The Talented Mr Wright returns



TL;DR: he’s being sued because someone actually believes the fake evidence he created to prove he’s Satoshi.

Have you ever read Patricia Highsmith’s book The Talented Mr Ripley, or watched the Matt Damon film? It’s a brilliant psychological thriller in which a man is forced down a path of ever greater deceit and more numerous lies, forgeries and murders in order to cover his original crime.

Enter Craig Wright, the man who, back in December 2015, burst onto the world stage after Wired and Gizmodo magazines outed him as Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of bitcoin. A vast dump of ‘hacked’ evidence supposedly showed lengthy email exchanges and documents sent between Wright and Dave Kleiman, an IT security expert who died in 2013 and, it appeared, had collaborated with Wright on the bitcoin white paper and code.

It transpired that there was more to it that this. The documents weren’t hacked, they were leaked, and a lot of them were starting to look unconvincing. Wright was either Satoshi or… he had gone to great lengths to convince people he was. At the same time, the Australian Tax Office was going after Wright and he fled for the UK, prompting critics to suggest that the story was a desperate attempt to deal with his tax issues. A few months later in 2016, when Wright tried to prove he was Satoshi by apparently signing a message with private keys that only bitcoin’s creator should know, the internet tore him apart. The forgery was laid bare in minutes. Wright – who had gone on national TV to claim he was Satoshi – protested his innocence, said he was done offering proof, and withdrew from public life.

Now, Dave Kleiman’s brother is suing him for $10 billion. Ira Kleiman says that Wright forged a series of contracts and backdated them to have a set of assets transferred to him. In doing so, he fraudulently stole 1.1 million BTC belonging to Kleiman.

In a beautiful twist of fate, this has come about because Ira Kleiman is one of the few people who does (or at least, claims to) believe that Wright’s original evidence trail was genuine. It’s not, as a new analysis makes clear. Most of the bitcoins in the addresses involved clearly belong to other people or groups, most notably the collapsed MtGox exchange. But Ira Kleiman’s lawyers take Wright’s 2015-16 narrative at face value, presenting him with a killer dilemma:

1) Continue to maintain his was telling the truth, and potentially end up on the hook for $10 billion

2) Admit he lied about everything and possibly face further consequences for that

It’s not clear what Wright’s next move will be, or the new contortions to which he will subject the truth. But – just like The Talented Mr Ripley – it is clear that this is going to continue to enthral audiences, and that it’s going to be best enjoyed with a bucket of popcorn.





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