- Craig Wright is financing his flurry of lawsuits using a loan from Calvin Ayre
- The loan uses Wright’s disputed Tulip Trust as collateral
- Wright has admitted he does not have access to the supposed fortune
Craig Wright is financing his flurry of lawsuits using loans supplied by Calvin Ayre backed by 1.1 million in bitcoin that Wright has admitted in court that he no longer has access to. Twitter user @Tak_Horigoshi revealed the arrangement after reviewing documents relating to Wright’s case against Peter McCormack, which is currently progressing through court. The documents state that Wright is borrowing money from Ayre and using his Tulip Trust, which supposedly contains the bitcoin haul, as collateral, a trust he was supposed to gain access to in January 2020 but which has never materialised. The very existence of the Tulip Trust has been debated, but explains in part Ayre’s continued defense of Wright and his claims that Wright will win all of his legal battles.
McCormack One of Many Wright-deniers
Craig Wright sued Peter McCormack in April 2019 after the Australian took exception to McCormack’s assertion that he was not Bitcoin’s creator Satoshi Nakamoto. McCormack was one of a number of individuals singled out for such treatment by Wright who in 2019 launched a number of legal attacks against people who disagreed with him in an attempt to force someone, anyone, to allow him to take them to court and confirm in a legal context that he was Bitcoin’s creator.
@Tak_Horigoshi uncovered the way in which Wright’s game of lawsuit roulette is being financed thanks to another Twitter user, @btckershi, getting hold of copies of some filings in the McCormack case through the British courts, filings that show how Wright is not just pulling the wool over his followers’ eyes but also those of his financial backer:
Wow. Craig Wright is paying for his litigation by taking out a loan against the “Tulip Trust” coins, to be paid back to Calvin Ayre.
Coins for which Craig has testified (and his lawyer confirmed) he does not have the private keys.https://t.co/4rhW8oE5PY pic.twitter.com/44L9gSbUah
— a void (leaks) (@Tak_Horigoshi) August 23, 2021
It has long been known that Ayre has provided capital to fund the operations of Wright’s Bitcoin SV project and possibly the activities of his employers, nChain, too, but the filing shows a different side to the relationship, proving that Ayre has a lot to lose if Wright doesn’t win his cases or does not have access to the Tulip Trust.
Tulip Trust Existence Debated
The Tulip Trust is the name of an alleged trust holding over a million bitcoin supposedly mined by Wright and his former business partner Dave Kleiman in Bitcoin’s early days. Wright claims to have handed over control of the Tulip Trust to Kleiman, who died in 2013, in 2011, since when Wright has not had access. He was allegedly expecting a “bonded courier” to arrive with the keys in January 2020 but this never happened, causing him to tell the Florida court in charge of the Kleiman vs Wright case that he no longer had access to the funds.
Incredibly, Ayre seems to have either not been told this or has chosen to ignore it and believe Wright’s claim that at some unstated point in the future the keys will arrive, either in part or completely, much in the same way that some sects of Christianity are waiting on tenterhooks for the second coming of Christ.
The very existence of the Tulip Trust has also been questioned, with only Wright’s avowed supporters offering support of the notion, but the fact that a seven-figure sum is resting on its existence probably explains why Calvin Ayre is so keen to reinforce the notion that Wright will win all his cases – it will likely be the only way he will get his money back.
That reminds me, I must reply to that Nigerian prince…
