According to CoinDesk, Craig Wright's Tulip Trading needs to prove ownership of some 110,000 bitcoins (BTC) at the center of a case against a group of bitcoin developers filed in 2021. An English court document reveals that in a preliminary trial, the court will determine whether Tulip owns the bitcoin, according to a High Court of England and Wales order posted on the Bitcoin Legal Defense Fund website. The order is dated Nov. 15. Wright, who has long claimed he is bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto, sued the developers for refusing to build a backdoor mechanism to help Tulip Trading retrieve the coins it claimed to have owned and lost. The case was originally dismissed in March 2022 but reinstated on appeal.
The preliminary trial, scheduled to take 15 days, will also seek to determine whether the alleged hack occurred and, if so, whether it deprived Tulip Trading of the private keys that controlled the bitcoin, among other issues. The Bitcoin Legal Defense Fund is an organization funded by, among others, Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter (now X), Bluesky, and Block (formerly Square). CoinDesk reached out to Tulip's law firm Shoosmith for comment. Enyo Law, which represents most of the defendants, said documents related to the case could be retrieved from the Bitcoin Legal Defense Fund website.