A Florida Trial Might Unmask the BTC's Creator Satoshi Nakamoto Once and For All

In this day and age, everyone has heard of Satoshi Nakamoto. The name refers to the pseudonym used by the person or persons who invented Bitcoin, wrote the Bitcoin white paper, and created bitcoin's original reference implementation. There's only one problem. No one knows who that is.

A trial in Florida may soon change that, as reported by the Wall Street Journal (WSJ). At first glance it might seem like a regular trial: the family of a deceased man called David Kleiman is suing his former business partner Craig Wright over control of their shared assets.

What makes this case different is that the assets in question are about one million bitcoins belonging to Bitcoin’s alleged creator: Satoshi Nakamoto. 

Wright is a 51-year-old Australian programmer living in London that has been making bold claims since 2016 that he created Bitcoin. This fact however has been dismissed by most of the Bitcoin community.

This has not stopped Kleiman's family from claiming that their late relative and Wright were indeed partners in engineering Bitcoin which would entitle them to about half of $64 billion, the total worth of Nakamoto's bitcoins today.

A lawyer for the Kleiman family, Vel Freedman, told WSJ “We believe the evidence will show there was a partnership to create and mine over one million bitcoin.”

Doubling down

You would think that this trial would be enough to have Wright go back on his claims of being the inventor of Bitcoin, but instead, the defense is merely planning to prove that Wright and only Wright invented the now-famous cryptocurrency.

“We believe the court will find there’s nothing to indicate or record that they were in a partnership,” Andrés Rivero, a lawyer for Wright told the WSJ.

Wright, however, has already given up on his claims once. Back in May of 2016, the programmer reneged on his claims when he faced strong public scrutiny. Will he be able to withstand the trial? And more importantly, will this trial finally unmask Nakamoto's true identity? Time will tell.