BSV thought leader Joshua Henslee released a video on March 28 expressing his frustration after the recent U.K. court decision on Dr. Craig Wright’s claim that BTC developers are fiduciaries. Watch the video or read the summary below.
First things first…did Dr. Wright really lose the case?
One thing that’s clear from this video is that Henslee is frustrated by the entire situation. That’s something many BSVers can relate to, for sure. He labels the decision a loss for Dr. Wright, but that’s not strictly speaking true.
Why not? Dr. Wright has seemingly ‘lost’ cases before, which have subsequently been overturned on appeal. For example, he previously lost a jurisdictional hearing in the U.K. versus Hodlnaut, and this was subsequently overturned on appeal.
While Henslee’s frustration is understandable, it’s not correct to call this a loss per se. A more apt analogy would be a football team that’s down 28-3 after the first quarter or a boxer who has been knocked down but has managed to get back to his feet and wants to keep fighting. It’s still early days, and it can’t be called a loss until all appeals are exhausted.
Furthermore, Dr. Wright’s legal team feels there are grounds for the appeal. As the old saying goes, the show ain’t over ‘til the fat lady sings.
What is the case about, and what happened?
Henslee begins the video by recapping what the case is about. Here are the crucial facts he points out:
- Dr. Craig Wright lives in London. In February 2020, he had coins hacked from his computer.
- He subsequently sued the centralized group of BTC protocol developers on the basis that they owe fiduciary duties to network users.
- In this case, the judge dismissed the case on jurisdictional grounds.
Henslee then points out that appeals generally have a low chance of success, and therefore he feels like this is a loss for Dr. Wright. However, as the linked story above shows, that isn’t always the case, and Dr. Wright has form when it comes to winning appeals. Secondly, in general, approximately 20% of appeals in the U.K. are successful. While that’s a minority, it’s certainly not game over for Dr. Wright yet.
The educational gap around Bitcoin and the judge’s thoughts on Dr. Wright’s claims
Henslee then points out that there’s a huge gap between Bitcoiners of all stripes and people who aren’t familiar with the technology. However, he feels that the judge did her research and was not biased because she didn’t attack Dr. Wright on personal grounds.
Speaking more about how the judge outlined her thought process in writing, Henslee says that ultimately she thought Dr. Wright’s argument was lacking and that it required a leap in logic.
Henslee then criticizes how the BSV community doesn’t talk openly when Dr. Wright comes up short. He feels that a more honest look at whether or not the arguments he puts forth are actually correct would do everyone a world of good.
More generally, Henslee thinks the educational gap between people involved in Bitcoin and ordinary people is a problem and that it won’t go away anytime soon. Since the ‘outsiders’ are the future users, we need to find a way to close the educational gap and make understanding and using Bitcoin as easy as possible.
The market’s reaction to the case
Henslee has previously made a video on how most of BSV’s past price action has been based on events linked to Dr. Wright. This time, nothing happened, and he thinks that’s a good thing. He feels that BSV traders and users should stop making bets based on Dr. Wright’s statements and predictions because nobody can tell what will happen in the future.
Henslee hopes that the market has moved past speculation on the outcome of Dr. Wright’s court cases and that BSV will be priced based on transaction count, block sizes, and app development going forward. He feels like there’s so much in BSV that’s positive and that focusing on the legal cases distracts from all of this.
Watch: CoinGeek New York presentation, The Path to BitCoin Adoption: How to Turn the Entire Web into Bitcoin Apps
New to blockchain? Check out CoinGeek’s Blockchain for Beginners section, the ultimate resource guide to learn more about blockchain technology.
