I completely reject Dr. Wright’s testimony about the alleged Tulip Trust, the alleged encrypted file, and his alleged inability to identify his bitcoin holdings. Dr. Wright’s story not only was not supported by other evidence in the record, itdefiescommon sense and real-life experience. Consider his claims.He designed Bitcoin to be an anonymous digital cash system with an evidentiary trail. DE 236 at 15. He mined approximately 1,000,000 bitcoin, but there is no accessible evidentiary trail for thevast majority of them.He is a latter-day Dr. Frankenstein whose creation turned to evil when hijacked by drug dealers, human traffickers, and other criminals.Id. at 16-17.To save himself, he engaged David Kleiman to remove all traces of his involvement with Bitcoinfrom the public record.Id. at 16.As part of his efforts to disassociate from Bitcoinand “so that I wouldn’t be in trouble,”he put all his bitcoin (and/or the keys to it–his story changed) into a computer file that is encrypted with a hierarchical Shamir encryption protocol. SeeId. at 23.He then put the encrypted file into a“blind” trust (of which he is one of the trustees), gave away a controlling number of the key slicesto now-deceased David Kleiman, and therefore cannot now decrypt the file that controls access to the bitcoin. His only hope is that a bonded courier arrives on an unknown dated in January 2020 with the decryption keys. If the courier does not appear, Dr. Wrighthas lost his abilitytoaccess billions of dollars worth of bitcoin, and he does not care. Id. at 21-22.Inconceivable.During his testimony, Dr. Wright’s demeanordid not impress me as someone who was telling the truth.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. He did Case 9:18-cv-80176-BB Document 277 Entered on FLSD Docket 08/27/2019 Page 19 of 29 He quibbled about irrelevant technicalities.When confronted with evidence indicating that certain documents had been fabricated or altered, he became extremely defensive, tried to sidestep questioning,and ultimately made vague comments about his systems being hacked and others having access to his computers. None of these excuses were corroborated by other evidence.Sadly, Dr. Wright does not write on a clean slate. As Judge Bloom recently noted in denying Dr. Wright’s Motion for Judgment on the Pleadings, Dr. Wright has taken directly conflicting factual positions at different times during this litigation. DE 265 at 10 (“[T]he record is replete with instances in which the Defendant has proffered conflicting sworn testimony before this Court.). As discussed below, that behavior continued before me.Dr. Wright has a substantial stake in the outcome of the case. If Plaintiffs succeed on their claims, Dr. Wright stands to lose billions of dollars. That gives him a powerful motive not to identify his bitcoin. As long as the relevant addresses remain secret, he can transfer the bitcoin without the Plaintiffs being able to find them. After all, Bitcoin is an anonymous cybercurrency.
