot: this claim and legal battle is just a trick to get the real Satoshi Nakamoto to reveal his identity.

Once that happens, the quick-action special ops teams on stand-by for an organized crime syndicate go into action, kidnapping the real Satoshi, with the plan to intimidate or torture him into handing over the keys to the $4.5B worth of BTC.

Like all big heists, the mercenaries each get a payout, but the main portion of BTC disappears, being immediately broken up into smaller amounts and distributed to thousands of wallets.

The authorities are now faced with the uncomfortable choice of either shutting down the cryptocurrency entirely, to prevent the (latest) crooks from profiting from the theft, or else engaging in the enormous task of trying to trace what is designed to be hard to trace, as the money is laundered through ever more transactions, a difficult if not impossible task.

The authorities know if they simply shut the cryptocurrency down, e.g. by declaring it illegal, or by freezing the blockchain and halting any further transactions until the mess can be unwound, that thousands (millions?) of small investors (speculators) will lose access temporarily or maybe permanently to their money and scream very loudly about it.

The organized crime syndicate hopes the authorities will decide the lesser evil is to let them get away with the theft. After all, they routinely pay people to steal valuable art work from museums, and then hide it in secret warehouses, waiting for the statue of limitations to run out. Even if that might not happen in the lifetimes of the current bosses. Eventually the paintings turn up again and can be auctioned off, back to the museums or to rich private collectors. Cryptocurrency is just another commodity for them.

Sherlock because it will all be a big mystery...

I would watch that movie

Please explain how "the authorities" would "freeze the blockchain".

Transactions take place by being confirmed on the blockchain by "mining". The "miner" computes a key that is required to hash the next block on the chain to a string with a certain number of leading zeroes (the current "difficulty"), and, as a reward, gets the transaction fees in that block, and a mining reward. This happens roughly every ten minutes (the "difficulty" is varied based on the time-to-mine of recent blocks, but there is some element of randomness to this).

The important bit here is that the blockchain itself is on a globally hosted decentralised network, and the "miners" are based across the world. In order to stop all transactions from being recorded, you'd have to stop all mining activity, globally. Just declaring it "illegal" is not going to cut it, for obvious reasons, just as declaring that paying for drugs with US dollars is illegal doesn't stop that being the currency of choice for drug traffickers.

Some countries have banned, or severely limited cryptocurrency mining (China, Russia, and so on), and whilst it may have made the "difficulty" dip at that point in time, it has soon rebounded; the "difficulty growth" has been roughly exponential since Bitcoin's inception, which is one of its main problems, because difficulty is proportionate to energy use.

This plot doesn't work, because Bitcoin is uncensorable by being a world-wide network of independently operated nodes. There is no world government. Freezing the blockchain is impossible, because every node independently stores its own copy. My government might find me and freeze my node's blockchain. The other 40,000 nodes ignore my node because it is now non-compliant

Also, the real Satoshi never mined that much Bitcoin. His story is mundane. His computing resources were limited to one laptop supplied by his employer. Mining Bitcoin was a heavy load on this PC, making it useless for its normal work

He offloaded the mining work to collaborators, willing volunteers, in the first few days, and never mined again. The 700,000 unspent Bitcoin from 2009 mining belongs to those dozens or hundreds of collaborators, all of whom discarded their keys when Bitcoin was so hard to sell that nobody knew if it even had a price, another mundane story

If anything, Wright's courtroom drama makes a good movie plot. How far can a liar push a lawsuit without ending in prison for perjury? All the falsely sued Bitcoin developers having to fly into London to appear before a judge on a fraudulent claim, with the stress of an unpredictable outcome, and constant demands on their finances to fund their defence costs. If Wright wins, the movie becomes the ultimate true parody of a corrupt legal system

> All the falsely sued Bitcoin developers having to fly into London to appear before a judge on a fraudulent claim, with the stress of an unpredictable outcome, and constant demands on their finances to fund their defence costs

Which is presumably the aim. He does some sort of deal with their solicitors where they agree to support his claim in return for them being dropped.

He then shops the case around jurisdictions until he finds a judge and jury East Texas who decide for him because he has an American Flag hat and this Satoshi guy sounds like a gook.

He gets a judgement against Coinbase or Binance for a few $10M in damages and they pay because they are worth $Bn and its cheaper than a threat to their SEC licence.

It's just the old patent troll model with magic beans

a firm called nChain Ltd is "said to be working on a modification to the existing BSV client software, which would enable someone who owns but cannot access the BSV to regain control of them."

If they can do this then so can hackers. What is the point of blockchain, if anyone can overwrite keys for anyone who claims ownership.

Just like losing £5K down the back of the sofa, then sending it to the local incinerator cos it has become a bit grubby. If you demand that the Bank of England owes you £5000 even though you cannot prove you are the bearer, they should just laugh in your face.

If I owned any bit coin, I would have a copy on the keys on a USB key. If they were worth more than £1K, I would have it on 2 USB keys, If it were any more I would have it on an encrypted key stored at a solicitors office or a bank deposit box.

Modifications to blockchains require approval of the majority of miners, or result in a "minority branch" on the chain which dies out.

The alternative is a fork of the blockchain, but who is going to involve themselves in a fork of Bitcoin which allows others to take control of your wallet?

400 years after tulip mania, there is still a market for tulip bulbs. Have a listen to the "More or Less" podcast on the subject - turns out it wasn't so stupid as is portrayed. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p066xbxr

Also, tulip bulbs have utility value: you can grow them into tulips, which are enjoyable to look at. They can also be sold as/in cut bouquets to produce income. If you choose a perennial variety that income can be obtained repeatedly without losing the bulb. It is possible to overpay for any asset but at least you still have an asset that provides some kind of value; surely the worst choice is to purchase an asset that can never provide any value at all.

If, and it's a big "if", he really did invent Bitcoin (original BTC), then he can prove that by a) telling people he's going to move a bit from that 4.5bn he claims to own; b) transferring a minor wedge into another wallet that he owns and to which other people can see, and c) transfer it back if he wants. Do that, on video if you must, and boom everyone will believe him. The fact that he hasnt done something that simple, says he's a liar.

So ok Hackers stole his "keys" to this forked Bitcoin, which I assume was forked 1:1, so he's claiming the same ownership as in original Bitcoin. Is he also claiming that Hackers stole his keys to the original Bitcoin wallet too?

If so, well frankly then he's an idiot for not having everything offline and backed up. If Hackers had really stolen the keys to his bitcoin, those bitcoins would be making their way through tumblers, etc. and into bank accounts somewhere else. That they havent moved at all, says to me he's talking bollocks. More likely (again making the rather reaching assumption that he really does own them), he's simply forgotten the passwords, or lost the keys on an old harddrive that went to the tip. No back-ups and bye bye.

But then again, I'm willing to bet he's talking out his arse... But as always, let see what the courts decide...

Is he also claiming that Hackers stole his keys to the original Bitcoin wallet too?

They're the same keys. And yes, he filed a suit in 2021 against a list of Bitcoin developers to code an exception so that a specific list of old, unspent coins can be accessed by himself without using the private keys to sign the transactions. This is technically trivial, but a gross breach of governance (except that the court is responsible for the breach, and the developers are unwilling servants of the court, if Wright wins the suit)

One of the two of us blatantly misunderstands how this works. If someone can change some code to allow access to someone’s Bitcoin, presumably his own, then hackers can access everyone’s Bitcoin by changing the same code in the same way.

… for "Oh fuck off, you ridiculous poseur"?

and so's my wife.

There is a guy who lost his hard drive containing keys to his bitcoin (well, threw them away). They are worth about £400 million by now. He asked his local government to dig up the complete garbage dump where his hard drive would be. It might be possible to find the drive for much less than £400 million, but they refuse. (And the story is likely true, because his sob story was published first when the bitcoin was worth £700,000, many years ago).

Listen guv... honest... that 5 billion or so of bitcoin.. it's mine... yeah yeah... hand on heart. Private keys? oh they were stolen, but the money's mine... yeah man - wait, you mean bitcoin is anonymous and you can't prove who owns it? Do you accept a pinky swear or swearing on my nan's grave??