Category: Bitcoin BSV

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Bitcoin Bitcoin BSV Crypto News

Self-Proclaimed ‘Satoshi’ Claims Victory Against Bitcoin Podcaster, Awarded Damages of £1

Dr Craig Wright, the self-proclaimed inventor of Bitcoin, has claimed victory in a defamation lawsuit against popular British Bitcoin podcaster Peter McCormack. “Faketoshi”, as he is known in Bitcoin circles, was awarded £1 for advancing “deliberately false evidence”:

Evidence Found to be False

The host of the What Bitcoin Did podcast was sued for his comments in which he described Wright as a “fraud” and “liar” in relation to persistent claims that he was indeed the founder of Bitcoin.

UK High Court Judge Martin Chamberlain ruled against McCormack, finding that the podcaster had caused “serious harm” to Wright’s reputation since he was apparently disinvited to speak at various events and conferences.

The judge, however, determined that since Wright had “advanced a deliberately false case and put forward deliberately false evidence until days before trial, he [would] recover only nominal damages”. On that basis, the court found that there would be “no injustice” in awarding the paltry sum of sum of £1:

Summary of judgement. Source: WuCoin

Not the End for Wright

In a statement distributed by his lawyers, Wright said: “I intend to appeal the adverse findings of the judgment in which my evidence was clearly misunderstood.”

Australian-born Wright remains a constant source of derision and controversy within the Bitcoin community. Last year, he won a copyright lawsuit over the Bitcoin whitepaper and later sued a former partner over claims he was entitled to Satoshi’s 1.1 million bitcoins.

McCormack took to Twitter to celebrate the result, saying:

As some of you will now have seen, the judgment in my trial v Dr Craig Wright has now been handed down. I want to thank my lawyers for their diligent work on the case. I also want to thank Justice Chamberlain for this result. We are very pleased with his findings. Please do note that the process is not complete and therefore I will not be commenting further on this. Once the entire process is complete, there will be others I will be thanking.

Peter McCormack, host, What Bitcoin Did podcast

The Bitcoin community celebrated the favourable result, pointing to Wright’s history of plagiarism, forgery and false evidence:

This comes at a time where his hard forked token BSV has less than 2 percent of bitcoin’s market capitalisation and has been delisted from most exchanges due to a lack of security:

With several other cases on the go and an appeal imminent, litigious Wright will likely remain in the headlines for the foreseeable future.

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Bitcoin BSV Crypto News Crypto.com Hackers Security

Crypto.com Suspends Withdrawals Following ‘Unauthorised Activity’ on User Accounts

Crypto.com suspended withdrawals this week after a small number of users reporting suspicious activity on their accounts, claiming “all funds are safe” – but not before security firm Peckshield reported losses amounting to “about US$15 million”.

Several Customers Report ‘Thefts’

The Singapore-based exchange stopped withdrawals on January 17 in response to several “thefts” reported by customers. One of them was Dogecoin (DOGE) founder Billy Markus, who noticed a suspicious transaction pattern on Etherscan.

Several hours later, Crypto.com issued an update advising users were required to sign back into their accounts and reset their two-factor authentication (2FA).

However, crypto enthusiast and jeweller Ben Baller claimed his account had been breached to the tune of 4.28 ETH (about US$15,000). Baller tweeted he had used 2FA to sign back in, so it appears the perpetrators must have bypassed some of Crypto.com’s security features:

At around 16:00 UTC, Crypto.com CEO Kris Marszalek tweeted that final checks were being made prior to withdrawals being resumed within the following hour, reiterating that “all funds were safe”.

Not Your Keys, Not Your Coins

In July last year, exchanges suspended Bitcoin SV (BSV) following double-spending attacks registered on the coin’s network. Developers of the BSV network had identified a wallet address that was linked with a history of illegal activities, including ransomware. The attacker had tried to mask double-spending of coins by causing block re-organisation attacks, which usually occurs when miners work together to remove previously confirmed blocks from the blockchain.

And just last month, centralised US crypto exchange BitMart was hit by one of the most devastating hacks to date, draining a combination of cryptocurrencies. The losses were estimated to be around US$200 million by security firm PeckShield, who – as in this week’s Crypto.com case – picked it up as it was happening.

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Bitcoin Bitcoin BSV Crypto News Cryptocurrency Law

Self-Proclaimed ‘Satoshi’ Craig Wright Cleared of Charges, But Liable for $100 Million

A US federal jury has found that Australian businessman Craig Wright – who not only credits himself as the inventor of Bitcoin but also claims to be Satoshi Nakamoto, its pseudonymous creator – owes US$100 million in compensatory damages to a company founded by his former friend and associate, the late Dave Kleiman.

Wright testified that Kleiman had helped him edit a white paper that explained the foundation of Bitcoin, but he insisted the two weren’t business partners. Kleiman died in 2013, and his brother Ira brought the federal civil lawsuit on behalf of Kleiman’s estate and the company he founded, W&K Info Defense Research.

“I feel remarkably happy and vindicated,” Wright said after the verdict was announced. “I am not a fraud, and I never have been.” He added that he had offered Kleiman’s estate “US$12 million many years ago, which if [they] had taken then in bitcoin, when it was $200, and kept it – you can do the math”.

Asked to comment specifically on the verdict against W&K, Wright said it means that “I owe my ex-wife more money” – referring to the fact that Ira Kleiman’s control of W&K is being challenged in a county court. Both Wright’s ex-wife and current wife claim to control a third of W&K and are suing Ira Kleiman, alleging he didn’t have authority to bring the federal suit. Those cases have been on hold pending the outcome of the federal suit.

Case Sets Historical Crypto Precedent

Vel Freedman, representing the plaintiffs, also approved of the verdict: “We just won $100 million!” Though a long way short of what he’d sought – up to $36 billion for the value of bitcoin in dispute, $126 billion for intellectual property and $17 billion in punitive damages – Freedman said the verdict set “a historical precedent in the innovative and transformative industry of cryptocurrency and blockchain”.

What follows is an edited extract of the joint statement released by Freedman and his legal colleagues:

We are immensely gratified [this verdict reflects] that Craig Wright wrongfully took bitcoin-related assets from W&K. Years ago, Wright told the Kleiman family that he and Dave Kleiman developed revolutionary Bitcoin-based intellectual property. Despite those admissions, Wright refused to give the Kleimans their fair share and instead took those assets for himself.

Vel Freedman, Roche Freedman

Earlier this year, the London High Court granted a default judgment in Wright’s favour for copyright infringement against “Cøbra”, the pseudonymous operator and publisher of the bitcoin.org website. Wright had sued Cøbra for unlawfully publishing the Bitcoin whitepaper “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System”.

Aside from legal costs, the order required that “Cøbra” remove the whitepaper and put a notice on its website informing visitors of the default judgment for a period of six months. That deadline elapses at the end of December.

As for the default judgment itself, to the order of US$48,400, it’s not clear if Wright offered to share the spoils with the Kleiman estate. In any case, the $100 million in compensation won this week makes it look like pocket change.

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Australia Bitcoin BSV Blockchain Industries

Aussie Tech Startup ‘Tokenized’ Launches API to Help Developers with Smart Contracts

Tokenized is an Australian startup aiming to change the way capital markets work by leveraging blockchain and smart contracts. It has recently launched its API that allows anyone to plug into its service to use smart contracts and tokenised instruments.

Smart Contract API for Developers

The API for Tokenized, a smart contracting platform believed to be the “first practical step forward towards building out a smart contract-based global financial system”, has been made available. The platform-as-a-service (PaaS) will release a host of services for users who want to build “banking-grade, and feature-rich, apps with embedded smart contracts and token services”.

Building Your Business on the Blockchain

The platform fully utilises the Bitcoin SV network for its low transaction fees and high transaction throughput at 10,000 transactions per second, allowing both public and private entities as the basis for its blockchain-based applications. It joins the ranks of other Aussie companies leveraging the BSV network, such as Progressive Minerals, a mining company using the Bitcoin SV network (BSV) to build its new blockchain-based infrastructure.

The platform allows users to draft, manage, and execute smart contracts with no code. Some of the features even allow for the recovery of users’ funds if they lose their keys through an identity and authority oracle.

Users can build a business, brands, or even a front-end supported with all the associated Bitcoin, token, smart contract and compliance-related tech. There are various built-in security add-ons such as KYC, multifactor authentication systems, vaults, and lockboxes to assure the safety of future users.

Who Can Benefit From Tokenized?

Tokenized is capable of working with any organisation, or individual, around the world interested in issuing smart contracts and tokens on a distributed ledger.

The Tokenized platform’s design has been generalised to account for all of the key features required of any type of agreement and the associated legal instruments. In other words, any use case that requires entities working together can benefit from utilising the solution.

James Belding, CEO, Tokenized

Any business that would like to issue digital assets (loyalty points, coupons, tickets, etc) to improve customers’ user experience can benefit. The interoperability of an on-chain token system can open up new ways of engaging and rewarding customers on social media while lowering engagement resistance.

Example of an event ticket smart contract being drafted.

Tokenization is an increasingly useful solution for businesses to distribute digital or even real-world assets. Property in Australia has recently been tokenised in an attempt to lower barriers to entry for investors.

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Bitcoin BSV Crypto News Hackers

BSV Reportedly Suffers Another ‘Massive’ 51% Attack

Bitcoin Satoshi Vision (BSV) suffered another 51% attack on August 3, around 11:46 am Eastern Time Zone, as confirmed by analytics provider Coin Metrics.

The attack resulted in a catastrophic event for the network, which already had gained a bad reputation in the crypto space. An unidentified group reportedly reorganised over 100 blocks, creating three versions of the chain and mining them simultaneously.

Coin Metrics confirmed the attack after Lucas Nuzzi, an active member of the crypto community on Twitter, shared the news:

The attack continued for 12 hours, and was ongoing at press time. At first it was reported that 14 blocks were reorganised, but that number now amounts to over 100, according to Nikita Zhavoronkov. The BSV price – which was already in a downtrend – lost 7 percent in the last 24 hours, reaching lows of US$133.

Bitcoin Association Responds

The Bitcoin Association responded by recommending node operators to “mark the fraudulent chain as invalid”, which, according to the association, will return their nodes to the “chain supported by honest miners”.

However, some people were not convinced:

This attack further stains the image of BSV, created and promoted by Australian programmer Craig Wright. The protocol was originally intended to be an immutable ledger that would overcome Bitcoin’s original protocol limitations.

However, several exchanges have been delisting BSV in response to the continuous 51 percent network attacks.

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Australia Bitcoin Bitcoin BSV Crypto News

Exchanges Suspend BSV Deposits and Withdrawals Following 51% Network Attack

Exchanges are suspending Bitcoin SV (BSV) following double-spending attacks registered on the coin’s network.

According to a blog post, developers of the BSV network identified a wallet address that was linked with a history of illegal activities, such as ransomware. The attacker tried to mask double-spending of coins by causing block re-organisation attacks – which usually occurs when miners work together to remove previously confirmed blocks from the blockchain.

A malicious actor has recently been carrying out block re-organisation attacks on the Bitcoin SV network, which appear to be intentional acts in an effort to mask the illegal double-spending of coins.

Bitcoin Association blog post

According to analyst Lyn Alden, forked networks like Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin SV are susceptible to these types of attacks as BSV has only 0.5 percent of Bitcoin’s hash rate.

Rough Year for BSV

BTC-forked blockchains have suffered from the same vulnerability since they were created. Ironically, the coins were made with the intention to shore up the vulnerability of the main network. Allegedly, developers have tried to contact law enforcement to take legal action against the hackers.

Bitcoin Association intends to file reports with appropriate law enforcement authorities and work with affected parties to pursue all available legal remedies. Since first identifying the malicious activity, the Bitcoin SV Infrastructure Team has collected and documented relevant data to provide to appropriate authorities.

Bitcoin Association blog post

As previously reported, Australian exchange Independent Reserve delisted BSV on January 28 after considering the actions of Australian computer scientist Craig Wright as anti-ethical – something echoed by many in the Aussie crypto community.

Following a lawsuit filed by Wright earlier this year, the London High Court granted default judgment for copyright infringement against “Cøbra”, the pseudonymous operator and publisher of the bitcoin.org website.