This could well get interesting, with some wide ranging ramifications. Dr Craig S Wright - The Man Who Would Be Satoshi Nakamoto - has won his opportunity for (another) day in court. Indeed what could easily turn out to be weeks or months in fact.
LONDON (Reuters) - Self-proclaimed bitcoin creator Craig Wright's lawsuit against bitcoin network developers to try to recover billions of dollars can continue to trial, a London court said on Friday.
The ruling paves the way for a trial on whether developers owe duties to the owners of digital assets – which a lawyer representing some developers said could pose a fundamental challenge to decentralised finance if Wright won.
Australian computer scientist Wright is suing 15 developers in an effort to retrieve around 111,000 bitcoin – currently worth about $2.5 billion – after he lost the encrypted keys to access them when his home computer network was allegedly hacked.
Wright’s Seychelles-based company Tulip Trading is taking legal action against the developers of three networks, arguing they are obliged to write software patches to help Tulip recover the bitcoin.
Tulip’s case was thrown out last year, but the Court of Appeal ruled on Friday that developers arguably do owe duties to owners, which should be determined at a full trial.
Judge Colin Birss said Tulip had a realistic argument that cryptocurrency is “entrusted” to network developers, who could therefore have a duty to, for example, “introduce code so that an owner’s bitcoin can be transferred to safety”.
Wright says he wrote the bitcoin white paper which first outlined the technology behind the digital assets under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008, however the claim is hotly disputed.
Don't get too excited though. On current schedules the case won't be heard until 2024 at the earliest. In the meantime the full judgement of the Appeal Court is available here (PDF).