The trial of the century ended earlier this month with Dr. Craig Wright emerging victorious, but it may not be the most defining court trial for Bitcoin, according to T.K. Coleman. The educator, life coach and entrepreneur joined Joshua Henslee to talk about why he believes the upcoming COPA trial could be bigger for the space, the Satoshi misdirection and why the Satoshi coins aren’t moving any time soon.
Coleman is the director of Entrepreneurial Education at the Foundation for Economic Education and the co-founder of Praxis, a service that matches users with paid apprenticeship opportunities. He’s also a big Bitcoin evangelist, having discovered Bitcoin from Isaac Morehouse, his fellow co-founder at Praxis and the founder of Crash.
Coleman joined Henslee to talk about the trial and everything that has transpired since then. Noting that the anti-Craig faction is still trying to spin the verdict to sound like a win for them, he stated that it was expected—nothing about Dr. Wright can be good to them as he’s the biggest threat to their empires.
In great contrast, on other cases where the courts have given a straight verdict against entities allied to them, they are quick and willing to take an anarchist stand. Tether is a prime example. U.S. authorities found that Tether has committed a crime and misrepresented its backing and issued a fine. In its response, however, Tether executives said, “the government is going to say that because crypto is a big threat to them.”
Will the Satoshi coins move?
At a time when speculation is rife on what happens to the Satoshi coins, Coleman believes that Dr. Wright isn’t going to move them any time soon. The only reason he thinks Satoshi would have had to move the coins was if the court had sided with Ira and demanded that he gets a portion of the coins.
Coleman believes that Dr. Wright has proven to be a man of great resolve who only does what he wants to, when he wants to. If he ever decides to move his stash, it will be at his own will, not because everyone is daring him to.
“I just don’t see what the argument is for why he needs to move those coins right now or why that would be so advantageous,” Coleman said.
If Dr. Wright was to move the coins, the entire market would be very quick to dump their BTC out of fear that he dumps his entire stash. Therefore, it’s most likely that he will move the coins stealthily to avoid crashing the market, Coleman believes. Being the biggest BTC holder, Dr. Wright has everything to gain from letting BTC hit new highs as he builds his vision on Bitcoin SV.
Doubling down on Dr. Wright’s knack for misdirection, Coleman recalled the rolling iceberg claim that Satoshi made three years ago, saying he would sell a large amount of BTC for U.S. dollars which would naturally lead to a significant price drop. He has yet to do that, and while the BTC faction fixates on when this will happen, he has focused on building BSV.
“Satoshi has been deceitful from the beginning. That’s strategic misdirection. There’s nobody named Satoshi Nakamoto that created Bitcoin. He [Dr. Wright] lied from the very beginning,” Henslee pointed out.
COPA case is bigger than Kleiman v Wright
The Kleiman v Wright case was dubbed the trial of the century, and rightly so as it was the largest intellectual property rights case in history. However, according to Coleman, the upcoming COPA case will be more significant for Bitcoin.
COPA, otherwise known as the Crypto Open Patent Alliance, is a movement of BTC-aligning organizations formed by Square’s Jack Dorsey and whose members include Coinbase (NASDAQ: COIN), Kraken, BitPay, MicroStrategy (NASDAQ: MSTR) and Blockstream. It sued Dr. Wright in April this year, asking the court to declare that he has no copyright ownership over the Bitcoin white paper.
This case is more significant as unlike the Kleiman case, there is no middle ground, Coleman pointed out.
“In the Kleiman case, there was always the possibility for it to go in a couple of directions that still left things ambiguous. It was always possible that you could get an outcome that would let Craig believers to remain believers and the doubters to remain doubters, and both sides to claim victory,” he said.
With the COPA case, it’s different. If COPA wins, Dr. Wright can no longer claim to be Satoshi. And for him to hold onto his rightful copyright ownership over the Bitcoin white paper, he will have to prove to a court that indeed, he is Satoshi, Coleman said.
“This will be the ultimate ‘put up or shut up’ case regarding the creation of Bitcoin. Once this is done, whoever the losing party is, they are going to have a really tough time saving face and they are going to have to shut the hell up.”
Coleman’s advice to COPA—pull out and avoid the embarrassment. To him, it would be easier to save face by pulling out and faking a lack of interest in Dr. Wright than it would be if the lawsuit went ahead and Dr. Wright beat them in court. That would be the ultimate knockout and would not only decimate COPA, it would also have a far-reaching effect on all the digital currency projects they associate with, from BTC to Solana to Tether and hundreds more.
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