A London court ruled on Friday that self-proclaimed Bitcoin creator Craig Wright’s lawsuit against developers of the Bitcoin network to recover billions of dollars can proceed to trial.
The court decision opens the door for a trial to determine if developers have obligations to the owners of digital assets. This could pose a significant challenge to decentralized finance if Wright is successful, according to a lawyer representing some developers.
Australian computer scientist Craig Wright is taking legal action against 15 developers with the aim of recovering around 111,000 Bitcoins, worth approximately $2.5 billion, which he lost access to when his home computer network was hacked, he claims.
Wright’s Seychelles-based company, Tulip Trading, is pursuing legal action against developers of three networks, claiming that they have a duty to create software patches to assist Tulip in retrieving the lost Bitcoin.
Tulip Trading’s case was dismissed last year, but the Court of Appeal has now ruled that developers may have obligations to owners and that this should be determined through a full trial.
According to Judge Colin Birss, Tulip Trading has a credible argument that cryptocurrency is entrusted to the network developers and they may have a responsibility, such as creating code to transfer an owner’s Bitcoin to a secure location.
Craig Wright claims that he authored the Bitcoin white paper, which introduced the technology behind digital assets, using the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008. However, this claim is highly disputed.
According to his lawyer, Felicity Potter, the ruling is a move towards a properly regulated and well-governed digital asset ecosystem, which should be embraced by both current and potential coin holders.
James Ramsden, a lawyer representing 13 of the 14 developers involved in the appeal, stated that code writers are very apprehensive about the case, which could potentially make them responsible for large amounts of money if Wright is successful.
He also mentioned that the result of the trial will have implications for all aspects of decentralized finance, including value tokens, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and the broader blockchain system.
