I am Satoshi Nakamoto: Self-proclaimed inventor of Bitcoin prevails in legal case
A UK-based computer scientist has declared that a victory in a court case in Florida shows he is the mysterious inventor of Bitcoin.
Craig Wright, an Australian who lives in Britain, prevailed in a civil trial in America against the family of his late business partner, who claimed he owed them billions of dollars in cryptocurrency.
The jury in Florida found that Mr Wright did not owe up to half of 1.1 million Bitcoin to the family of David Kleiman.
Mr Wright was ordered to pay $100 million over a breach in intellectual property rights related to a joint venture between the two men.
At the heart of the complex court case was the true identity of the mysterious and enigmatic creator of Bitcoin - "Satoshi Nakamoto".
In October 2008, at the height of the financial crisis, the elusive Nakamoto published a paper setting out "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System".
It laid out a framework for a digital currency that would not be tied to any legal or sovereign authority.
The name "Nakamoto" roughly translated from Japanese as "at the centre of" and was widely regarded to be a pseudonym.
In 2016 Mr Wright first claimed to be Satoshi Nakamoto.
Mr Kleiman's family, in their legal case, claimed that he and Mr Wright had been close friends and co-created Bitcoin through a partnership.
They argued that Mr Kleiman's estate should be entitled to a share of 1.1 million Bitcoin. which were among the first to be created and are held by Nakamoto. They are now worth over $50 billion.
Mr Kleiman, an Army veteran, was a paraplegic following a motorcycle accident in 1995. He appeared on television as an expert in computer forensics and security.
When he was found dead at his home in Palm Beach, Florida in 2013, aged 46, his body had begun to decompose, there were bloody wheelchair tracks, open bottles of alcohol, a loaded handgun, and a bullet hole in his mattress. The exact circumstances of his death remained unknown.
In the civil case lawyers for Mr Wright said he and Mr Kleiman were friends and collaborated on work together.
But they said the partnership had nothing to do with the creation of Bitcoin or its early operation.
After the case Mr Wright said the outcome showed he was the creator of Bitcoin.
"The jury has obviously found that I am," he said.
Mr Wright added: "I have never been so relieved in my life. This has been a remarkably good outcome and I feel completely vindicated."
Lawyers for W&K Information Defense Research LLC, a joint venture between Mr Wright and Mr Kleiman, said they were "gratified" that the jury had awarded $100 million to the company in relation to intellectual property rights.
The company developed software that set the groundwork for early cryptocurrency technologies.
The case in Miami was highly technical, with the jury listening to explanations of the intricate workings of cryptocurrencies, as well as the murky origins of how Bitcoin came to be.
Mr Wright's claim that he is Nakamoto has been met with scepticism from a sizeable portion of the cryptocurrency community.
The 1.1 million Bitcoin have remained untouched since their creation and sceptics have called for him to move a fraction of the coins into a separate account to prove he owns them.
Others have been associated with the Satoshi Nakamoto pseudonym.
In 2014 Dorian Nakamoto, a physicist in California, was identified in a media report but strenuously denied having anything to do with Bitcoin.
