Craig Wright Faces a Legal Conundrum as 50 Bitcoin Moves From Address He “Owns”

50 Bitcoins that have been mined in the network’s first month have just been moved from an address Craig Wright claimed he owned. The address was part of a list of 16,000 addresses delivered by the bonded courier in January this year, to which Craig claims he had lost the keys to. This poses a serious threat to the credibility of Wright’s testimony in the Kleiman trial, as both confirming and denying he was the one that moved the coins would result in perjury.

50 Bitcoin From the Satoshi Era Moved

After news about Bitcoin mined in February 2009 moved for the first time in 11 years broke, the crypto community was shaken as it opened the possibility of it being the work of Satoshi Nakamoto. However, a deep dive into the UTXO revealed that it wasn’t associated with any of the actual Satoshi Nakamoto’s known addresses, but to Craig Wright, the chief scientist at nChain who claims to be Bitcoin’s original creator.

The address from which the 50 BTC was moved earlier today was included in the list of addresses Wright claims belonged to him. The list of addresses was filed to the court as part of Wright’s trial with Ira Kleiman, who is suing Wright for half of his alleged fortune.

Craig Wright Might be Wrong

As Wright claimed multiple times throughout his trial with Kleiman that he has no way of accessing the coins in any of the addresses he provided to the court, this presents a huge problem for his defense.

If he says that it was him that has moved the coins many believe are very likely to have belonged to Satoshi Nakamoto, he could be held in contempt of court and sentenced for perjury. Among the thousands of filings in his trial, there are numerous sworn affidavits where he claims he had no way of accessing the coins.

However, if he denies having moved the coins, it would mean that the address belongs to someone else. Saying that someone had stolen the private keys would most likely be a very thin defense that probably wouldn’t stand in court.

We are yet to hear from Wright or the Kleiman estate. As of now, several prominent analysts claimed that while these are most likely not coins that have been mined by Satoshi Nakamoto, this is the first time since 2017 that funds dormant for more than 10 years have been moved.

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