An early Bitcoin adopter has recently proved he owns a BTC address that self-proclaimed Satoshi Nakamoto Craig Wright claimed to own in a high-profile lawsuit. The address itself, at one point, held 160,000 bitcoins in it.
In the Kleiman v. Wright case, in which the Kleiman family sued Craig Wright over the alleged manipulation of the inheritance of the now deceased Dave Kleiman, who worked together with Wright on bitcoin in its early days, the Kleiman estate accuses Wright of stealing over 1.1 million bitcoins.
In the case, various documents were submitted as evidence. One, known as Exhibit 11, includes various early bitcoin addresses allegedly used in a trust held in the United Kingdom, that was to be kept untouched until regulations on BTC and cryptocurrencies were clearer.
Recently the owner of one of the bitcoin addresses listed posted a message on Memo, a microblogging platform built on Bitcoin Cash, claiming ownership of the addresses and claiming it doesn’t belong to Satoshi Nakamoto or Craig Wright.
The message, coming from bitcoin address 16cou7Ht6WjTzuFyDBnht9hmvXytg6XdVT, reads:
Address 16cou7Ht6WjTzuFyDBnht9hmvXytg6XdVT does not belong to Satoshi or to Craig Wright.
Craig is a liar and a fraud.
The addresses’ legitimate owner included a signature that allows users to validate that the person who sent it out does indeed control its private keys. Various cryptocurrency users validated the signature, confirming the person who sent it out controls the 16cou address.
On Reddit, blockchain developer Mark Lundeberg posted an image that shows he used the Electron Cash wallet to verify the signature.
Notably various users believe the address belongs to Bitcoin.com CEO Roger Ver, who’s a well-known Bitcoin Cash supporter, and who has called Craig Wright a “liar and a fraud,” and been sued because of it. Other possibilities include Mt Gox traders or early BTC adopters.
A Controversial Bitcoin Address
The owner of the bitcoin address coming forward in claiming he isn’t Craig Wright is notable as, a document from the case called Exhibit 4, describes an encounter that’s said to have occurred on October 13, 2011, in which Wright’s attorney swore by oath the self-proclaimed Satoshi Nakamoto showed him he could be controlling the address.
In the document, the lawyer wrote that on his HTC smartphone Wright he was able to see the 16cou address. The document reads:
I viewed the Bitcoin wallet addresses by scrolling down on the screen of the Wright mobile. It appeared to me that if Mr Wright wanted to, he could control all of, and make transactions in, the Bitcoin wallet addresses.
The case is, however, only becoming more complex. Recently on social media Calvin Ayre, the CEO of CoinGeek and a Bitcoin SV supporter, has said that by May 21 he hopes to have significant proof Craig Wright is Satoshi Nakamoto.
