Authorities Raid Home of Possible Bitcoin Founder

That didn't take long

LinkedIn

Earlier today, investigations by Wired and Gizmodo presented a strong, albeit circumstantial, case that Bitcoin founder Satoshi Nakamoto was actually Australian tech businessman Craig Steven Wright.

And now, via The Guardian:

On Wednesday afternoon, police forced open a home belonging to Craig Wright, who had hours earlier been identified in investigations by Gizmodo and Wired, based on leaked transcripts of legal interviews and files. Both sites have indicated that they believe Wright to have been involved in the creation of the cryptocurrency.

More than 10 police personnel arrived at the house in the Sydney suburb of Gordon at about 1.30pm. Two police staff wearing white gloves could be seen from the street searching the cupboards and surfaces of the garage. At least three more were seen from the front door.

Guardian Australia understands the raids are not related to the claims surrounding Wright being involved in the creation of bitcoin, but are related to an Australian Tax Office investigation.

Part of Wired's case relied on a leaked transcript of a meeting between Wright, his attorney, and officials from the tax office. "I did my best to try and hide the fact that I've been running bitcoin since 2009," Wright reportedly said in the meeting. "By the end of this I think half the world is going to bloody know."

The Tax Office won't comment about whether they met with Wright, citing confidentiality laws. The raid may not be about the claim that Wright is the founder of Bitcoin, but it could be about taxes owed as a result of Wright's involvement with the cryptocurrency.

Comments

[__Warren__]

NOW I care.

[Sevo]

Ed, there's a Webathon in process for pete's sake! 10 minutes left and you post this?!

[SIV]

Wired snitches out the creator of Bitcoin.

Reason dimes out its commenters to Fed D.A.s

[SugarFree]

And they let cunts like you post here.

[Cytotoxic]

Chilling.

[Pl?ya Manhattan.]

FUCK YOU PAY US

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

We talking about the government or all those emails from Nick Gillespie in my inbox?

[Swiss Servator]

Why not both?

[LynchPin1477]

If true, it is really sad. The guy deserves to remain anonymous if that is what he wants. And I'm calling complete BS that the raid has nothing to do with bitcoin.

[N]

That's some miraculously convenient timing. I'm sure they normally send a squad of 10 cops and have a team in white gloves search the place over tax issues.

[AlmightyJB]

Union rules. Must be at least 10 officers to every perp.

[MikeP]

I broke a mirror in my house and I'm supposed to get seven years bad luck, but my lawyer thinks he can get me five.

[The Hyperbole]

My uncle got busted for counterfeiting Bitcoins, he was putting the heads and tails on the wrong sides.

[MikeP]

Why is it a Bitcoin for your thoughts but you have to put your two Bitcoins in? Somebody's making a Bitcoin.

[Pro Libertate]

In Vegas, I got into a long argument with the man at the roulette wheel over what I considered to be an odd number.

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

Skirting the government is fun. But it sure can be painful.

[TheZeitgeist]

Bitcoin's trading ~$500 right now. Should be an interesting market as details of this surface.

[Sevo]

OT:

"Wealthy environmentalist Tompkins dies in Chile accident"
http://www.sfgate.com/news/sci.....684841.php

Background:
He and former wife Suzy lucked into a rag-trade wave; Esprit. He nearly killed it by insisting on signs saying 'if you don't need it, don't buy it'. Can't remember the details, but the stock holders tossed 'em both out on their asses. And then they divorced for reasons rumored but I can neither confirm nor really care about.
Regardless, the buy-out made them both very wealthy, and as D donors, A-list members for SF parties.
When he's in town, that is, as opposed to in Chile trying to buy enough land to cut the country in two, N-S. But he's a proggy, so he only hopes to help, doncha' know. Really, you don't? Well...
So Suzy is now an aged, homely, ignorant piece of crap (with a trophy - but acceptable - husband), of value only as a D donor. Doug shows up in SF often enough to get appointments to various city agencies (which he rarely attends) in return for his political donations, and now falls out of a kayak and dies.
In their favor, neither ever pulled a Donald and tried to toss a land-owner out, but that is the absolute best that can be said.
Doug, glad you died before you did more harm!
/Sevo.

[C. Anacreon]

What is a D donor?

[Wasteland Wanderer]

A doner of Derp. In this case, blue flavored derp.

[Pl?ya Manhattan.]

Donates to Democrats. However, I think D donor might mean something completely different in the gay community.

[C. Anacreon]

Back in the day when I was a young Armani-clad gadabout, my New York marriage merited a note in the San Francisco Chronicle Society Column, much to the dismay of many a Bay Area ingenue. Most of the column that day, which I did clip and is in some scrapbook somewhere, was about Suzy Tompkins humping a dog or something ridiculous like that. I still blame her for my wedding not being the top story.

[jester]

Buying up land to create nature preserves isn't anything I'm opposed to. Seems like a money-where-your-mouth-is thing to do.
I wonder if at some point Chile's government will need money so badly that they'll need to extract revenue from them. Taxation makes keeping anything going on perpetuity doubtful.

[Juice]

But he was doing environmentalism the right way. If you don't want people using land in the way you disapprove, then buy it up and keep people out. So he had that going for him.

[The Grinch]

I agree with the sentiment re his politics but that last sentence was just mean.

[Brochettaward]

Stories like this are why I loathe the state. How people could see this as anything besides basic extortion at the end of a barrel, I'll never know. You dare to suggest taxation is theft, and you get called a child with most right thinking people refusing to even entertain the notion. The Australian government wants - demands - its cut of the action regardless of whether it actually had anything to do with its development or success. Simply being born within the arbitrarily defined borders of a state or existing within it means that everything from your body and possessions to your mind are really property of whatever government claims ownership.

[Atanarjuat]

It's a lot like that shipwreck story Playa posted, where the government of Columbia said "we are altering the deal, pray we don't alter it any farther" after the salvage company found the wreck.

[Juice]

When you find buried treasure, you keep your yapper shut.

[Suthenboy]

Haven't you heard? You didn't build that.

[Winston]

So how long until Trump goes the full distance and calls for Muslims to be sent to camps and or/deported?

[Princess Trigger]

So, FDR-level monster?

[Suthenboy]

Question: In the run-up to FDR's summer camps for adults did any of the Japanese Americans actually engage in spying / sabotage / killing?

The situation seems a bit different to me.

*Not advocating Fun Camps for Allah.

[MSimon]

Yes. There were Japanese spies.

[Zeb]

Innocent people are innocent people. It doesn't matter how many Muslims do bad things; the ones that don't are still innocent and it would be hugely immoral to treat them otherwise, just like with the Japanese Americans in WWII.

[Winston]

Ah Trump: The Cosmos hate him in order to stay in their cocktail parties while the Rockwellians think he will be America's Kerensky and the left-libertarians hate him for not expropriating all wealth and property like some obscure 19th Century writer.

[nrob]

the battle of the totalitarians, and which one we'll "choose" continues on.

[Fist of Etiquette]

...they believe Wright to have been involved in the creation of the cryptocurrency.

More like corruptocurrency. Am I right?

[db]

This whole "we found out about his bitcoin involvement during a tax audit" thing reeks of parallel construction. I imagine there were other "assets" involved in discovering this.

[UnCivilServant]

I couldn't bring myself to read the article because reason's unhealthy obsession with bitcoin has made it insufferable.

[Zeb]

But you bothered to make a completely content-free comment, which is the important part.

[HazelMeade]

If Wright hasn't sold any of his bitcoins, how can he owe any taxes? We don't tax people on the increase in market value of an asset. We tax them when they sell the asset.

[Atanarjuat]

He was investigated by Australian tax collectors, not American, so might be subject to a different tax scheme.

[MSimon]

Can he pay the tax in BitCoin?

[db]

Yes, all of itthem.

[MSimon]

What about the Saudis? And their brand of Islam.

[Ted S.]

Fuck Zerohedge's auto-playing ads and lack of a mobile version.

[Lee G]

Ten cops and it's not about Bitcoin.

Yeah, righhhhhhht

[SugarFree]

The New York Times passed on the documents because they thought the leak was so suspect, but Sam Biddle and Andy Cush of Gawker Media have such a vendetta against anything remotely libertarian or Silicon Valley they wipe their ass with anything even resembling journalistic ethics.

[Rich]

the raids are not related to the claims surrounding Wright being involved in the creation of bitcoin, but are related to an Australian Tax Office investigation.

Alrighty, then.

[Drave Robber]

I did my best to try and hide the fact that I've been running bitcoin since 2009

Technically, no single person or entity is "running bitcoin"; it seems a word may be omitted there, e.g. "running bitcoin business" changing the meaning of that line entirely.

Or it may be an awkward joke along the lines of "my dad plays piano at a bordello" because of "how you're supposed to tell an eight years old child you're an Objective-C programmer?".

[waffles]

Yo, fuck Commie Australia.

[AddictionMyth]

Bitcoin is a huge scam exploiting the common man's desire to believe he's clever enough to know he's not. But as a real Libertarian I'm all for fooling most of the people some of the time (and gettin in while the gettins good).