Peter Todd, a Bitcoin Core developer, has closed a defamation suit against Isis Lovecruft, a cryptography expert, who had accused him of sexual misconduct in 2019.

According to the terms of the settlement, the suit is dropped without any monetary compensation for Todd, and it also includes a statement by Lovecruft that Todd did not sexually assault her. Lovecruft uses the non-binary pronoun them/they, and her name is a pseudonym. 

The Case In A Nutshell

In February 2019, in a tweet, Lovecruft accused Todd of having raped her. Lovecruft claimed in the tweet that Todd and two other cryptographists had made verbal and sexual advances towards her at a cryptocurrency conference in 2014. She also listed as exhibit screenshots, a discussion between her and an anonymous woman, Jane Doe, who also claimed to have been raped by Todd.

After this, Todd sued Lovecruft in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California in Oakland for defamation. 

Lovecruft argued that Todd’s defamation suit was an attempt to silence her and other women.

Terms Of The Settlement 

According to the terms of the settlement, Lovecruft once again tweeted on 18th June 2020, that Todd had never raped or sexually assaulted her. She, however, is not required to retract or delete statements already made earlier. 

The terms of the settlement between Lovecruft and Todd were decided on 3rd June 2020. The final written agreement to the same was composed on June 10 2020.

According to a post published by Lovecruft’s legal defense team, Todd agreed not to take legal action against any person identified in Lovecruft’s lawsuit concerning their actions relating to the lawsuit. 

Lovecruft funded her legal battle against Todd from her ‘Gofundme’ campaign for legal costs. 

Explaining why he settled the case, Todd explained that he was unable to bear the legal fees and he didn’t want to fight the case with his family’s money. 

The Defamation Lawsuit May Have Been Settled, But The Battle Is Still On 

Lovecruft appears to be in no mood to let bygones be bygones. She recently tweeted once again that, “Peter Todd is a rapist”. This comes after she had publicly admitted that Peter Todd had not raped her. There is a small issue of the two other unknown women, too, who had alleged that Todd had raped them. 

The battle appears far from over for Todd.The GoFundMe page explained that the terms of the deal do not apply to the sexual assault claims made by two anonymous women, one of them called Jane Doe. Both these women had made filings in the case to support Lovecruft. One of the women said Todd assaulted her, while the other claimed that he had raped her. Talking to CoinDesk, both women have claimed that they met Todd at large Bitcoin community events. They also claim that after the sexual assault on them, they stopped going to these events.

Todd, on his part, has denied the assertions of both these women. He also claims that none of them was involved in any of his Bitcoin projects. 

The settlement of the Lovecruft defamation case is one part of the ongoing saga. The trouble for Peter Todd is far from over. There are chances that any of the other two women could eventually come up with some incriminating sexual assault evidence against Todd. 

The former Bitcoin Core developer has claimed to be innocent several times, but that will not save him. He may still have to spend a lot of the money he didn’t want to spend on the Lovecruft defamation case, knowing how rape cases can get dragged out in court.