Craig Wright has filed a lawsuit against the developers of Bitcoin Core and Bitcoin Cash, demanding to return him access to two wallets, one of which is associated with the hacking of the MtGox exchange.
Self-proclaimed "creator of Bitcoin" Craig Wright has filed a lawsuit in the High Court of London against the developers of two projects: Bitcoin Core and Bitcoin Cash through the law firm Ontier LLP. Wright's Tulip Trading Ltd demanded access to two wallets that hold 31,000 BTC and 79,957 BTC, according to the document. The larger wallet is linked to the 2014 hack of the MtGox exchange.
Wright claims that last February, hackers stole the private keys for these two addresses and deleted copies of the keys on Craig Wright's computer. Therefore, Wright cannot access the bitcoins at these addresses, which he managed on behalf of Tulip Trading. Despite the fact that Bitcoin Core developers do not control other people's wallets, Wright demands that the developers hand over the keys to him.
The Bitcoin.org administrator, alias CobraBitcoin, said that Wright has already filed a lawsuit against Bitcoin Core and Bitcoin Cash developers. Wright tries to intimidate them, threatening them with litigation, bankruptcy and "destruction of lives." Cobra writes that by his actions, Wright interferes with the productive work of developers and harms the technical progress of Bitcoin. Cobra urged the community to unite and ensure that people contributing to the development of Bitcoin Core are not bullied by Wright.
Interestingly, Cobra's screenshot of the claim header lists Craig Wright himself as the plaintiff and one of the main developers of Bitcoin, Cory Fields, while Wright's BItcoin Association is among the defendants. Such an obvious error can indicate both an error of a judicial officer and that the document is fake.
In any case, Wright's claims look like another attempt to remind of himself. It is technically impossible to fulfill Wright's requirements - Bitcoin developers cannot transfer keys and withdraw funds from addresses that do not belong to them. To gain control of these funds, a 51% attack will be required on the Bitcoin network to reorganize the history of the blockchain. The cost of the attack would cost several billion dollars. Developers can try to fork Bitcoin, but this will be just another fork that will not be accepted by miners, exchanges or the user community. Not surprisingly, Wright's claims are taken with a grain of salt, and many lawyers believe that Wright's lawsuit is inherently doomed to failure.
Last month, Wright demanded that the administrators of bitcoin.org and bitcoincore.org remove the Bitcoin White Paper from their resources. But Bitcoin.org has refused to remove the Bitcoin documentation.