The "Father of Bitcoin" is suspected to appear to file a $5 billion lawsuit

Bitcoin and blockchain technology are in the spotlight, and speculation about their creators has never stopped. Who exactly is the recognized founder of Bitcoin, "Satoshi Nakamoto"? With the skyrocketing value of Bitcoin, it has attracted global attention.

Recently, Craig Wright, an Australian entrepreneur who claims to be the creator of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto, was sued for more than $5.1 billion by the family of his late partner Dave Kleiman, accusing him of conspiring to embezzle his partner's Bitcoin. This $5 billion lawsuit just proves that Wright may not have lied about the identity of the founder of Bitcoin. He is "Satoshi Nakamoto."

Involved in embezzlement of partner’s property

According to a recent report on the Bloomberg News website, Wright and Dave Kleiman, who is also a virtual currency advocate, founded a Florida-based company in 2011 called Wright-Kleiman Information Defense Research LLC, with network security as its main business. The two had previously worked together to develop Bitcoin and carried out a lot of mining work. According to the lawsuit filed on February 14 by the Federal Court in West Palm Beach, Florida, the company jointly established by the two estimated that 300,000 to 1.1 million Bitcoins were mined and stored in trusts in Singapore, the Seychelles and the United Kingdom. But Kleiman died in 2013, and his family did not know the extent of his involvement in the Bitcoin plan. Wright took the opportunity to seize Kleiman's Bitcoin and related intellectual property rights, and was involved in forging documents. According to reports, the lawyer of the Kleiman family stated in the lawsuit: "Craig forged a series of contracts with the intention of transferring Dave's assets to Craig and/or companies owned by Craig. Craig filled in earlier dates on these contracts and forged Dave's signature."

The lawsuit also states that when the family questioned the documents after Kleiman's death, Wright promised to "pay back Kleiman's share", but did not fulfill it. Kleiman's brother Ella Kleiman provided emails between himself and Wright, in which Wright hinted that he may have 300,000 bitcoins belonging to Kleiman.

“[Kleiman] mentioned you had 1 million bitcoins in a trust, and you said 300,000 of them belonged to him, so I assume the remaining 700,000 is yours, is that correct?” Ella wrote.

Wright replied: "About the same, minus what the company needs."

Ella Kleiman is currently managing the estate of the late Dave Kleiman, and he also filed the lawsuit against Wright. In his lawsuit, he stated: "While it is impossible to determine whether Bitcoin was created by either or both of them, it is undeniable that both of them played a role in developing Bitcoin and accumulated a large amount of Bitcoin wealth between 2009 and 2013." Ella and other family members of Dave Kleiman therefore claimed that they have the rights to more than 1 million Bitcoins mined by Kleiman during his lifetime and the blockchain technology he developed, and should receive half of the company's current value. The crazy rise of Bitcoin has attracted global attention, and the increase of more than 10,000 times in a few years is even more shocking. When the Kleiman family filed the lawsuit, the value of each Bitcoin was more than 10,000 US dollars. The rights to more than 1 million Bitcoins and the blockchain technology developed are estimated to be worth more than 10 billion US dollars, and this valuation still has the potential to appreciate as Bitcoin rises. Therefore, the Kleiman family believes that the current value of half of the company they are claiming is estimated to be at least 5.1 billion US dollars.

Wright, who is reportedly living in London, could not be reached for comment on the case. No attorney is listed for Wright on the docket.

The mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto

As a pioneer of electronic cryptocurrency, Satoshi Nakamoto, who published a Bitcoin paper in 2008 and released the Bitcoin software in 2009, has always been a mysterious figure. For many years, the entire industry and many media have been tracking down the true identity of Satoshi Nakamoto, but it has never been confirmed, and even caused many blunders. For example, in 2014, the US "Newsweek" published an article saying that Dorian, a computer engineer in California, was named "Satoshi Nakamoto" when he was born, and therefore believed that he was the founder of Bitcoin. But in the end, it was proved that the guess was wrong.

In December 2015, technology news websites Wired and Gizmodo claimed to have obtained relevant evidence and information, pointing out that Australian entrepreneur Craig Wright is "Satoshi Nakamoto" and that he created Bitcoin with the help of Kleiman.

An article published on the Wired website pointed out that the evidence obtained by the site was leaked by Wright's friend to security researcher Gwern Branwen, who then handed it over to the editor of the site. The relevant evidence includes Wright's blog posts, emails, and information about the company founded by Wright.

In Wright's blog, he mentioned in August 2008 that he would publish a paper on cryptocurrency (Satoshi Nakamoto published the Bitcoin paper in November 2008); Wright also required readers who wanted to contact him to use a PGP public key, and the email name (satoshin) used to register the public key was very similar to the email name (satoshi) used by Satoshi Nakamoto; Wright also announced the launch of the Bitcoin test version at a very precise time.

Many of the emails Wright exchanged with his friends were related to Bitcoin or large-scale purchases of computer processors. There was also a PDF file in which Wright's confidant Dave Kleiman agreed to take over a trust fund of 1.1 million Bitcoins. This number is consistent with the number of Bitcoins that the outside world speculates that Satoshi Nakamoto owns.

Additionally, Wired found that a company owned by Wright called Hotwire was founded in 2013 with $2.3 million worth of Bitcoin, which was about 1.5% of all Bitcoin on the market at the time.

Prior to this, Wright had never been on any other media's list of Satoshi Nakamoto candidates.

Litigation Byproduct

In 2016, Wright admitted on his blog that he was the main figure in the team that developed the original Bitcoin software under the pseudonym "Satoshi Nakamoto". Wright provided technical evidence and used Bitcoins known to be owned by the inventor of Bitcoin to support his claims. He claimed that he hoped to end the media's speculation about who "Satoshi Nakamoto" was by revealing his identity. After the media broke the news, Australian authorities quickly searched Wright's home. However, the Australian tax department said that the search was not related to Bitcoin, but a long-term investigation into tax issues.

In addition, Wright also revealed his identity to three authoritative media outlets, the BBC, The Economist, and GQ magazine, and demonstrated how to use an early Bitcoin password lock for digital signatures. However, he also admitted that although he played a major role in the invention of Bitcoin, he also received help from others.

Shortly after Wright revealed his identity, Gavin Andresen of the Bitcoin Foundation expressed support for Wright's statement in his blog. Economist Jon Matonis, one of the founders of the Bitcoin Foundation, also said that he was sure that Wright was telling the truth. However, this statement was not accepted by the majority, especially in the Bitcoin circle. "Only a small number of people may have the ability to create Bitcoin," an influential but unnamed member of the cryptocurrency community said in an interview with the media, and Wright is not one of these small groups.

After that, Wright claimed that he decided not to provide further evidence to prove that he was the inventor of Bitcoin. However, this lawsuit has made many people who originally doubted Wright's identity as "Satoshi Nakamoto" believe his claim of being the "founder". After all, no matter what disputes he has with the Kleiman family, 1.1 million bitcoins are indeed in line with the outside world's estimate of the number of coins held by "Satoshi Nakamoto".

Velvel Devin Freedman, the attorney representing the Kleiman family in the lawsuit, said in an interview with the media that finding out whether Wright lied about inventing Bitcoin will be a byproduct of this lawsuit. "This case has attracted global attention because people realize that evidence proving how much Craig stole from the Kleiman assets will fully reveal whether Craig is Satoshi Nakamoto," Freedman said. "Whether Craig is Satoshi Nakamoto is not relevant to this case, but Craig will have to swear in court and submit documents for expert examination. People will be excited to find out what is really as he claims, even though those things are not what we care about most."