A computer scientist who claims to be the inventor of the world's most popular cryptocurrency, bitcoin, has won a lawsuit for 1.1 million bitcoins, a sum that today amounts to more than $55 billion.
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The trial, which took place between Australian Craig Wright and the family of his former partner and late Dave Kleiman in Miami, sided with Wright and acquitted him of the fraud charges he faced. According to Reuters, what Kleiman's relatives were asking for was half of the 1.1 million bitcoin fortune the two partners created.
Although Wright will not share the bitcoins with the late Kleiman's family, he will have to pay $100 million in intellectual property royalties to W&K Information Defense Research LLC, a company they both owned. Wright's former partner and computer expert Kleiman died in 2013, and the two claimed to have created bitcoin together.
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"This was an extremely good result and I feel completely vindicated," Wright said in a video. "There are still more battles to come. We are going to change everything: cryptocurrencies will become digital cash as they should be."
However, Wright claims to be the real Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonym for the man who created bitcoin. In 2016, Wright said he was Nakamoto and that the name was a pseudonym. The 1.1 million bitcoins Wright won are some of the first cryptocurrencies ever mined by Nakamoto. Kleiman's family said Wright stole the bitcoin mined during their partnership.
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Lawyers for W&K and Kleiman's estate said their clients are "absolutely delighted" to have won $100 million in the copyright ruling and that the Kleimans were given "a fair share of what Dave helped create."
