From the Wall Street Journal, November 13:
Lawsuit over a $64 billion cache looks beyond the pseudonym to solve the mystery of who created the cryptocurrencyA seemingly run-of-the-mill trial is playing out in Florida: The family of a deceased man is suing his former business partner over control of their partnership’s assets.
In this case, the assets in question are a cache of about one million bitcoins, equivalent to around $64 billion today, belonging to bitcoin’s creator, the pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto. The family of the dead man says he and his business partner together were Nakamoto, and thus the family is entitled to half of the fortune.
Who Satoshi Nakamoto is has been one of the financial world’s enduring mysteries. Does the name refer to one person? Or several? And why has he or she or they not touched a penny of that fortune?
The answers to those questions are at the center of the Florida dispute and of bitcoin itself. Bitcoin has become a trillion-dollar market, with tens of millions of investors. It has challenged governments trying to regulate it and has been endorsed 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 is all before you get to who controls one of the largest private fortunes in the world.
That is what a Florida jury will try to tackle. The family of David Kleiman is suing his former business partner, a 51-year-old Australian programmer living in London named Craig Wright. Mr. Wright has been arguing since 2016 that he created bitcoin, a claim dismissed by most in the bitcoin community. Mr. Kleiman’s family argues that the two worked on and mined bitcoin together, entitling Mr. Kleiman’s family to half a million bitcoins.
The plaintiffs plan to produce evidence showing that the two were involved in bitcoin since its inception and worked together.
“It is about two friends who had a partnership, and about how one of them tried to take everything for himself after the other died,” said Tibor Nagy, a lawyer for Mr. Kleiman’s family.
The defense said it has evidence that will show Mr. Wright is the creator of bitcoin and never included Mr. Kleiman. “We believe the court will find there’s nothing to indicate or record that they were in a partnership,” said Andrés Rivero, a lawyer for Mr. Wright.
For bitcoiners, 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 one million bitcoins. Anyone claiming to be Satoshi Nakamoto could show that he or she has them by moving even a fraction of a coin out of it.
The mystery of Satoshi Nakamoto is one of the curiosities of bitcoin. On Oct. 31, 2008, somebody using that name sent a nine-page paper to a group of cryptographers explaining a system of “electronic cash” that allowed people to exchange value without the need for a bank or other party. 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 the family of Mr. Kleiman claims his business partner Mr. Wright asked for Mr. Kleiman’s help in what would become that nine-page paper. They collaborated on the white paper and launched bitcoin together, the suit alleges....
....MUCH MORE
Previously, February 2018: "The Man Who Claimed to Invent Bitcoin Is Being Sued for $10 Billion".
Hey, the wheels of justice grind slowly in the U.S. (and in Dickens*)
I find it almost beyond belief that Wright is Satoshi. He is just too loud about it:
Crypto: "Craig Wright Attempts to Copyright the Satoshi White Paper and Bitcoin Code"
He is not Satoshi.
As the man says on TV: Craig, what's in your wallet?....
See our first rule for identifying members of Phi Scamma Jamma which says (the introduction to 2013's "How to Spot a Hedge Fund Fraudster"):
Bombast. In my experience they are all bombastic.
And stripper poles. You would not believe the number of stripper poles that crooks collect....
*However, the trial should be interesting to follow. The apparent world record longest trial ended in 1966
having been filed in 1205.
Judgement was for the plaintiff.
And back to Dickens, the lawsuit in Bleak House via Law and Politics Book Review on LawCourts.org:
"...Innumerable children have been born into the cause; innumerable young people have married into it; innumerable old people have died out of it. Scores of persons have deliriously found themselves made parties in Jarndyce and Jarndyce, without knowing how or why; whole families have inherited legendary hatreds with the suit.
The little plaintiff or defendant, who was promised a new rocking-horse when Jarndyce and Jarndyce should be settled, has grown up, possessed himself of a real horse, and trotted away into the other world.
Fair wards of court have faded into mothers and grandmothers; a long procession of Chancellors has come in and gone out; the legion of bills in the suit have been transformed into mere bills of mortality; there are not three Jarndyces left upon the earth perhaps, since old Tom Jarndyce in despair blew his brains out at a coffee-house in Chancery Lane..."