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Comment by tomglynch | Hacker News Reader

Seems it was proven he doesn't own those bitcoins, so he's meant to be handing over half of nothing, which is still nothing.

Edit: My statement is incorrect. The amount of bitcoins Craig Wright has access to was not determined in the case, but potentially could be none.

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How could you possibly prove that he doesn't own those bitcoins? You can prove control, but not lack of ownership unless you just burn the coins.

Well, he has been claiming to own them. So the court ordered him to hand over half. I guess he could now try to convince the court that he doesn't own them.

He failed to prove that he’s the inventor of Bitcoin. That doesn’t prove that he isn’t.

If he was though, it'd have various implications such as it not being difficult to prove he had access to his own private keys.

I can imagine you might be the guy and not want to prove it, or it to be known. But actively claiming to be the guy and not proving it indisputibly when you could... what'd be the point?

Besides having private keys to early wallets, my #1 reason to not believe him is his arrogance and loving attention. The Nakamoto(s) that wrote the white paper and spoke on forums about it was/were very anonymous and privacy-obsessed.

Wright tried to prove that he doesn't control the bitcoins he mined prior to 2013 due to blind trusts, secret sharing schemes and various other excuses. The court ruled that this story is hogwash.

The actual situation is this: Wright does not control those bitcoins, because he is not Satoshi Nakamoto, just a conman.

He tried to explain the fact that he can't control them with the nonsense story about blind trusts, which the court soundly rejected for being a very obvious lie.

The court never decided on whether or not he was Satoshi Nakamoto, as both parties are happy to proceed on the assumption that he is.

Expanding on that, from TFA:

"Reinhart said at the start of his ruling the court “is not required to decide, and does not decide” whether Wright is Nakamoto, and the court was not required to decide and did not decide how much bitcoin Wright controls today."

Money quote:

"I completely reject Dr. Wright’s testimony about the alleged Tulip Trust, the alleged encrypted file, and his alleged inability to identify his bitcoin holdings.

Dr. Wright’s story not only was not supported by other evidence in the record, it defies common sense and real-life experience."

The Judge goes on to dismantle Wrights claims. He does not believe one bit of this fairy tail.

He claims to have them, but not have access to them, as part of a team who invented BTC. This court case awards half of his alleged holdings to the beneficiaries of the estate of his alleged partner.

His ownership of the coins or the validity of his claim to be Satoshi never came up in this case AFAICT...

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