Article written by Haim Ravia and Dotan Hammer
Craig Wright, an American computer scientist who claims to be the inventor of Bitcoin, is the legal sole owner of 1.1M Bitcoin (more than $71 million), according to a U.S. federal court in Florida. Wright’s ownership of the Bitcoin was challenged by the family of his deceased business partner, David Kleiman, who alleged that Kleiman co-invented the Bitcoin and therefore is the rightful owner of half of the Bitcoin that Wright claims.
At trial, Wright also asserted he is “Satoshi Nakamoto”, the pseudonym (or group of people) considered the creator of bitcoin and who in 2008 published a paper laying out a framework for a digital currency independent of any legal or sovereign authority. This is not the first time Wright makes this assertion, and while members of the Bitcoin community have regularly called for Wright to prove it, Wright has yet to do so.
The federal court in Miami dismissed Kleiman’s family’s claim that Kleiman co-created Bitcoin with Wright, but awarded $100 million in intellectual property rights to a joint venture between the two men, unrelated to Bitcoin.
