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'Satoshi' Craig Wright Is Being Sued For $10 Billion For Stealing His Partner's Bitcoin (coindesk.com)

Craig Wright, the nChain chief scientist who previously claimed to be the pseudonymous bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto, is being sued for a whopping $10 billion for stealing $5 billion in bitcoin from a former business partner. CoinDesk reports: The lawsuit is being brought by Ira Kleiman on behalf of the estate of his brother, Dave, who has been linked to the earliest days of bitcoin. Kleiman, a forensic computer investigator and author, passed away in 2013 following a battle with MRSA. At the heart of the new lawsuit, according to a complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida on Feb. 14, is an alleged hoard of more than 1.1 million bitcoins, which Ira Kleiman's lawyers say is worth in excess of $10 billion. He is being represented by Boies Schiller Flexner LLP.

Wright, court records show, has been accused of allegedly conducting "a scheme against Dave's estate to seize Dave's bitcoins and his rights to certain intellectual property associated with the Bitcoin technology." "As part of this plan, Craig forged a series of contracts that purported to transfer Dave's assets to Craig and/or companies controlled by him. Craig backdated these contracts and forged Dave's signature on them," attorneys for the plaintiff wrote. Included alongside the complaint are a number of additional filings, including the business registration for a firm called W&K Info Defense Research LLC, in which Kleiman and Wright were business partners. In addition to the roughly 1.1 million bitcoins, Ira Kleiman is also seeking compensation for the intellectual property his lawyers claim arose from the partnership between his deceased brother and Wright.

4 of 92 comments (clear)

  1. Tells you what Bitcoin really is. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    There's currently about 17 million bitcoins in existence. So if just one of these early players has 1.1 million of them, how many in total are hoarded by the founders while the suckers who were late to the party bid up the value on a small handful of coins.

  2. If a pretend tree falls in the forest, did it fall by WillAffleckUW · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The key problem here is one factor, valuation.

    It has no intrinsic value.

    It only has inferred value.

    The value depends on the market, if and when such a market is in existence.

    It's worth at least one-percent of a wooden vessel cargo pallet of tulips.

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  3. Re:If a pretend tree falls in the forest, did it f by WillAffleckUW · · Score: 5, Insightful

    spoken like someone who doesn't understand what money is

    Money is power backed by the organization which grants you resources. Bitcoin is a mathematical expression of the powerless pretending that they have both power and resources.

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  4. If only there is a way to ... by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I wonder if there is a way to authenticate documents and calculate some kind of hash that makes it impossible to back date ....

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    sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact