Craig Wright is suing 16 blockchain developers of the Bitcoin Satoshi Vision (BSV) ecosystem, Bitcoin Core (BTC), Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and Bitcoin Cash ABC (ABC), Reuters has learned, citing a lawsuit filed at London's High Court.
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Wright demands that developers provide him with 111,000 bitcoins (EXANTE: Bitcoin) stored in two digital addresses for which he does not have private keys. He also claims he lost the encrypted keys when his home computer network was attacked by hackers back in February 2020.
Wright claims that developers have breached their duties to act in the best interests of the rightful owner of globally-traded assets.
"Our client has always maintained that he created bitcoin to operate within existing laws and that in the event of loss or theft, where legitimate ownership can be proven, the developers have a duty to ensure recovery," said partner at law firm Ontier, Paul Ferguson.
However, one of the defendants, Peter Todd, says that he and the others were not involved in the day-to-day development of the network. Todd also said that Wright failed to prove his ownership over the bitcoins, and added that bitcoin should not be subject to "arbitrary confiscation."
In May 2020, over 140 bitcoin-addresses with first transactions dated back to 2009, collectively signed a message accusing Craig Wright of fraud. The owners (or the owner) of the addresses said that Craig Steven Wright "is a liar and a fraud" as he had not had the keys to sign the message. Prior to that, Wright claimed that the addresses belonged to him as he is the true creator of the bitcoin technology.
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