The Australian man who claims he invented Bitcoin has won a massive legal fight worth tens of billions of dollars.
Craig Wright an Australian computer scientist, was locked in a battle with the family of his dead business partner, David Kleiman.
Kleiman's family was suing Wright for half of their alleged shared assets, which included 1.1 million Bitcoins.
Advert
Satoshi Nakamoto is the pseudonym used by the person or persons who developed Bitcoin, authored the Bitcoin white paper and created and deployed Bitcoin's original reference implementation.
Nakamoto also devised the first blockchain database. Many people have laid claim to the alias, but the true identity isn't known.
Wright claims to be Satoshi Nakamoto, however the wider crypto market has dismissed his allegations.
Advert
According to Kleiman's family, both he and Wright were partners in engineering Bitcoin, which entitled them to half of Nakamoto's Bitcoins.
One point one million Bitcoins are worth around AUD$71 billion, so you can understand why there was such a battle over the estate.
However, a Florida jury ended up siding with Craig Wright, which means he gets to essentially keep all of the Bitcoins.
The court did grant AUD$142 million worth of intellectual property rights to a joint venture shared between Wright and Kleiman to the latter's family.
Advert
The trial was a tricky one because it relied on the jury understanding how cryptocurrencies and the blockchain work.
Anyone who has money invested into the digital funds will know that it's not exactly a walk in the park breaking the whole industry down for people who might not be accustomed to all the jargon.
Dr Wright's legal team explained to the jury that while he and Mr Kleiman worked together and were friends, he wasn't involved in the work that was done on Bitcoin.
Advert
According to the Associated Press, Dr Wright's 1.1 million Bitcoins haven't been touched since they were first created.
He said he would prove he owned them and therefore his links with the possible origins of Bitcoin if he were to win the case.
Andres Rivero, who represented Craig Wright, said following the win: "This was a tremendous victory for our side."
Many experts believe the code behind Bitcoin is too sophisticated for it to have come from one person, unless that person was a genius.
Advert
Nakamoto, who is said to use two email addresses, vanished from message boards and development discussions at the end of 2010. During the asset's first year of operation, Nakamoto collected nearly one million Bitcoins.
In 2016, shortly after his public claim that he was Nakamoto, Wright walked back the announcement. He has since reestablished the claim but insists only he is behind the creation.
Featured Image Credit: AlamyTopics: Bitcoin, News, Australia