Craig Wright’s Billion-Dollar Bitcoin Trial Delayed Until April 2021

The ongoing legal battle between the Kleiman family and Craig Wright, over 1.1 million Bitcoin (over $19 billion today), has been pushed back until April 5, 2021. A court document shows that pre-trial deadlines for objections are now listed with a deadline of March 16, 2021. 

The Kleiman family insists that Wright—who has proclaimed himself to be the real Satoshi Nakamoto—owes half of his Bitcoin wealth to his former partner, the late Dave Kleiman. The trial was recently delayed until January 4, 2021, but now, it has been pushed back even further.

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“Using the proposed deadlines to make streamlined, focused decisions will conserve judicial and party resources and lead to a better, and better considered, presentation of each side’s position at trial,” court documents said. 

The Court makes decisions on appropriate evidence

In addition to the trial delay, the Court has made several key decisions about what can and can’t be said by either party during trial. 

In another court document filed yesterday, Wright successfully requested that the Court “exclude at trial any mention of any prior judicial statements about his credibility.” The Court found that prior statements, made by Judge Reinhart, “present a considerable danger of unfair prejudice and should be excluded.” 

One such statement made by Judge Reinhart on August 27, 2020, reads, “During his testimony, Dr. Wright’s demeanor did not impress me as someone who was telling the truth,” adding, “When it was favorable to him, Dr. Wright appeared to have an excellent memory and a scrupulous attention to detail. Otherwise, Dr. Wright was belligerent and evasive.” But this, and many other similar statements, will not be shown to the jury.

The court document also shows that Wright is going to argue the sibling relationship between Ira and Dave Kleiman was not enough to justify passing on the wealth supposedly accumulated. He has previously claimed that the siblings had a “very acrimonious relationship.” 

Finally, the Kleiman family had requested the Court stop Wright from selectively claiming his computers were hacked and documents forged when pressed on them in court.

The Kleiman family alleges that it faces a “trial by ambush” as it has no way of knowing which of the many thousands of documents Wright will claim to be inadmissible due to forgery or or hacking. Yet, the Court has decided that it is the jury’s responsibility to evaluate the plausibility of Wright’s hacking and forgery claims, and has denied the Kleimain family’s motion.