Craig Wright is currently embroiled in a billion-dollar lawsuit where he is being sued by the Kleiman estate. Recently, there was a new twist to the case after a judge ordered him to pay $165K in legal fees. The plaintiffs had been demanding $658K in legal fees but Judge Kleiman Reinhart only allowed for $165,500.
Craig Wright Lawsuit
The legal battle has been going on for over a year. He is being sued by the Kleiman estate, which claims that Wright and Kleiman were business partners. As a result, they state that half of the Bitcoin Wright claims to own belong to the Kleiman family. If indeed Wright is the father of Bitcoin, then he owns around 1.1 million Bitcoin of which the Kleiman estate wants half. To date, very few crypto investors believe Craig Wright is the creator behind Bitcoin. Industry visionaries such as Binance CEO ( Changpeng Zhao ) have called Craig Wright a scam due to the inabilities to prove he is the creator of Bitcoin.
Back in April 2019, the Binance CEO shared a tweet in which he said
“CSW is a fraud. Investing in a fraud never ends well. See below. Time will tell.”
The case has not been going well for Wright. Craig Wright has lost several times in the case after he raised legal objections, which the judge overruled. He has been ordered to provide the right documentation and testimony in the case. The plaintiffs plan to depose several fact witnesses in the ongoing case. However, the COVID-19 outbreak has meant that depositions have to be done over video. Besides that, some of the depositions have had to be rescheduled due to travel restrictions.
While COVID-19 has slowed down the court system, the judge decided to make a ruling on the case. The plaintiffs had been requesting that Wright pays $658K in legal fees but the judge decided to grant them $165K. The judge felt that the estimates presented by the plaintiffs were too high.
After his review, he decided that the expert payments were too high and thus he lowered the fees. He decided that since the experts did not provide an hourly rate or the time he spent to come up with his presentations in court, he decided to grant him $40,000 in fees.
Trending Online
Since the Judge made his ruling, it has been trending on social media and online forums. One lawyer on Twitter tweeted that while it was a lot of money Wright had to pay, the judge significantly slashed the hourly rate for the experts. Others thought that Wright was lucky for being ordered to pay just 20% of what had been originally demanded. While Wright has to pay $165K, the case continues. If he loses, he might have to pay around $5.1 billion in BTC. It is not clear if Wright plans to appeal this ruling, which would have him pay $165K by the end of this month.
Expensive Risk
If Wright is pulling everyone’s leg and he is not the father of Bitcoin, this might be one of the most expensive hoaxes in the crypto sector. Thus far, he has been unable to provide any concrete proof that he is the founder of BTC. If he is not the creator of BTC, he could simply admit it in court and end the non-sense. It’s evident that the industry has lost all interest in his self-proclaimed title. Craig Wright still has the chance to shock the industry, but many have simply discounted that risk at this point. People still believe in the fact that Bitcoin was created by Satoshi Nakamoto. Satoshi is believed to:
- Creating Bitcoin white-paper
- Developed Bitcoin
- Positioned the BTC reference implementation.
Image Source: Pixabay
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