The MtGox civil rehabilitation trustee recently submitted a draft rehabilitation plan for distributing the assets of MtGox. The plan is not final and is currently being reviewed by the Japanese court, following which it will also need to be voted on by all creditors, and after that the practical matters of registering for payouts needs to happen, so this does not mean payouts are imminent or that the trustee is about to dump coins on the market. This always has to be explicitly pointed out as some so-called journalists love spreading FUD about this for clicks. I have followed the MtGox bankruptcy and civil rehabilitation process closely since its beginning, in addition to extensively investigating the MtGox collapse itself. While the rehabilitation plan is meant to be for creditor discussion only, I feel compelled to publicly counter some of the bad takes and outright lies and misinformation being spread on this topic. If you are a MtGox creditor, I’ll lat...

I've recently been repeatedly asked about the theft of 80,000 BTC from MtGox in early 2011, as initially reported in a 2016  The Daily Beast article , and specifically how it relates to the address  1FeexV6bAHb8ybZjqQMjJrcCrHGW9sb6uF . Rather than address every question individually, I will briefly summarize what's known about this in a blog post. Background For a quick refresher course on the various incidents and thefts from MtGox, see my 2017 presentation on the topic. In short, there were multiple different thefts from MtGox, including but not limited to: The main theft, responsible for over 600,000 BTC gradually stolen throughout 2011–2013, began when the hot wallet was stolen on September 11, 2011. Approximately 2,000 BTC was stolen and the market was crashed after someone gained access to the admin account of original owner Jed McCaleb in June 2011. A side wallet containing 300,000 BTC was stolen from Mark Karpelès' computer in May 2011 (these funds were returned by...

With a decisive ruling by Judge Reinhart during the August 26 hearing into contempt of court by Craig Wright in the lawsuit brought by Dave Kleiman's estate, the case is more or less over after the judge imposed significant sanctions against Wright. Let's dig into what went down during this hearing. Background If you need to catch up on what this trial is about, check out the three previous entries in this blog series: Kleiman v Craig Wright: The bitcoins that never were Kleiman v Craig Wright, part 2 Kleiman v Craig Wright, part 3 Kleiman v Craig Wright, part 4  In particular, the part 4 blog post is still fresh at the time of this writing, so I'll skip summarizing the case here. The August 26 hearing Following the previous hearings, during which witnesses for both sides as well as Craig Wright himself were heard, the August 26 hearing was scheduled to hear closing arguments from both sides and a possible ruling by Judge Reinhart, the judge presiding over the discovery pr...

It's getting hard to keep up with all the developments around Craig Wright, though thankfully more and more people are investigating and reporting on Twitter and elsewhere, freeing up just enough time for a few deep dives. Let's dig into the August 5 evidentiary hearing in the Kleiman v Wright lawsuit in Florida, with testimony from Steve Shadders, CTO of nChain, and Matthew Edman, expert witness for the plaintiff. Background For starters, check out the three previous entries in this blog series: Kleiman v Craig Wright: The bitcoins that never were Kleiman v Craig Wright, part 2 Kleiman v Craig Wright, part 3 The case is already very intricate due to the many developments and information that's surfaced so far (see earlier posts for additional backstory), but the main points are: Ira Kleiman is the brother of Dave Kleiman, a computer forensics expert that, following his death in 2013, has achieved fame as someone Craig Wright claims helped him develop Bitcoin. After Dave di...

There has been much reporting on the recent June 28th hearing in the case of Ira Kleiman v. Craig Wright, where the latter testified in person for the first time. Several reporters attended the hearing and relayed baffling events, but those of us who have been following the case were anxious to get a direct look at exactly how things played out. With the court transcript and exhibits in hand, let's go on that journey together. Background For starters, check out the two previous entries in this blog series: Kleiman v Craig Wright: The bitcoins that never were Kleiman v Craig Wright, part 2 Craig Wright has for years now been claiming to be Bitcoin inventor Satoshi Nakamoto, and despite those claims being widely and thoroughly discredited by numerous experts (see Jameson Lopp's excellent write-up of some of the holes in Wright's claims), Wright remains financially backed by a small group of people like Calvin Ayre and retains a small but dedicated following online for his BS...