5 ms·

This clown sued the bitcoin developers in May for the coins he cannot access. Anyone know what happened to that?

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
nullc 5y ago
It's still ongoing. We have a hearing scheduled for March to challenge the jurisdiction of the UK courts and move to strike out his claims. Background: Wright has sued a dozen former and current Bitcoin developers, demanding that they publish backdoored Bitcoin software to allow him to take coins which are unambiguously not his, and failing that he demands they pay him roughly $7 billion USD in damages. Obviously the case isn't even intended to be successful, it's intended to take a long time so that Wright can continue selling shares in Bitcoin he doesn't own and will never have access too, and to harass people who wouldn't aid his fraud in the process.
- betwixthewires 5y ago
  I think he's doing an interesting attack on the network: the concept is that if you can't sign a transaction then the coins aren't yours. If he can use the legal system to get around that restriction, and actually compel a fork of the bitcoin software and bitcoin network to take possession of them, he's demonstrated a security vulnerability. Of course, this attack vector would be moot if all miners were anonymous and all contributors to code were anonymous, or if all amounts and addresses were private. Maybe Craig Wright deliberately made the bitcoin blockchain transparent so he could perform this attack later (/s if it's not obvious).
  - nullc 5y ago
    Anyone can create a fork at any time whenever they want. What they can't do is get users to use their fork and call it Bitcoin. Wright has already attempted this: He has a fork of Bitcoin called "Bitcoin SV" (satoshi's vision) which he claims is the real Bitcoin and that Bitcoin is an imposter. Today it has well under 1% of Bitcoin's hashpower, well under 1$ of Bitcoin's price (and has fallen a LOT relative to Bitcoin), and it's now down to less than 40 reachable nodes. Most of the few exchanges that have ever had it have dropped it, and it has recently had suffered some extremely severe reorg attacks -- causing millions of dollars in losses to at least one exchange. For the purpose of Wright's backdoor demands miners are irrelevant. If contributors were all anonymous you'd have the problem that they might actually be wright. He's even suing former developers like me, who haven't contributed for a couple years (or more!) ... really the targets of the lawsuit don't have much connection to reality. And the more obscure you make it to get the software the more ability he'd have to just setup impersonation sites to get people to run his malicious version instead. Also, anonymity hasn't helped that much in the case of the owner of Bitcoin.org-- being anonymous just caused him to lose in a default judgement when Wright sued him because the UK will not allow an anonymous party to defend themselves. Ultimately they'll likely have to deanonymize to prevent Wright from seizing Bitcoin.org. Addresses being private wouldn't really change anything about Wright's attack. He'd still demand to be given coins just the same. In fact, as of the moment Bitcoin is anonymous enough to severely frustrate his efforts: He claims to "own" 1.1M BTC but right now he's only suing developers for a backdoor to acces 0.111M of it, because whenever he'd claimed specific addresses for more he's gotten nailed by the true owners signing messages. So right now he's only going after a smaller portion where he can be confident the current controlling party won't speak up (the bulk of those coins were stolen from MTGox and haven't moved since).
    - betwixthewires 5y ago
      There's a difference between being an anonymous owner of a domain registered at a central authority which can be compelled to turn over the domain and an anonymous contributor to a codebase which cannot be compelled to modify code if their identity is not known. The default judgment to me is a flaw in the legal system, if an anonymous party cannot defend themselves, how can an anonymous party be sued? This default judgment is a shame. The proper default judgment should've been "who exactly are you suing?" He can't demand coins he doesn't even know exist, he can't even prove the coins exist to a court without keys to show that they exist. Being private would absolutely prevent this vector, he'd have to have the keys to prove to a court he owns the coins, which means he wouldn't have to prove anything to a court, he would only have to move the coins. Interesting vector with impersonation sites, I'll have to roll that one around in my head for a while.
      - nullc 5y ago
        > owner of a domain registered at a central authority which can be compelled to turn over the domain and an anonymous contributor to a codebase Agreed. But imagine that there is no normie accessible place on the web to get non-malicious Bitcoin software. And anyone running a site distributing it is at risk if their identity is leaked. What effect is that going to have in the long run? "There are levels of survival we are prepared to accept." -- Bitcoin would survive in such a state, but I don't think it would be a great outcome. > The default judgment to me is a flaw in the legal system, if an anonymous party cannot defend themselves, how can an anonymous party be sued? This default judgment is a shame. Fully agreed. > He can't demand coins he doesn't even know exist, he can't even prove the coins exist to a court without keys to show that they exist. He's actually argued that he could just demand the developers issue more coins too. And he doesn't have keys, but that isn't slowing him down! The big legal flaw he exploits is that if you go to trial it can be extremely expensive (esp in the UK where you pay the other sides legal costs for every failed motion, and wright sticks a whole firm on his case). ... normally the expense of trial is protected against by preliminary motions like summary judgements. But in a summary judgement the court assumes all disputed facts favor the non-movant, and wright fills his cases with forgeries to makeup whatever disputed fact he needs to keep the case going. The huge volume of forgeries which require expert analysis and debunking also add massively to the cost of being in litigation with him. His goal isn't to win (though I'm sure he'd be happy if he did)-- his goal is to burn time and the opponents resources.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

It's still ongoing. We have a hearing scheduled for March to challenge the jurisdiction of the UK courts and move to strike out his claims. Background: Wright has sued a dozen former and current Bitcoin developers, demanding that they publish backdoored Bitcoin software to allow him to take coins which are unambiguously not his, and failing that he demands they pay him roughly $7 billion USD in damages. Obviously the case isn't even intended to be successful, it's intended to take a long time so that Wright can continue selling shares in Bitcoin he doesn't own and will never have access too, and to harass people who wouldn't aid his fraud in the process.

betwixthewires 5y ago
I think he's doing an interesting attack on the network: the concept is that if you can't sign a transaction then the coins aren't yours. If he can use the legal system to get around that restriction, and actually compel a fork of the bitcoin software and bitcoin network to take possession of them, he's demonstrated a security vulnerability. Of course, this attack vector would be moot if all miners were anonymous and all contributors to code were anonymous, or if all amounts and addresses were private. Maybe Craig Wright deliberately made the bitcoin blockchain transparent so he could perform this attack later (/s if it's not obvious).
- nullc 5y ago
  Anyone can create a fork at any time whenever they want. What they can't do is get users to use their fork and call it Bitcoin. Wright has already attempted this: He has a fork of Bitcoin called "Bitcoin SV" (satoshi's vision) which he claims is the real Bitcoin and that Bitcoin is an imposter. Today it has well under 1% of Bitcoin's hashpower, well under 1$ of Bitcoin's price (and has fallen a LOT relative to Bitcoin), and it's now down to less than 40 reachable nodes. Most of the few exchanges that have ever had it have dropped it, and it has recently had suffered some extremely severe reorg attacks -- causing millions of dollars in losses to at least one exchange. For the purpose of Wright's backdoor demands miners are irrelevant. If contributors were all anonymous you'd have the problem that they might actually be wright. He's even suing former developers like me, who haven't contributed for a couple years (or more!) ... really the targets of the lawsuit don't have much connection to reality. And the more obscure you make it to get the software the more ability he'd have to just setup impersonation sites to get people to run his malicious version instead. Also, anonymity hasn't helped that much in the case of the owner of Bitcoin.org-- being anonymous just caused him to lose in a default judgement when Wright sued him because the UK will not allow an anonymous party to defend themselves. Ultimately they'll likely have to deanonymize to prevent Wright from seizing Bitcoin.org. Addresses being private wouldn't really change anything about Wright's attack. He'd still demand to be given coins just the same. In fact, as of the moment Bitcoin is anonymous enough to severely frustrate his efforts: He claims to "own" 1.1M BTC but right now he's only suing developers for a backdoor to acces 0.111M of it, because whenever he'd claimed specific addresses for more he's gotten nailed by the true owners signing messages. So right now he's only going after a smaller portion where he can be confident the current controlling party won't speak up (the bulk of those coins were stolen from MTGox and haven't moved since).
  - betwixthewires 5y ago
    There's a difference between being an anonymous owner of a domain registered at a central authority which can be compelled to turn over the domain and an anonymous contributor to a codebase which cannot be compelled to modify code if their identity is not known. The default judgment to me is a flaw in the legal system, if an anonymous party cannot defend themselves, how can an anonymous party be sued? This default judgment is a shame. The proper default judgment should've been "who exactly are you suing?" He can't demand coins he doesn't even know exist, he can't even prove the coins exist to a court without keys to show that they exist. Being private would absolutely prevent this vector, he'd have to have the keys to prove to a court he owns the coins, which means he wouldn't have to prove anything to a court, he would only have to move the coins. Interesting vector with impersonation sites, I'll have to roll that one around in my head for a while.
    - nullc 5y ago
      > owner of a domain registered at a central authority which can be compelled to turn over the domain and an anonymous contributor to a codebase Agreed. But imagine that there is no normie accessible place on the web to get non-malicious Bitcoin software. And anyone running a site distributing it is at risk if their identity is leaked. What effect is that going to have in the long run? "There are levels of survival we are prepared to accept." -- Bitcoin would survive in such a state, but I don't think it would be a great outcome. > The default judgment to me is a flaw in the legal system, if an anonymous party cannot defend themselves, how can an anonymous party be sued? This default judgment is a shame. Fully agreed. > He can't demand coins he doesn't even know exist, he can't even prove the coins exist to a court without keys to show that they exist. He's actually argued that he could just demand the developers issue more coins too. And he doesn't have keys, but that isn't slowing him down! The big legal flaw he exploits is that if you go to trial it can be extremely expensive (esp in the UK where you pay the other sides legal costs for every failed motion, and wright sticks a whole firm on his case). ... normally the expense of trial is protected against by preliminary motions like summary judgements. But in a summary judgement the court assumes all disputed facts favor the non-movant, and wright fills his cases with forgeries to makeup whatever disputed fact he needs to keep the case going. The huge volume of forgeries which require expert analysis and debunking also add massively to the cost of being in litigation with him. His goal isn't to win (though I'm sure he'd be happy if he did)-- his goal is to burn time and the opponents resources.