An Australian computer scientist, named Craig Wright, (51) has claimed to be the inventor of the bitcoin.
Craig Wright says he is the true Satoshi Nakamoto, a pseudonym for the mysterious creator of bitcoin. While many publications have investigated and searched in futility the true identity of the bitcoin creator, others insist he’s done nothing to be recognized as the BTC founder, yet, Craig Wright’s claims seem more and more probable as he has now prevailed in a civil trial against the estate of a deceased former business partner, David Kleiman over bitcoin fortune.
In a lawsuit, Kleiman’s estate insisted it was owed half of a 1.1 million bitcoin fortune whose total worth is over $50b. According to CNET, the 1.1 million bitcoin Wright secured with the verdict is among the first bitcoin ever mined and experts say that only someone involved with bitcoin from the beginning would have access to the wallet containing the bitcoin, which is worth about $54 billion.”
Kleiman’s estate claims that Craig Wright and David Kleiman were friends, collaborators and created the bitcoin together and upon Kleiman’s death in 2013, they deserve half of the bitcoin fortune. Wright however testified that while he was friends with Dave Kleiman, Kleiman helped him edit a white paper that explained the foundation of Bitcoin, but that the two weren’t business partners.
On his part, Kleiman’s brother who filed the suit against Wright, Ira Kleiman submitted evidence of their business relationship including emails Craig Wright allegedly wrote to various people, saying things like, “Dave Kleiman and I started mining in 2009. So we have a few things that will interest them. It is a shame Dave died last year before fruition, but all is moving ahead”; “I was not the person doing the mining. Dave was.”; and “Satoshi was a team. Without the other part of the team, he died,” Coindesk reports.
Since hearing began in November, only this week did a federal jury give its verdict – in Wright’s favour – ruling that Wright and Dave Kleiman weren’t in a business partnership and as such, Wright gets to keep the 1.1 million bitcoin fortune but he must pay $100 million in damages for the unpaid use of intellectual property to W&K Information Defense Research, a company founded by Kleiman, a joint venture founded by the two men.
While lawyers representing W&K and Kleiman’s estate said they were “immensely gratified” for the $100 million intellectual property rights judgment, despite Wright’s refusal to give the Kleimans “their fair share of what Dave helped create,” Wright said, “I feel remarkably happy and vindicated.”