Craig Wright Ordered to Pay $5 Billion in BTC, Warns of Impending Dump

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Craig Wright, the self-proclaimed investor of Bitcoin and the head of Bitcoin SV, has been ordered to pay out $5 billion in Bitcoin to his former, deceased, business partner’s estate after a lengthy courtroom battle. 

Wright was found to have forged papers, and lied in court, essentially perjuring himself, which left the judge no option but to rule in favour of Ira Kleinman, the brother of Dave Kleinman. This ruling now sees Wright have to hand over half of the suspected 1.1 million BTC that he and Dave mined prior to Dec. 31, 2013, as well as 50 percent of the intellectual property that Wright owned prior to Dec. 31, 2013.

This figure, in today’s market, equates to roughly $5 billion dollars. The concern is that this money being handed over to Kleinman comes with a tax caveat as, in Florida, it comes attached with estate tax of 40 percent. The 40 percent figure - about $2 billion, will more than likely come from a sell off into the Bitcoin market which Wright warns could tank the price of the major cryptocurrency. 

An on-going case

The case for David Kleinman’s Bitcoin began in February of 2018 when his brother took it to court to try and get back what he felt his brother was owned due to Wright and Kleinman’s early mining of Bitcoin.

The court battle was a combative one with Wright trying a number of tacts to get the motion thrown out - including forgery and lying. However, none of these tacts worked and earlier this week, a judge ruled in favour of the Kleinman estate.

Wright is now expected to hand over $5 billion worth in Bitcoin to the estate, but this, according to the self-proclaimed Bitcoin investor, could have major repercussions for the market. 

A massive dump

Speaking soon after the courtroom decision was made, Wright warned that a $2 billion dump onto the Bitcoin market may well be expected as it is unlikely that Kleinman has that much money to pay in taxes and would need to cash out Bitcoin to get it. 

He spoke with Modern Consensus:

“They might have to convince Ira not to dump it. I can’t convince him not to dump it. Ira has to do what Ira has to do. And it wouldn’t have been me. And I don’t need it. He does,” explained Wright.

“If you’d left me alone, I would have sat on my fucking money and you wouldn’t have to worry. And the biggest whale ever has to dump because he has to pay tax. It’s not a transfer. Florida has an estate tax. Trust me. This is not an outcome I would have liked. I own a lot of BTC. Dave should have owned 320,000 and I should have had 800,000 and now it’s 50/50. At the end of the day, that’s not a good thing for BTC,” he added.
 

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