In his latest blog post, Craig Wright claimed that he (as Satoshi Nakamoto) never wanted WikiLeaks to use Bitcoin. On March 31st he wrote: “I’m not the anarchist they want, nor have I ever been anything like one. You see, I didn’t want WikiLeaks to use Bitcoin because I didn’t like what they stood for.” However, publicly available web links from July 2011 suggest this was not the case. In the wake of PayPal’s decision to freeze the accounts of the non-profit WikiLeaks in 2010, Wright told commenters on his article in The Conversation that it was the foundation’s own …

While much of the mainstream media decided against running pranks this year due to the seriousness of the coronavirus crisis — the crypto community decided to have some fun anyway. One of the earliest, and funniest, was CoinMarketCap listing ‘Toilet Paper Token’ as the number one cryptocurrency above Bitcoin — the circulating supply, naturally, was ‘out of stock’. Satoshi predicted the COVID-19 outbreak CryptoPotato broke the news that Satoshi Nakamoto predicted the coronavirus outbreak in the original Bitcoin whitepaper. It was a pretty convincing story too, thanks to a cleverly fabricated image of the ‘introduction’ to the whitepaper where Satoshi …

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin was involved in a spat with a Bitcoin developer on Twitter yesterday, when he suggested BTC was originally designed to be P2P cash, not digital gold. Replying to Blockstream employee Zack Voell who claimed that Bitcoin was, is, and always shall be digital gold, Buterin pointed out the narrative had changed since 2011: “I joined Bitcoin land in 2011 and back then I remember a clear vibe that Bitcoin was P2P cash first and gold second.” Source: Twitter: Vitalik Buterin, Zack Voell Buterin’s view that Bitcoin was originally intended to be peer-to-peer electronic cash is one …

After a court slammed Craig Wright for producing forged documents and giving perjured testimony in the ongoing legal circus between Wright and Ira Kleiman’s estate concerning the Tulip Trust, Kleiman’s legal team is hard at work finding a key witness. Kleiman’s legal team are trying to subpoena former nChain CEO Jimmy Nguyen to provide a deposition. However, it seems like they are having a difficult time tracking him down. Kleiman’s legal team left a comment on Jimmy’s latest Twitter post on March 29, saying: “Jimmy — we've been trying to serve you with a subpoena in Kleiman v. Wright. We …

The man who claims to be Satoshi Nakamoto says 2020 is the year the law comes for Bitcoin. Writing on his personal blog, Craig Wright offered a view of Bitcoin’s future which doesn’t bode well for operators of Bitcoin’s Lightning Network, or the coin’s miners. One of Bitcoin’s biggest attractions is its supposedly permissionless, authority-resistant nature. But according to Wright, these are illusions. Wright claims that any amount of Bitcoin purchased without meeting legally recognized CDD (customer due diligence) and KYC (know your customer) requirements is, in effect, stolen Bitcoin. According to Wright, that spells trouble for Lightning Network operators …

On March 24, Cardano (ADA) founder, Charles Hoskinson, streamed a YouTube video titled “On Wikipedia,” in which he berated Wikipedia for applying arbitrary commercial censorship against Cardano. Wikipedia’s censorship of Bitcoin may have led to Satoshi’s disappearance Censorship of cryptocurrency projects is as old as the industry itself. Back in 2010, even Satoshi Nakamoto was frustrated with Wikipedia’s editors for removing Bitcoin’s wiki entry several times. After PayPal severed ties with WikiLeaks, one of Bitcoin’s supporters suggested that becoming the site's new source of donations would generate enough publicity to gain entry into Wikipedia. Satoshi strongly opposed WikiLeak’s adoption of …

United States Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart has ruled that the self-proclaimed Satoshi Nakamoto, Craig Wright, must pay only 20% of the legal fees requested by the estate of the late-Dave Kleiman. According to March 16 court documents, the attorneys representing Dave’s brother Ira requested a total of $592,558 for legal fees for hourly rates of between $610 and $1,050, and roughly $66,000 in other expenses. Kleiman estate requested nearly $660,000 in fees and expenses Court documents show that Judge Reinhart found the quoted rates to be excessive, stating, “I am personally familiar with the hourly rates charged by the top …

As Cointelegraph reported yesterday, self-proclaimed Bitcoin (BTC) creator Craig Wright claims that Bitcoin can and will be seized to accommodate court orders. What follows is an analysis of whether what he says is possible and plausible. Screenshots resurfaced on Feb. 26, show that Wright claims Bitcoin will be seized without using the owner’s private keys. Instead, it will be moved through miners and nodes coordinating to comply with a court order. He said that code is law but “courts can mandate patching code.” Cryptocurrency security consultant Sergio Demian Lerner told Cointelegraph that Wright’s proposition “is morally and legally ridiculous” given …

Self-proclaimed Bitcoin (BTC) creator Craig Wright claims that Bitcoin can and will be seized to accommodate court orders. On Feb. 26, Bitcoin influencer Peter McCormack published screenshots showing Wright claiming that the first seizure of Bitcoin by courts will happen this year and won’t require private keys. Bitcoin seizure through miner coordination Instead, it will supposedly happen through miner and node coordinating to comply with a court order. He concluded: “Without keys, BTC will be confiscated. Code is law, and courts can mandate patching code. Bitcoin is not encrypted. It is economic.” In the second and last screenshot, Wright asks …

In a recent tweet, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao has made it clear that he thinks Craig Wright, the Bitcoin SV (BSV) founder and self-proclaimed Bitcoin (BTC) creator, is a fraud. Indeed, Wright is a divisive figure in the industry, having involved himself in various legal battles and public spats as he attempts to convince the crypto world that he is the rightful inventor of the first cryptocurrency. To this end, Zhao told Cointelegraph that Wright is not only hurting his own reputation but is harming that of the cryptocurrency industry as a whole: “He claims to be the founder of …

Changpeng Zhao, the co-founder and CEO of major cryptocurrency exchange Binance publicly expressed distrust towards self-proclaimed Bitcoin (BTC) creator and Bitcoin SV (BSV) founder Craig Wright. In a tweet published on Feb. 24, Zhao explicitly said that Craig Wright “is a fraud.” He also seemingly recommended not to invest in Bitcoin SV: “Investing in a fraud never ends well.” In April 2019, Zhao’s exchange delisted Bitcoin SV after Wright took legal action against a Twitter user that said he is not Satoshi Nakamoto. The exchange cited “evidence of unethical/fraudulent conduct” among the reasons for the delisting. Wright’s claims are met …

When the United States Treasury said on Feb. 13 that it would seek to enact new regulations governing cryptocurrencies, the price of Bitcoin (BTC) fell by almost 2% within an hour. But Alex Tapscott, for one, thinks it unlikely that the U.S. government will squash Bitcoin, as some fear. As he told Cointelegraph during a recent interview: “Crushing BTC in the U.S. is not feasible, in good part because key U.S. regulators have already supplied guidance on how it should be regulated,” referring to organizations such as the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Tapscott, co-founder of the Blockchain Research Institute, remains …