Crypto Genius or Fake? The Craig Wright Saga Explained

Wright is being sued by Ira Kleiman on behalf of the estate of his late brother for scheming to, according to the filing, "Seize Dave's bitcoins and his rights to certain intellectual property associated with the bitcoin technology."

At the heart of the lawsuit is a 1.1 million bitcoin Tulip Trust, which Kleiman alleges is comprised of coins collectively mined by his brother with Wright.

In May, Wright filed registrations with the U.S. Copyright Office over the original bitcoin code and white paper.

A forthcoming decision in this hearing does not only have implications for the ongoing Kleiman v Wright suit, but also for aforementioned libel cases Wright has lobbed against Roger Ver and Peter McCormack, who both accused Wright of fraudulently representing himself as Satoshi Nakamoto.

During the hearing, Wright gave testimony explaining why his $10 billion in bitcoin holdings - established in the Tulip Trust - are both legally and technologically inaccessible.

Ira's representative at Boies Schiller Flexner, Velvel Freedman, claimed in the day-long hearing that Wright had embezzled funds from the Kleiman estate by forging documents and emails pertaining to the Trust, which allegedly contain 1.1 million bitcoin conjointly mined by Dave and Wright.

"I'm very focused on ensuring things fall within the rules, and if I'm ordered to do something by a valid court, and I can do it, I will do whatever I have to do it," Wright said, after claiming his invention "Of Bitcoin was to create a system, not where code is law, but where code and law work together."

For his part, Freedman's strategy during his cross-examination of Wright was to tease out purported inconsistencies between Wright's testimony and documents submitted to the court as evidence, ultimately attempting to show a willful disregard for the court's orders.

Freedman, for his part, put forward evidence that Wright may be lying about how many different keys are necessary for this task, or that Wright may in fact be in possession of them already.

Wright later claimed that 821,000 bitcoin were unaccounted for because they were legally represented by a company called Wright International Investments through a convoluted ownership structure that Judge Bruce Reinhardt needed to clarify.