Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Craig Wright said he invented Bitcoin – lawyers proved him wrong

ft.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 113 posts

Re: Craig Wright said he invented Bitcoin – lawyers proved him wrong

#21

Post by greyface- »

diggan wrote: post #19
latexr wrote: post #7

> A legal notice on Wright’s website¹ now states that he is not Satoshi and that he has been ordered not to carry out any more legal proceedings based on these false claims. I can see the notice, but how does that work? Did the court order that specific phrasing and page? Have they seized the domain? Are they going to run it indefinitely? Is there anything stopping Craig from purchasing a new domain and using that? ¹…

It doesn't look like a seized domain/website, then his own personal "logo" wouldn't be there, and it would be clear some agency was behind it, but seems that has been published by himself. Skimmed through the linked court docs but didn't find anything about him being forced to publish something like this, although that would make sense if he was. Seems weird to write in 3rd person though, but wouldn't be the weirdest…

Here's one relevant court judgment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40981612

I haven't read other case documents, so it may not be the final word on the matter. In particular, it doesn't contain the actual notice text.

Re: Craig Wright said he invented Bitcoin – lawyers proved him wrong

#22

Post by chabes »

pavlov wrote: post #12
Tuna-Fish wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He attempted to sue Bitcoin core devs to alter the algorithm to hand over Satoshi's coins. On the basis that he lost the keys and that the maintainers have a duty to him to help him recover them. Every part of the lawsuit was just batshit insane. The most insane part was that an UK court allowed the lawsuit to be heard, and forced dozens of people not living in UK to pay big money to defend themselves.

While the lawsuit was insane, it serves a good reminder that when Bitcoiners proudly proclaim that “governments have no power over them”, it’s not quite that simple in lots of ways. If the governments of the world really started to believe their fiscal powers or national currencies were threatened by crypto, they have an extensive repertoire of tools to shut it down.

I disagree. This lawsuit was against a single individual. There is nothing here that is threatening to crypto as a whole.

One thing that will make it harder to regulate as time goes on is that more people will be financially involved. From traditional finance getting involved through funds, to the masses getting involved, the ecosystem has grown far beyond the fringe, and will continue to do so with each successive hype cycle. Hell, many governments themselves have skin in the game now.

I’m curious how you think serious crippling legislation or enforcement would play out.

EDIT: additional thought… this case protects the industry, not the other way around. The industry was being attacked by a fraudulent individual, and the government defended the industry.

Re: Craig Wright said he invented Bitcoin – lawyers proved him wrong

#23

Post by janandonly »

pavlov wrote: post #12
Tuna-Fish wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He attempted to sue Bitcoin core devs to alter the algorithm to hand over Satoshi's coins. On the basis that he lost the keys and that the maintainers have a duty to him to help him recover them. Every part of the lawsuit was just batshit insane. The most insane part was that an UK court allowed the lawsuit to be heard, and forced dozens of people not living in UK to pay big money to defend themselves.

While the lawsuit was insane, it serves a good reminder that when Bitcoiners proudly proclaim that “governments have no power over them”, it’s not quite that simple in lots of ways. If the governments of the world really started to believe their fiscal powers or national currencies were threatened by crypto, they have an extensive repertoire of tools to shut it down.

Governments can shut down the core developers, or at least force them into hiding and force them to use nyms (like they should do, as cypherpunks anyways).

But stopping people from downloading and running some code… well on a closed eco system like Apple App Store, sure, you can pressure a company into compliance, but how are you going to stop determined people? Who download and share code over I2P and TOR?

It’s off course true that if it really came to this globally, the price of bitcoin would probably tumble and be more compatible to other currently more privacy forward coins like Monero .

Re: Craig Wright said he invented Bitcoin – lawyers proved him wrong

#24

Post by idunnoman1222 »

meowfly wrote: post #13
Tuna-Fish wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He attempted to sue Bitcoin core devs to alter the algorithm to hand over Satoshi's coins. On the basis that he lost the keys and that the maintainers have a duty to him to help him recover them. Every part of the lawsuit was just batshit insane. The most insane part was that an UK court allowed the lawsuit to be heard, and forced dozens of people not living in UK to pay big money to defend themselves.

It looks like the UK is considering perjury and I hope they follow through and are aggressive on it. We can't have incentive structures where the upside is becoming fabulously rich but the downside is a slap on the wrist.

There was no potential upside of becoming fabulously rich. Nobody can “extract” those keys.

Re: Craig Wright said he invented Bitcoin – lawyers proved him wrong

#25

Post by pests »

idunnoman1222 wrote: post #24
meowfly wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It looks like the UK is considering perjury and I hope they follow through and are aggressive on it. We can't have incentive structures where the upside is becoming fabulously rich but the downside is a slap on the wrist.

There was no potential upside of becoming fabulously rich. Nobody can “extract” those keys.

No need to extract keys, the Bitcoin devs could just change the code. Even lock up the original and mint new ones for Craig. It's just code in the end.

Similar to how Eth changed the code to nullify the DAO hack.

Re: Craig Wright said he invented Bitcoin – lawyers proved him wrong

#27

Post by greyface- »

pests wrote: post #25
idunnoman1222 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was no potential upside of becoming fabulously rich. Nobody can “extract” those keys.

No need to extract keys, the Bitcoin devs could just change the code. Even lock up the original and mint new ones for Craig. It's just code in the end. Similar to how Eth changed the code to nullify the DAO hack.

The Ethereum DAO rollback fork was (for better or worse) widely supported by the community. It's not likely that a court-ordered fork to reassign Satoshi's coins to Wright would have anywhere near the same level of support.

Re: Craig Wright said he invented Bitcoin – lawyers proved him wrong

#28

Post by throw101010 »

pavlov wrote: post #12
Tuna-Fish wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He attempted to sue Bitcoin core devs to alter the algorithm to hand over Satoshi's coins. On the basis that he lost the keys and that the maintainers have a duty to him to help him recover them. Every part of the lawsuit was just batshit insane. The most insane part was that an UK court allowed the lawsuit to be heard, and forced dozens of people not living in UK to pay big money to defend themselves.

While the lawsuit was insane, it serves a good reminder that when Bitcoiners proudly proclaim that “governments have no power over them”, it’s not quite that simple in lots of ways. If the governments of the world really started to believe their fiscal powers or national currencies were threatened by crypto, they have an extensive repertoire of tools to shut it down.

You misunderstand the point people saying this make. They know governments can suppress their freedoms ultimately but since Bitcoin is an open and public system, the measures governments have to use to "kill" it force them to limit very fundamental freedoms (like freedom of speech to restrict the publishing of its source code, freedom to consume the energy citizens purchase and/or produce how they want, neutral access to Internet, etc.).

These kind of measures are political suicide in Western democracies, hence why politicians are seen as powerless against Bitcoin in these places, why they "let" this market grow and why they just setup ways to tax it as best as they can (at the borders between fiat and crypto).

In places where preserving such freedoms is not a burden for governments you already see bans flourish when it is convenient for the people in power... but even then, it just marginally stops the actual access to Bitcoin as a network participant (which is not limited to mining). It doesn't actually kills Bitcoin.

But everyone knows that if governments around the world decided to install massive censorship, invade the privacy of all their citizen, and magically all were in agreement to do so at the same time, Bitcoin wouldn't survive... if you think this is a possible scenario, is Bitcoin really the thing your should worry about?

Re: Craig Wright said he invented Bitcoin – lawyers proved him wrong

#30

Post by ionwake »

Simon_ORourke wrote: post #26

In fairness, anyone trying to convince me of any given fact of authorship could do well by leaving the bright red shirt and braces combo in the wardrobe.

I just don't understand why the guy claiming he is the creator and main programmer of a cutting edge anti-establishment crypto asset, would present himself as a suit and tie wearing business man who drinks champagne.

Like wtf is going on.

Post reply on HN