Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto could be exposed in Florida lawsuit

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In this case, the assets in question are a cache of around one million bitcoins, equivalent to around $ 64 billion today, owned by the creator of bitcoin, the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto. The family of the deceased say that he and his business partner were Nakamoto, and therefore the family is entitled to half of the fortune.

Who Satoshi Nakamoto is has been one of the lingering mysteries in the financial world. Does the name refer to a person? Or many ? And why did or did he not receive a penny of this fortune?

The answers to these questions are central to the dispute in Florida and to bitcoin itself. Bitcoin has grown into a trillion dollar market, with tens of millions of investors. It challenged governments trying to regulate it and was approved by some. The technology behind it is seen by some as a way to rewire the global financial system. Yet who created it and why has remained a mystery.

And that’s all before knowing who controls one of the largest private fortunes in the world.

This is what a Florida jury will try to tackle. David Kleiman’s family is suing his former business partner, Craig Wright, a 51-year-old Australian programmer living in London. Mr Wright has been arguing since 2016 that he created bitcoin, a claim rejected by most members of the bitcoin community. Mr. Kleiman’s family claim that the two worked and mined bitcoin together, entitling Mr. Kleiman’s family to half a million bitcoin.

“We believe the evidence will show that there was a partnership to create and mine over a million bitcoins,” said Vel Freedman, lawyer for the Kleiman family.

The plaintiffs plan to produce evidence showing that the two have been involved in bitcoin since its inception and have worked together.

“This is about two friends who had a partnership and how one of them tried to take it all for himself after the other’s death,” said Tibor Nagy, an attorney who observed the trial.

The defense said they had evidence showing that Mr. Wright is the creator of bitcoin and never included Mr. Kleiman. “We believe the court will find that there is nothing to indicate or record that they were in a partnership,” said Andrés Rivero, an attorney for Mr. Wright.

For bitcoins, there is only one piece of evidence that could conclusively prove the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto: the private key that controls the account where Nakamoto stored the million bitcoins. Anyone claiming to be Satoshi Nakamoto could show that he or she has them by withdrawing even a fraction of a coin.

One of the curiosities of bitcoin is the mystery of Satoshi Nakamoto. On October 31, 2008, someone using that name sent a nine-page document to a group of cryptographers explaining a system of “electronic money” that allowed people to exchange value without needing a bank or bank. ‘an other part. A few months later, the bitcoin network went live and Nakamoto collected one million bitcoins in its first year.

It was earlier in 2008 that Mr. Kleiman’s family claim that his business partner, Mr. Wright, enlisted Mr. Kleiman’s help with what would become this nine-page document. They collaborated on the white paper and launched bitcoin together, according to the lawsuit.

Bitcoin combines encryption, cryptography, distributed computing, and game theory. With Bitcoin, two people, anywhere in the world with an internet connection, could transact without a middleman within minutes.

For each of the more than 650 million bitcoin transactions, all publicly visible on a ledger called a ‘blockchain’, there are two strings of numbers that control how digital currency is moved: a public key and a private key. Anyone can send bitcoin to the public key, or destination address, which is similar to a bank account, only the person who controls the account will have the private key and essentially own the bitcoin.

In the early days of Bitcoin, no one cared much about Nakamoto’s identity. Bitcoin had no tangible value and only a small group of backers. Nakamoto has been active in its development for about two years, writing on message boards and sending emails to developers. In December 2010, Nakamoto, who was known to use two email addresses and have a registered website, stopped posting publicly; essentially, Nakamoto is gone.

The universe of people with the technical knowledge to create bitcoin is limited. Most of the important names in crypto have been tagged as Nakamoto. All have denied it, and no evidence has ever established a conclusive link with the creation of Bitcoin.

Meanwhile, in 2011, Mr. Kleiman incorporated a company in Florida called W&K Info Defense Research. His family alleges that it was a partnership and that Mr. Wright subsequently attempted to claim ownership outright. The defense claims that there was in fact no partnership.

Mr. Kleiman died on April 26, 2013.

The following year, Newsweek reported that a man with the same name as Satoshi, Dorian Nakamoto, was the creator of Bitcoin. He denied the request, and on a bulletin board, a one-sentence message from an account known to have been used by the real Nakamoto agreed, “I’m not Dorian Nakamoto.” If this was a real message from the creator of Bitcoin, this is Nakamoto’s last public correspondence.

In May 2016, Mr. Wright claimed he was the founder of Bitcoin. He met several of the early bitcoin pioneers, gave exclusive interviews to three media outlets, and filled a website with articles he had written on cryptography and bitcoin.

Three days later, faced with fierce criticism, he dropped the request. He took everything off the website and replaced it with a four paragraph apology. “I broke,” he wrote. “I don’t have the courage. I can’t.” He has since renewed his insistence on creating bitcoin.

Whether Mr. Wright or Mr. Kleiman possesses or possessed the necessary knowledge to create the cryptocurrency is disputed.

Mr. Wright “hacked, bamboozled and deceived people, playing the game of trust,” said Arthur van Pelt, a bitcoin investor who has become one of Mr. Wright’s outspoken critics. “There is no genuine, independent and credible proof of anything.”

Mr. Kleiman’s IT expertise was known to be extensive. It’s possible that Mr. Kleiman created bitcoin, said Emin Gun Sirer, founder of Ava Labs, but there isn’t enough information to be sure. “It’s an open question,” he said.

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