A computer scientist named Craig Wright who has claimed to be the inventor of Bitcoin has seemingly been vindicated by a Florida Jury who ruled against the family of his deceased business partner David Kleiman. The family claimed that they were owed half of a cryptocurrency empire valued in the tens of billions of US Dollars. Wright who has claimed to be the enigmatic ‘Satoshi Nakamoto’, a shadowy figure or group of figures known to have created Bitcoin, made his claim in 2016 and was met with wide criticism from many in the crypto community.
According to Insurance Journal,
“A Florida jury found that Wright did not owe half of 1.1 million Bitcoin to the family of David Kleiman. The jury did award $100 million in intellectual property rights to a joint venture between the two men, a fraction of what Kleiman’s lawyers were asking for in trial.
“This was a tremendous victory for our side,” said Andres Rivero of Rivero Mestre LLP, the lead lawyer representing Wright.”
Wright was awarded half of the $100 million in intellectual property.
The Kleiman Family’s Claim of a Bitcoin Partnership
Since Wright’s claim that he was Bitcoin’s creator 1.1 million bitcoin have remained to be mined, the members of the bitcoin community have called for Wright to move even some of them to a separate account in order to confirm his claim, but he has insisted that he will prove his ownership if he were to win the trial.
Kleiman passed away in 2013, since then his brother Ira has led the family’s legal effort claiming that David and Wright were “close friends and co-created Bitcoin through a partnership.” The Kleiman estate sued Wright for half of the outstanding bitcoins plus intellectual property rights.
Attorneys for Mr. Wright have maintained that while the two were friends and frequently collaborated, their partnership did not include the creation of Bitcoin or the early operations of the currency. Craig has repeatedly attested that he intends to donate a large amount of the Bitcoin fortune to a charity upon his legal victory. According to the Associated Press, “In an interview, Wright’s lawyer Rivero reconfirmed Wright’s plans to donate much of his Bitcoin fortune”
