Craig Wright is an Australian man who has been claiming to be the inventor of Bitcoin - Satoshi Nakamoto - for quite a few years now. He was sued by the estate of the late Dave Kleiman (a computer forensics expert from Florida), with the claim that Wright has defrauded the Kleiman estate, keeping a huge amount of money (in the form of BTC) for himself, even though he worked on the project together with Mr. Kleiman.
A federal jury has found Craig Wright to be innocent on these charges, but ordered him to pay $100 million to the W&K Info Defense Research, founded by Mr. Kleiman.
In order to understand the significance of the verdict, it’s first important to emphasize that Mr. Wright, while being adamant on his identity being that of the creator of Bitcoin, has failed to provide any proof of this being the case, for all of these years.
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If Mr. Wright was actually the creator of Bitcoin, he would be in possession of 1,1 million Bitcoins, which were mined back when Bitcoin was first created, and have not been touched ever since.
If one were to believe that these Bitcoins are currently located in the wallet of the creator of BTC, Satoshi Nakamoto, the BTC would be worth around $50 billion, as of writing this post.
Mr. Kleiman’s brother (by the extent to his estate) had taken up the lawsuit Craig Wright claiming that, if he was truly in possession of these coins (which, notably, Mr. Wright still adamantly claims he is), he would owe the Kleiman estate half of it, since he and Mr. Kleiman were business partners. Mr. Wright acknowledged that he and Mr. Kleiman were close friends, but denies the latter individual’s involvement in the creation of Bitcoin.
Since all Bitcoin transactions are public and available for everyone to see, the crypto community urged Craigh Wright to move at least a small amount of the 1,1 million BTC to a separate wallet, in order to prove that he is the true creator of Bitcoin. Mr. Wright has not done so.
At the same time, Mr. Wright promised that he would actually access his funds, and provide unquestionable proof that he was the creator of Bitcoin, if he were to win the trial in question. On top of that, he promised to donate most of the 1,1 million BTC to charity, a sentiment echoed by his representing party in court, too.
The jury ordered Mr. Wright to pay $100 million via fiat payment methods, and not BTC. The sum was named as payment for breach of intellectual property rights, however, exactly which rights are in question is unknown.
The attorney for the plaintiffs, Vel Freedman, was more than happy with the verdict. Although he asked for over $162 billion for the half of 1,1 million BTC and breach of intellectual property, and also around $17 billion in punitive damages, the final $100 million verdict did appear satisfactory.
Craig Wright, on the other hand, pointed out that Ira Kleiman, the brother of the late Dave Kleiman, would “have trouble collecting any verdict awarded to W&K”, because Mr. Wright’s ex-wife and another party own two-thirds of his company.
