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The Australian man who claimed to have invented cryptocurrency bitcoin has been ordered to hand over half of his alleged bitcoin holdings, reported to be worth up to $5bn.
The IT security consultant Craig Wright, 49, was sued by the estate of David Kleiman, a programmer who died in 2013, for a share of Wright’s bitcoin haul over the pair’s involvement in the inception of the cryptocurrency from 2009 to 2013.
Kleiman’s estate alleges Wright and Kleiman were partners, and therefore his family is entitled to a share of the bitcoin that was mined by the pair in that time. Wright denies there was a partnership.
A US district court in Florida on Tuesday ruled that half of the bitcoin mined and half of the intellectual property held by Wright from that time belongs to Kleiman.
One issue is it is not known exactly how much bitcoin Wright holds. It has been claimed that the Kleiman estate could get anywhere between 410,000 and 500,000 bitcoin, putting the value at between A$6.1bn and A$7.4bn as of Wednesday.
Wright claimed to the court that he couldn’t access the bitcoin because he doesn’t have a list of the public addresses of that bitcoin. He claimed in 2011, after seeing the cryptocurrency had begun to be associated with drug dealers and human traffickers, he put the bitcoin he mined in 2009 and 2010 into an encrypted file and into a blind trust. The encrypted key was divided into multiple key slices, and the key slices were given to Kleiman who distributed them to people through the trust.
[...] In the judgment, Judge Bruce Reinhart said Wright had not proved he could not comply and obtain the bitcoin. He said Wright made inconsistent statements and the whole story was “inconceivable” that he’d had a Dr Frankenstein-like revelation when his creation “turned to evil”.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by pipedwho on Wednesday August 28 2019, @11:36PM (8 children)
If this is legitimate, I think we're soon going to find out who Satoshi Nakamoto really is (was).
(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Wednesday August 28 2019, @11:41PM (4 children)
You say it like it really matters.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 29 2019, @01:11AM (2 children)
Based on the valuation of the bitcoins Mr Nakamoto supposedly has, it matters a lot to some people. Not just the family suing Mr Wright but every tax authority that can reach him.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday August 29 2019, @03:06AM (1 child)
And this has consequences on me and my life.... exactly how? Or yours?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 29 2019, @08:24AM
Was that your question? I thought you said:
Which is what I replied to. Whether that matters, or has consequences, to you does not matter to me.
(Score: 2, Touché) by khallow on Thursday August 29 2019, @12:18PM
Ditto. Who here really cares that it doesn't really matter? I doubt even you do.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 28 2019, @11:44PM
Spoiler: it isn't and we aren't.
(Score: 1) by liberza on Wednesday August 28 2019, @11:44PM (1 child)
Doubtful... Craig Wright has not proved in any way that he is Satoshi Nakamoto.
It would be quite simple to do: sign a message using the private key from BTC's genesis block.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 29 2019, @01:13AM
What if Wright is the wrong guy? What if David Kleiman was Satoshi Nakamoto?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by epitaxial on Thursday August 29 2019, @01:21AM (3 children)
I don't know why this doesn't get more attention. This is one of the greatest modern mysteries IMHO. Of course you can't cash out the Satoshi wallets without collapsing the market but to be sitting on that much potential wealth and never dipping in? Someone either has amazing self control (or possibly on the spectrum) or wealthy enough to not need it.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 29 2019, @02:07AM (2 children)
Or, in one moment of resolve/stupidity, Satoshi deliberately/accidentally nuked his hard drive.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Thursday August 29 2019, @05:23AM (1 child)
Or Satoshi just was lazy on doing backups, and his key was gone after a regular hard disk failure.
Or the key is protected with a strong password, which Satoshi never wrote down, and then one day forgot.
Of course it is also possible that Satoshi is already dead, and never told anyone the password to his key.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 29 2019, @10:54AM
Or generated during development and discarded the wallet.dat file from time to time (due to some issue) without starting a new genesis block.
Don't forget that bitcoins didn't had any value at that time.
To me, both parties weren't Satoshi. I was there when he was still in the community and had some conversation with him at the time. To me it always seemed he didn't want to be in the open and take personal credit for his work. It doens't matter who he/she is, it's about what he/she has given to the world and hoped what that we would find a use for it.
(Score: 2) by Chocolate on Thursday August 29 2019, @02:47AM (2 children)
They could count $50 bills stuffed under a mattress
How do they know how much Btc this guy has?
Bit-choco-coin anyone?
(Score: 2) by epitaxial on Thursday August 29 2019, @03:03AM (1 child)
Educated guesses https://bitslog.com/2013/04/17/the-well-deserved-fortune-of-satoshi-nakamoto/ [bitslog.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 29 2019, @01:26PM
Still not good enough though. No need to make an 'educational guess' at the contents of my bank account. Could they be grasping at straws here?