By
Kseniia Klichova
May 3rd, 2024
50 Bitcoins mined in 2009 were transferred to an unknown address. Some members of the cryptocurrency community believe that the creator of the digital asset Satoshi Nakamoto moved the 50 BTC. Or was is Craig Wright? Spoiler: No.
If you thought that the ‘real Satoshi’ soap opera came to its end, let us cheer you up. Or, should we say – let the fake Satoshi cheers you up. Ladies and gentlemen, turn off the Netflix, Hulu and YouTube. Leave all your do-it-yourself home projects and throw that banana bread in the garbage bin. One and only Craig Wright is back with his stories about BTC.
Yesterday we wrote of somebody moving 50 Bitcoins from one address to another. Nothing would be too weird if those Bitcoins weren’t the ones mined back in February 2009. Some optimists were already seeing Satoshi’s poltergeist doing stuff but the big secret was revealed – sort of.
Immediately after this transfer happened, our Craig felt the need to tweet:
https://twitter.com/Crypto_Bitlord/status/1263142831423549443
However, today we got a new story (as in every soap worth of watching and crying)/ Bitcoin SV’s billionaire benefactor and the Wright’s wingman Calvin Ayre stated Craig denied moving 50 BTC from a long-dormant address thought by some to belong to the Bitcoin founder.
He said:
“It was NOT Satoshi, I just spoke with him and Craig confirmed not him.”
Schroedinger’s Cat Case: Craig Wright and 50 BTC
Ok. Let’s clear one thing out. It wasn’t Satoshi (therefore it might be Wright) or it isn’t Wright (then it might be Satoshi)?
The thing is, that Wright was close to Satoshi and yes, he may have known all the codes and keys in order to do such thing, Also, we checked and the address in question, 17XiVVooLcdCUCMf9s4t4jTExacxwFS5uh, is amidst the 16,000 addresses listed in a court document in the Kleinman v. Wright case, that Wright claims as his own.
And even though some media called this situation a Catch-22, we think it’s much closer to Schroedinger’s cat case. Wright could or couldn’t transfer these Bitcoins, depending on whether he lied on the court he lost the keys or he didn’t lie. Just for reminder, he has denied in court he has access to the private keys to the addresses, so if he said he moved the 50 BTC that would mean he was lying. And if you’ve watched at least one episode of Judge Judy, you could conclude he could be in pretty deep sh** if that is true. On the other hand if it is someone else who transferred the coins, that would mean that this address is not his, again leaving him in a potentially sticky legal situation.
Ok, let’s not forget that there are several other people that knew what is Satoshi up to and may have had the keys. One of them was for sure, late Hal Finney. However, his wife Fran said that situation is pretty odd adding that “these were not coins my husband mined and we had nothing to do with this.”
Late Finney, Malmi, Hayner Didn’t Do It
Hal Finney died from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, in 2014. Finney’s wife Fran works with the ALS Association, an organization devoted to finding a cure for this dreadful disease.
Martti Malmi, also one of Bitcoin’s earliest developers, also denied moving the BTC.
Neither it was Marshall Hayner who also alluded that he did not move the coins even though he added that if it was him, he wouldn’t admit nevertheless.
The wallet address is not one associated with the Bitcoin creator, but the 11-year gap in activity still caused a 4% drop in BTC price to $9,363 at the time of writing.
Let’s go back to Wright though. Back in 2018, he posted almost an apocalyptic warning on Slack, explaining in detail how he’d be selling a “large volume of BTC” around the time of a halving that would tank the price.
One thing we have to admit to him – he is making our corona/lockout/quarantine days much more interesting. However, if it really was him to do this, we doubt that $486,000 was worth losing your freedom.