Craig Wright, who claims to be the creator of Bitcoin, was ordered by a federal jury to pay $100 million in damages to the family of a deceased business partner. He is above arriving at the courthouse in Miami, Florida, on November 16
The Australian computer scientist who claims he created Bitcoin was ordered by a federal jury to pay $100 million in damages over a breach in intellectual property rights to the family of a deceased business partner.
Craig Wright was spared, however, from having to pay the family of David Kleiman half of a cache of $1.1 million Bitcoin – currently worth about $50 billion – they say the two mined together.
The trove is among the first Bitcoin to ever be created and said to belong to its creator Satoshi Nakamoto. Wright claims to be the sole creator, though Kleiman’s brother Ira argued in court that they adopted the pseudonym together.
At the end of the trial, however, the true identity of the creator is still unclear. Wright has refused to move the cryptocurrency to another account to prove he has ownership of it – therefore the jury could not award it to the family of Kleiman, who was a computer security expert from Florida and died in 2013.
However, the jury did find that Wright owed Kleiman’s family $100 million related to their joint venture W&K Info Defense Research LLC, through which the two developed software used in the early stages of blockchain and cryptocurrency technologies.
Jurors in Miami federal court deliberated for a week, following three weeks of trial, in a highly intricate case that traced back the mysterious origins of Bitcoin and dove into the inner workings of the cryptocurrency.
In the end, the jury rejected most claims made by the Kleiman family against Wright, who told Bloomberg that he wouldn’t appeal the decision. “I have never been so relieved in my life,’ he added.
W&K will directly receive the $100 million from Wright rather than the Kleiman estate. “We are immensely gratified that our client, W&K Information Defense Research LLC, has won $100,000,000 reflecting that Craig Wright wrongfully took bitcoin-related assets from W&K,” a representative for the company told CNBC.
Devin Freedman, an attorney for the Kleiman estate, told Bloomberg that the verdict was “a historical precedent in the innovative and transformative industry of cryptocurrency and blockchain.”
The family of David Kleiman a computer security expert who died in 2013, allege that the two both launched Bitcoin and Wright owes
