The Alleged Inventor of Bitcoin Forced By Court To Pay $7 Billion
No one knows for sure who Satoshi Nakamoto, the alleged inventor of Bitcoin cryptocurrency, is. Several people have claimed to have invented the virtual currency, but none so far have provided convincing evidence in this regard.
However, one of the alleged inventors Craig Wright is forced by the Australian authorities to pay half of his wealth in Bitcoin to the descendants of David Kleiman, a programmer who is alleged to have helped him start the cryptocurrency between 2009-2013.
According to estimates, Craign Wright should own about one million Bitcoins, but no one knows for sure the exact value. Wright claims, however, that he does not even have access to his Bitcoin wallet, because the address is secret, and the password has been encrypted and divided into several pieces, each of which is sent to trusted people. The reason why these coins were "hidden" at that time was panic.
Wright says all the cryptocurrencies he mined between 2009 and 2010 are in this secret wallet, which was made when he learned that Bitcoin is being used online by drug dealers and other criminal activities. Apparently, in order to have access to the wallet, he has to wait until January 2020, when a courier is scheduled to bring the information needed to access his Bitcoin wallet.
The story seems hard to believe, but the judge doesn't seem to trust Wright's statements. Wright was ordered to pay half of his Bitcoins he owns to David Kleiman's family. However, the court cannot decide whether or not Wright is actually Satoshi Nakamoto nor determine exactly how many Bitcoins he owns.
The latest estimates said that Kleiman's family should receive somewhere between 410,000 and 500,000 Bitcoin, worth between $6.1 and $7.4 billion at this time.
