A computer scientist who claims he invented Bitcoin has won a court case allowing him to keep his cache of cryptocurrency worth billions of dollars, the BBC reports. A jury rejected claims that Craig Wright’s former business partner was due half of the assets. As a result, Wright will retain 1.1 million Bitcoin, worth about $54 billion. He will pay $100 million to his late partner’s company for intellectual property infringement. The family of Dave Kleiman, a computer security expert who died in 2013, said that the two men had worked together to create and mine the first Bitcoin in existence, and that Wright had stolen it. The invention of the cryptocurrency in 2008 was described in a white paper published under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto. Since 2016, Wright has claimed that he is Nakamoto, though that claim has been disputed. The Miami jury in the civil lawsuit cleared Wright on nearly all issues brought by the family of Kleiman. In a statement, lawyers for his late partner’s company, W&K Information Defense Research, and Kleiman’s estate said they were “immensely gratified” that the jury awarded the $100 million in intellectual property rights, and help give the Kleimans “their fair share of what Dave helped create.” Wright said the legal ruling confirmed he was the creator of the revolutionary digital asset. “The jury has obviously found that I am because there would have been no award otherwise,” he said. “This has been a remarkably good outcome and I feel completely vindicated.
