Craig Wright’s wife knows nothing about how Bitcoin works

Craig Wright’s wife, Ramona Watts, knows nothing about how Bitcoin works. 

Considering that her husband claims to be Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous author of the Bitcoin whitepaper, you’d think she might be aware that a Bitcoin private encryption key is not like a Mercedes key.

At least Ira Kleiman was honest (or self-aware) enough to tell the court that he does “not really” know much about how Bitcoin works. Ira is suing Wright for half of a $10 billion cache of bitcoins mined by Nakamoto in the early days of Bitcoin.

Here’s a beauty from her March 19, 2020 deposition, which was unsealed on June 27. 

In it, Ramona Watts was asked by Andrew Brenner, an attorney for Ira Kleiman, about spending Bitcoin held in the Tulip Trust—of which she is a trustee:

Brenner: Your answer before was that, ‘We currently cannot spend the Bitcoin because we don’t have full private keys.’

Watts: But I do believe that there are other ways that you can access the Bitcoin, providing that they are according to —they fulfill the trust purpose by legal means, but I don’t know how.

Brenner: You believe there are other ways but you don’t know how?

Watts: That is correct. I liken it to if you have lost your car key and you cannot actually drive to a certain place, but if you call roadside assistance and say, “This is my car,” you have to  show them some proof that it is your car. Obviously, you cannot just go into a parking lot and say, ‘That great sporty Mercedes is my car.” If you show them some proof it was your car, they might be able to either cut you another key or get you in, open the door for you.

Brenner: Okay. Other than you believing there is a way to do it, you don’t know how to spend the Bitcoin in the trust correct?

Watts: I don’t know how to do it. I believe there is another way to do it, that is correct.

There is, in fact, no way to spend a bitcoin without the private key.