🔒 UK Law Commission Report poses a challenge to Craig Wright's case against Bitcoin developers.
💼 The Bitcoin Legal Defense Fund (BLDF) argues that the latest report published by the UK Law Commission could undermine a central argument put forward by Craig Wright in his controversial case.
📄 In a 300-page digital assets report published in late June, the UK Law Commission cited a classification of fiduciary duty, supporting developers' defense that they were not directly responsible for the 111,000 Bitcoins lost to hackers.
🔐 Wright, the owner of Tulip Trading, claimed in the lawsuit he filed in 2021 that the developers involved in the open source development of Bitcoin Core owed him a fiduciary duty. To recover the allegedly stolen funds, Wright is looking for a backdoor into the Bitcoin Core blockchain. Additionally, Wright is also known for claiming to be Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonym of Bitcoin.
🔍 The UK report sheds light on the definition of the fiduciary role, stating that the fiduciary categories recognized by law are "agents, attorneys, partners, company directors and lawyers". The report states that fiduciary duty rarely exists outside these categories. According to BLDF, as legal representatives of the developers, the defendants do not fall within any of the criteria specified by the Commission.
📢 “They are not agents, fiduciaries, partners, corporate directors or attorneys, and have never been ‘given the authority to manage property or make discretionary decisions on behalf of another person,'” BLDF wrote in its latest blog post, adding: “Bitcoin does not delegate any authority to a third party.” It was created to facilitate transactions between individuals without transferring it to any party."
📚 According to the University of Texas' definition, fiduciary duty means "the legal responsibility to consider the best interests of another party." Common examples of fiduciary duty include undivided loyalty, duty of care, full disclosure of conflicts of interest, and confidentiality.
⚖️ The Tulip Trading case could set a judicial precedent for asset liability of open source developers, and a hearing in the case is expected in 2024. At the Bitcoin 2023 conference in May, BLDF general counsel Jessica Jonas stated that the possible legal ramifications of the case could deeply impact the community, where 97% of the world's software programs are open source.
💡 The UK Law Commission report also recommended the creation of a new and separate category of personal property to accommodate the unique characteristics of digital assets.