England and Wales High Court ruled Mr. Wright’s claims about alleged hack of his company’s crypto simply can’t be tried “on the merits of the claim”
Yesterday (25 March 2022), UK High Court Judge and Senior Judicial Commissioner Valerie Falk, DBE, ruled out that Seychelles-based Tulip Trading Limited, a company of self-proclaimed Bitcoin (BTC) inventor Craig Wright, n has no legal basis to sue the core developers of Bitcoin (BTC) for its alleged February 2020 hack.
Yet another failure for Craig Wright?
As per the text of the court order unveiled by the official England and Wales High Court portal, the judge clearly dismissed the claims by Craig Wright.
CSW has accused a number of veteran bitcoin (BTC) developers, including its three senior managers, Wladimir van der Laan, Pieter Wuille, Jonas Schnelli, of refusing to “take steps to allow TTL to regain control of assets “. Meanwhile, it remains unclear whether a hack occurred as alleged: the “stolen” assets are dormant, per a court order.
Dame Falk stressed that even if the hack did occur and resulted in huge losses for Mr. Wright, the defendants could not be held accountable for refusal to assist him in bringing back his money by affecting network integrity:
The fact that the BSV network may be about to make a system change to accommodate the loss of access to private keys (…) does not mean that such a change, whether general or specific to TTL, can be imposed on others.
Also, Bitcoin (BTC) veterans should not bear responsibility for failure to implement security mechanisms to protect Bitcoiners (BTC) from key losses.
As such, the court ordered that CSW’s claims cannot even qualify as legal claims:
TTL has not established a serious issue to be tried on the merits of the claim. In those circumstances the appropriate order is to set aside the order of Deputy Master Nurse granting permission to serve the claim form out of the jurisdiction, and to set aside service of the claim form.
First reactions: “It may finally be over”
Largely Crypto Twitter slammed CSW claims and applauded the ironic tone of the court order and the thorough understanding of what blockchain is, as demonstrated by the judge:
I would say that Mrs Justice Falk has got amongst it very much better than some thought might happen. The judgment is well reasoned & well presented.
WizSec, a blockchain-focused cybersecurity team, scoffed at claims about their lack of formal logic:
As such, CSW threatened and filed a lawsuit over breach of duty, but not only does the duty not exist, by his own updated argument the *breach* hadn’t happened yet either, and wouldn’t happen until the court ruled in his favor.
BitMEX Research, the R&D arm of the BitMEX crypto ecosystem, is certain this could be the final court ruling for CSW and his attorney, Calvin Ayre, in a year-long saga.
By press time, both Craig Wright and Calvin Ayre have kept silence on whether the court order will be appealed—restraining from commenting on the case.
What does this mean for Web3 regulation?
First, the order looks like a complete failure for Craig Wright: in fact, the court dismissed his claims on a technicality, not on legal grounds.
The mentioned ruling is among the first documents that legally confirm that blockchain developers and maintainers cannot be held accountable for private keys issues.
This is what decentralization is all about: the motto “not your keys, not your crypto” is somehow endorsed by the High Court of England and Wales. And it goes far beyond being another chapter in the “CSW vs. Bitcoiners” drama.
