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An Australian computer scientist named Craig Wright, who claims to be the mind behind Bitcoin, just won a major U.S. legal case that saved him from paying a former business partner tens of billions of dollars in the cryptocurrency.
The dispute pitted Wright against the family of his late business partner and computer forensics expert, David Kleiman, who was demanding half of the 1.1 million bitcoins the two allegedly mined through their partnership.
A Florida jury found Monday that Wright did not owe Kleiman’s family half the amount in bitcoins, although it did award him $100 million in compensatory damages for breach of intellectual property rights.
This amount is half of what Kleiman’s lawyers were asking for.
The mystery continues: who created Bitcoin?
In 2016, Wright claimed on his blog that he was the real Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonym used by the creator of Bitcoin. The accusation held that Kleiman was a co-creator of the valuable cryptocurrency alongside Wright and thus deserved half of the fortune.
“We are pleased that after four years of intense litigation and seven days of jury deliberation, in a case that was thought to be unwinnable, the jury ruled Dr. Craig Wright (aka Satoshi Nakamoto), was not business partners with Dave Kleiman.,” the firm Rivero Mestre LLC, representing Wright, said on Twitter.
For his part, Wright stated that the ruling was “remarkably good” and that he felt “completely vindicated,” although the case continues to be fought in the courts.
Going forward, the cryptocurrency community will continue to wait for Wright to prove that he is the real mastermind behind Bitcoin.
