Shalini Nagarajan

Macauley Peterson

Robinhood will no longer support the bitcoin fork favored by <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/craig-wright">Craig Wright</a>, the Australian computer scientist who has claimed to be pseudonymous Bitcoin developer Satoshi Nakamoto.



The move has sent Bitcoin Satoshi’s Vision (<a href="https://blockworks.co/price/bsv">BSV</a>) crashing against BTC, the asset favored by the faction known as Bitcoin Core — but more often as, simply, bitcoin.



In an <a href="https://robinhood.com/us/en/support/articles/bitcoin-sv-update/">update</a> to users on Wednesday, the trading app said it would end support for BSV on Jan. 25 as part of a routine review of its crypto products.



With some geographical restrictions, users can continue to trade the token until the deadline.



After entirely delisting the token, Robinhood will sell any remaining BSV for market value, and the proceeds will be credited to user accounts under available funds.



BSV rallied alongside BTC against the US dollar Thursday but is down against BTC to levels not seen since the FTX bankruptcy.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/TBrZLCVJq_G7Xwgs1o96fAVIsZFsZ3kQiczXPxYqA6jkPg5qjb57zH2vcV_WV8O-zYugkeZLh_ou1iqFE7-YfN2ySsD455PvvXkqnSpszNPAlIMeT1rhqRwyoe7jrWJw4ZbPXK3yGddpiHJ96q7--1eK-5yLhEELrQsHxwjZc3iLdXcbpLJtxTNze2x6Tw" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">BSV/BTC | Source: TradingView</figcaption></figure>



The latest development isn’t likely to settle any debates about the legitimacy of the crypto in the pantheon of bitcoin forks, but it does remove one of the few remaining venues where BSV can be traded against actual dollars, as opposed to Tether’s USDT. Of the latter, only OKX has significant volume — $17.5 million in 24-hour volume, <a href="https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/bitcoin-sv#markets">per Coingecko</a>.



Robinhood didn’t provide a specific reason for delisting the token, but the trading app has a “rigorous framework” in place to regularly vet tokens on its platform.



Bitcoin SV was first included under Robinhood’s brokerage in November 2018 after it emerged from the hard fork of Bitcoin Cash (<a href="https://blockworks.co/price/bch">BCH</a>).&nbsp;



Proponents of Bitcoin SV believe that it aims to execute some of the features mentioned in Nakamoto’s <a href="https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf">white paper</a> that appear to be absent in the original Bitcoin blockchain.&nbsp;



Like its predecessors, Bitcoin SV uses a proof-of-work protocol to verify transactions and sports the same maximum supply of 21 million tokens.



It emerged from political clashes within the Bitcoin Cash community, a little over a year after BCH forked Bitcoin, ostensibly to improve upon the scalability of the protocol and reduce transaction fees which, at the time, were quite high.&nbsp;



Aside from Wright, Bitcoin SV is championed by Canadian entrepreneur Calvin Ayre, who has <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_n6QvThlSaU">described</a> it as the most valuable network in the blockchain space. Ayre <a href="https://twitter.com/CalvinAyre/status/1613197890008281089">reacted</a> to Robinhood’s delisting of BSV as “meaningless.”&nbsp;



Wright meanwhile <a href="https://twitter.com/Dr_CSWright/status/1613206147573645313">described</a> the trading app as “dishonest,” saying “the last thing [Robinhood wants] is a system that stops their frauds.”



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Wright and the future of his “creation”</h3>



Speaking of allegations of fraud, Wright <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/craig-wright-not-defamed-by-being-called-a-fraud-judge-rules">lost a Norwegian libel suit in October</a> that he launched against someone who called him just that for his unproven claims to be Satoshi.



A subsequent defamation suit against podcaster Peter McCormack <a href="https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Wright-v-McCormack-Final-Judgment-for-Hand-Down.pdf">ended in December</a> and also went against Wright, who was ordered to pay McCormack’s legal fees.



And in a blow to Wright’s Satoshi narrative, Justice Chamberlain — the judge that oversaw Wright’s case against McCormack — emphasized that it is “important to be clear that Dr. Wright has not established that he is Satoshi” — a detail not previously driven home <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/verdict-in-craig-wright-civil-trial-100m-award-for-plaintiff-but-no-punitive-damages">at Wright’s other trials</a>.



Justice Chamberlain also wrote that “Dr Wright had advanced a deliberately false case until shortly before trial,” adding, “When the falsity was exposed, he changed his case, explaining that he had made inadvertent errors. I rejected that explanation as untrue.”



In the aftermath of the ruling, Wright seemed to imply that he would back off on the idea of making his case to be Satoshi in court, instead appealing to the court of public opinion in a Twitter thread that <a href="https://twitter.com/Dr_CSWright/status/1605758679386492928" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">begins</a>, “One day, people will understand,” and <a href="https://twitter.com/Dr_CSWright/status/1605760216489897984" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">continues</a>, &#8220;I no longer care what you think. I care for my wife, my mother, and my family. I seek to see my creation used.&#8221;



On the other hand, his lawyers are still busy in the UK <a href="https://twitter.com/gonbegood/status/1600798376152686594">suing Bitcoin developers</a> to try to force them to help Wright gain access to Satoshi’s dormant bitcoins, which Wright claims were rendered inaccessible due to a case of lost <a href="https://www.blockworksresearch.com/glossary#public-key-cryptography-asymmetric-cryptography">private keys</a>. That case is awaiting a ruling on jurisdiction before possibly proceeding to try the merits of the legal claim on the facts.



Through all this, Bitcoin SV is still ranked the 52nd cryptocurrency based on its market capitalization of around $804 million as of Thursday at 2:30 pm ET, according to <a href="https://blockworks.co/price/bsv">data compiled by Blockworks</a>. The token lost as much as 15% on Wednesday before rebounding strongly today along with the rest of the crypto market <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/cpi-falls-in-december">following the CPI data release</a> by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.



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Bitcoin SV Plunges Against BTC After Robinhood Delisting

<div id="highlights-block_61a416f02d14a" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li>Wright’s defense team declared victory, as their client avoided the worst outcomes</li>
 <li>The jury was initially unable to reach agreement last week but were instructed by the judge to keep trying</li>
 </ul>
 
</div>



Jurors in the Florida trial of Craig Wright, an Australian computer scientist who claims to have invented Bitcoin, were deadlocked as recently as last Wednesday, after several days of deliberations. The judge in the case, US District Judge Beth Bloom, issued what’s known as an <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/allen_charge" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Allen charge</a>, instructing them to “carefully reexamine and reconsider all the evidence” in an attempt to reach an agreement. Now they have.



On Monday, the jury found Wright liable on one of the plaintiff’s claims, that of conversion — unauthorized possession of personal property,&nbsp; in this case intellectual property — and awarded $100 million in damages, according to <a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.flsd.521536/gov.uscourts.flsd.521536.812.0_1.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">court documents</a>. Notably, no bitcoin was directly ordered to be paid.



Wright <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/craig-wright-trial-goes-to-florida-jury-which-could-award-as-much-as-189b/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">could have been found liable</a> for a range of behavior including fraud, theft, breach of fiduciary duty, with damages potentially reaching into the billions, therefore he and his legal team see the outcome as a victory.&nbsp;



“This has been a remarkably good outcome — I feel completely vindicated,” Wright told his supporters in a <a href="https://twitter.com/JimmyWinSV/status/1467910308953997314?s=20" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">recorded video message</a>.



The jury rejected plaintiff Ira Kleiman’s claim that his deceased brother David was a business partner of Wright’s, and decided that Wright would owe nothing to the David Kleiman estate. Instead, the sole monetary award went to W&amp;K Info Defense Research LLC, a company for which Ira Kleiman is now the only registered director, but that was once a joint venture between Wright, his wife at the time Lynn Wright, and David Kleiman.



In <a href="https://cryptopotato.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/lynn-wright-ira-kleiman-petition-071620.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">a separate legal maneuver</a>, the ownership of the company is an ongoing matter of dispute, and Lynn Wright contends that Ira Kleiman was “not authorized to act on behalf of W&amp;K Info Defense.”



Lawyers for Ira Kleiman, see the jury award as a win for their client, even if it falls far short of what they claimed:



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">Kleiman v. Wright update: We are incredibly gratified the jury found Craig Wright has to pay our client, W&amp;K, $100,000,000 for the bitcoin-related assets he stole. This is a great win for our client and for justice!&mdash; Vel Freedman (@VelvelFreedman) <a href="https://twitter.com/VelvelFreedman/status/1467923812075421701?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 6, 2021</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Satoshi Nakamoto’s bitcoin stash</h3>



The identity of Satoshi Nakamoto was not a subject of this case. It was simply assumed that Wright had access to Satoshi&#8217;s 1.1 million bitcoins, which could have been awarded as damages. The jury elected not to award any bitcoins, opting instead to levy money damages in dollars.



For Ira Kleiman to collect on the $100 million from Wright due to <meta charset="utf-8">W&amp;K Info Defense Research, he will first have to resolve the dispute over the company’s ownership. If he does retain control, and successfully turns the jury award into a definitive money judgment that Wright must pay, the question remains, where will the money come from?



Earlier in the trial, the initial judge, Judge Reinhart, <a href="https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/USCOURTS-flsd-9_18-cv-80176/pdf/USCOURTS-flsd-9_18-cv-80176-9.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">found</a> that Wright submitted forged documents and offered perjured testimony related to the production of a list of bitcoin addresses under his (supposedly Satoshi’s) control.



Wright has so far failed to prove that he is in possession of, or has access to, the private keys needed to move those early Satoshi-mined bitcoins. Absent such proof, he is unlikely to persuade <a href="https://bitcoinmagazine.com/business/op-ed-how-many-wrongs-make-wright" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">skeptics</a> that he is in fact Satoshi.



Wright disputes the consensus view of what bitcoin even is. In 2018, Wright’s <a href="https://www.gemini.com/cryptopedia/bsv-what-is-bitcoin-sv" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">preferred bitcoin, BSV</a>, which stands for “Bitcoin Satoshi’s Vision”, forked from the Bitcoin Cash (BCH) blockchain, which itself forked from the original BTC chain in 2017.



Speculators evidently view the trial outcome as beneficial for the prospects of the bitcoin fork — BSV has surged 34% in the past 24 hours and now as a market cap of just under $3 billion. That remains a far cry from the market cap of BCH at about $9 billion, much less the BTC market cap of $962 billion.




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