Once we map out the major camps and actors, and draw out the lines of attack, we start to see that, at minimum, nChain/BSV have a formidable war chest to wage so many legal campaigns (& defenses) — simultaneously.

A crew with a deep war chest and a proclivity to fight can never be discounted. Especially if it includes Australians and LA lawyers.

1.5 Battle Plans

Now that we have a panoramic view, the best way to make sense of the flood of lawsuits between, say, Calvin Ayre (BSV) & Roger Ver (BCH) is to step back and ask what the lawsuits are tying to achieve.

The cynical answer to the question regarding intent is that the lawsuits above are merely publicity plays, serving as clever forms of earned media under the guise of crypto impact litigation. Another view is that these lawsuits are motivated by personal animosity as much as strategic vision.

The realist/rational view is that the current lawsuits may be opening moves in a much more complex and drawn-out chess match. Bitcoin SV’s Jimmy Nguyen says so explicitly, frequently referencing a book that informs his thinking: Winning the Long Game (by J. H. Schoemaker and Steve Krupp).

This begs the questions: (a) Is this chess game winnable? (b) At what cost?

1.6 $8 Billion Reasons to be Wright

Before proceeding, we need to add one other legal attack vector to our battle map. This is the major lawsuit in the US District Court for the Southern District of Florida involving the estate of Dave Kleiman (and his company, W&K Info Defense Research, LLC) versus Craig Wright.

Among other things, the lawsuit (Case 9:18-cv-80176) alleges the tort of conversion — which is a civil version of the crime of theft. Essentially, Ira Kleiman is pleading that Wright “converted” some or all of Dave Kleiman’s estimated 1,100,000 bitcoins.

At today’s market rates, what’s at stake in Kleiman v. Wright is a cool $8 billion USD (+/- a few bills).

Though the Kleiman v. Wright case is formally a tort case, the plaintiffs’ lawyer — Devin Freedman of Boies Schiller Flexner — has explained that the Satoshi Nakamoto story is “relevant” to the underlying proceedings. [Never mind that asking courts to answer “who is Satoshi?” is like asking vegans about the taste of beef.]

1.7 Winning the Long Game

One way that nChain can win the long game is through a strong offensive-defensive legal posture. Seen in this light, the current rounds of, say, libel, IP, and Satoshi/Faketoshi litigation can (and likely will) be used in future disputes as a form of estoppel. As seen with Wright’s copyright registration, one does not need a formal “final” judicial decree to declare whether Wright is or is not Satoshi. Markets act in mysterious ways.

Even an interim judicial order that assumes, arguendo, that Wright might have been part of a Satoshi collective would undoubtedly have direct market effect and shift the narrative around Bitcoin primacy towards BSV. As markets are unpredictable, there is a non-negligible likelihood that BSV succeeds in orchestrating a comeback along these lines. In fact, even without a judicial finding on Satoshi’s true identity, Kleiman’s pleadings already essentially admit that Wright was integral to the creation of Bitcoin, directly bolstering BSV’s narrative and evidentiary thread.

The fact that BSV’s opponents have largely agreed to meet BSV on judicial fields of battle serves as strong precedent. In functional equivalence, and perhaps even in more formal terms, the various communities’ willingness to resort to traditional bases of jurisdiction may be seen as similar to de facto consent to jurisdiction — in a broad sense of the word. This is one of the most important and consequential battlegrounds in the bigger crypto legal war.

What does this mean? Stated plainly, once Bitcoiners agreed to subject their formal disputes to court, they signaled acquiescence to the power of aforementioned courts to resolve Bitcoin issues. For instance, the fact that the Binance CEO offered to underwrite legal expenses for Peter McCormack makes it reasonable to expect some type of formal dispute between BSV actors and, say, Binance.

Seemingly frivolous libel suits may just be delivery vehicles for litigating many other vectors of control over Bitcoin. Counter-claims (where a defendant sues a plaintiff) and cross-claims (where a defendant sues a third party who’s really the one to blame for the underlying mess) are age-old tactics for Trojan horse attacks. The fact that many security-conscious Bitcoiners are willingly submitting themselves to these attack vectors is perplexing, to put it mildly.

Thankfully, not everyone is an eager beaver about rushing to court. Ver and Buterin’s postures will be increasingly relevant here. The best counsel they can get is the same best counsel any of us can get: to stay as far away from litigation as possible.

2. War for Narrative Primacy

Whereas the legal battles are likely to draw out for decades and most likely produce unsatisfactory stalemates, the narrative blitzkrieg will be fast and vicious.

2.1 Scope of Bitcoin Narrative Wars

The war for narrative primacy is the battle for “hearts and minds” both within existing Bitcoin communities, as well as communities of adopters who are only now coming to Bitcoin. In the words of McCormack:

McCormack’s tweet, referring to CSW, subsequently deleted (original link: https://twitter.com/PeterMcCormack/status/1131217131247480833)

It turns out that “taking over” Bitcoin is not as difficult as diehard Bitcoin maximalists would have liked to believe. It begins with small steps, such as denying Bitcoin-ness to other competing Bitcoins.

This is why the BSV community doesn’t even dignify the BTC token with the “Bitcoin” name, referring to BTC as “Core.” Not to be outdone, BTC folks derisively call BCH, BSV (& other wannabe Bitcoin variants) “alts,” “Fakecoins,” and/or, “shitcoins.”

The battle for narrative primacy extends to domain names and Twitter handles as well. Bitcoin.com is controlled by the Bitcoin Cash crew, allowing newcomers to buy BCH or BTC. On Twitter, @Bitcoin is controlled by the BCH folks. Bitcoin.org is controlled by the core BTC crew, serving as an on-ramp for BTC purchases. There’s also a BitcoinCore.org which serves as a one-stop-shop for the BTC developer community.