Craig Wright, self-proclaimed bitcoin inventor, is reportedly being sued for $5 billion in bitcoin and other assets by the estate of a now deceased former business partner, David Kleiman.
Kleiman’s brother Ira filed the lawsuit in Florida.
Go deeper with GlobalData
According to details of the lawsuit published by Bloomberg, Wright and Kleiman had worked together on early development of bitcoin. The pair formed W&K Info Defence Research in 2011 to mine the cryptocurrency.
The suit seeks the return of bitcoin worth over $5 billion.
A summons for Wright was reportedly issued on 15 February.
What was said:
Wright’s only public response to the allegations contained in the suit was a one-word tweet that said “greed”.
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By GlobalDataGreed
— Dr Craig S Wright (@ProfFaustus) February 26, 2018
Background:
In 2016, Craig Wright revealed himself as the inventor of cryptocurrency bitcoin known publically as Satoshi Nakamoto to the BBC, the Economist and GQ.
He provided technical proof to support these claims. He digitally signed messages using cryptographic keys created during the early days of bitcoin’s development to send the cryptocurrency to Hal Finney one of the other early developers.
His claim was corroborated by high profile members of the Bitcoin Foundation.
But members of the Bitcoin community remained unconvinced by his evidence and declared it was a scam.
Some argued that the evidence he used was manufactured years after 2008 when the cryptocurrency was in its early stages of development.
Wright decided to not publish the further evidence he had said he would and withdrew from the media spotlight.
The lawsuit does not discuss Wright or Kleiman’s role in the creation of bitcoin. It read:
It is unclear whether Craig, Dave and/or both created bitcoin.
For reasons not yet completed clear, they chose to keep their involvement in bitcoin hidden from most of their family and friends.
