Self-Described Bitcoin Inventor Says He Can’t Access His Assets

Craig Wright, a man who claims he invented Bitcoin, was recently ordered by a judge in Florida to surrender around $3 billion of his holdings in the cryptocurrency, according to a report by Bloomberg. Now Wright says he might not even be able to access it.

Wright, an Australian scientist, said that he “cannot be certain that information will in fact arrive” on how he will be able to access his coins in an attempt to split them up. He also said the “private keys” to the digital coins would potentially not be available in time.

The case has been ongoing, but earlier in 2019, U.S. Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart said Wright lied, giving false documentation in the court case. Reinhart ruled that Dave Kleiman, Wright’s late partner, owned half of all the coins that Wright mined through the year 2013, and 50 percent of the intellectual property that was created.

Back then, the coins were worth about $4 billion, but the value has decreased over time. It’s still not known, however, if Wright actually has access to the coins.

Some crypto experts think Wright is a fraud, he didn’t invent Bitcoin and he doesn’t have any holdings at all. Others are concerned that if he has the coins and dumps them, then the market as a whole would be affected adversely.

“I do not intend to dump my family’s BTC as some people suspect or want, as this would hurt many people in the industry,” Wright said about his purported holdings.

The judge in the case said he found “clear and convincing evidence” showing that the encrypted trust file that contains the currency doesn’t exist and that Wright’s testimony about it was “intentionally false,” according to Vel Freedman of the law firm of Roche Freedman, who represents the Kleiman estate.