By
Chimamanda U. Martha
April 25th, 2024
The pseudonym Satoshi is said to have swindled all of his partner’s Bitcoin holdings and has been charged with a lawsuit.
Till date, the mystery regarding the existence of Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto – which is an anonymous personality so far, remains unresolved. Two years back, Craig Wright, an Australian computer scientist and businessman claimed to be the real person behind the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto. However, his claims have been challenged strongly by the global Bitcoin community and even Mr. Wright has failed to provide any concrete evidence till now to back his claims.
Craig Wright now seems to be embroiled in the middle of yet another controversy and has been sued for a whopping $10 bn AUD by the family members of his previous business partner Dave Kleiman. Mr. Keliman for a forensic computer analyst and programmer and is said to have worked along with Wright for creating Bitcoins. In 2011, the duo formulated a company named W&K Info Defense Research LLC in Florida and allegedly held 1.1 million Bitcoins between them.
The lawsuit filed by Kleiman’s family alleges Craig Wright of having attempted to backdate and forge the contracts thereby transferring Kleiman’s assets to his own holding. The family alleges that Wright has swindled and taken over $5 billion of Kleiman’s Bitcoins and other intellectual property relating to blockchain technologies.
Moreover, the lawsuit documents also detail the working points of the W&C company and claims that Kleiman was the sole member of the firm, and so his estate was entitled to all the 1.1 million Bitcoins mined there. This now amounts to somewhere around $10 billion and so Kleiman’s family now wants all of them.
The lawsuit says: “It is unclear whether Craig, Dave, and/or both created bitcoin. It is undeniable, however, that Craig and Dave were involved in bitcoin from its inception, and that they both accumulated a vast wealth of bitcoins from 2009 through 2013.”
The lawsuit was filed in Florida two weeks ago and alleges that at the time of Kleiman’s death, “no one in his family was aware of the extent of his involvement in creating Bitcoin … recognizing this, Craig perpetrated a scheme against Dave’s estate to seize Dave’s bitcoins and his rights to certain intellectual property associated with the bitcoin technology.”
Craig Wright came into limelight in 2015, when the Australian authorities investigated the businessman over his involvement with the cryptocurrency. Later, in 2016, Wright went out public claiming that he was indeed the real face behind the suspicious personality Satoshi Nakamoto. However, he later failed to provide enough proofs to back his claims.