A Court Ruled in Favor of Craig Wright

In 2016, Australian computer scientist Craig Wright implied that he was Satoshi Nakamoto in a blog post. As a reminder, Satoshi Nakamoto is the pseudonym used by the person or persons who developed Bitcoin. However, many in the crypto community are skeptical of Craig Wright’s claim. 

Despite all challenges, Wright just won the major U.S. major court case, saving him from paying a former business partner tens of billions of dollars in the cryptocurrency. This week, he prevailed in a Miami civil case that pitted him against the family of his late business partner. It is worth noting that half of the 1.1 million Bitcoin mined and held by Satoshi was at stake. David Kleiman’s estate also claimed rights to some intellectual property behind early blockchain technology.

Craig Wright and Bitcoin

The prosecution argued that David Kleiman was a co-creator of Bitcoin, alongside Craig Wright. But a federal jury in West Palm Beach sided with Craig Wright. It declined to award any of the Bitcoin to David Kleiman’s estate.

 Still, he has to pay $100 million in compensatory damages regarding a breach of intellectual property related to W&K Info Defense Research LLC, a joint venture between Kleiman and his business partner. Interestingly, that money will go directly to W&K Info Defense Research LLC rather than to the Kleiman estate.

 In 2008, Satoshi Nakamoto published a nine-page white paper detailing a vision for Bitcoin. Several months later, a person or a group behind Bitcoin released software that allowed people to mine for the cryptocurrency. This person, or a consortium of coders, remained on the scene until 2011, at which point he abruptly left the project. Satoshi Nakamoto sent an email to a fellow developer. He told his fellow developer that they “moved on to other things.”