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Craig Wright is officially heading to a trial that could carve up his reported Bitcoin fortune after his efforts to have the case dismissed were denied by a judge.
The case stems from allegations that Wright defrauded the estate of his late business partner David Kleiman.
Kleiman’s brother, Ira Kleiman, filed the lawsuit on behalf of the estate in February 2018, claiming that Wright is trying to steal intellectual property as well as the entire 1.1 million BTC trove that the two business partners reportedly mined together. The amount of Bitcoin is worth about $11.5 billion at time of writing.
In a 93-page decision filed on September 21st, US district judge Beth Bloom denied Wright’s motion to have the case dismissed. Wright had hoped to have the case thrown out on six grounds ranging from statute of limitations to court jurisdiction issues to claiming the plaintiffs can’t establish that he and Kleiman had an oral agreement. Bloom denied them all.
The trial is scheduled to begin on January 4th, 2021, according to an order filed earlier this month.
Wright is infamous in the crypto world for making controversial claims that he is Bitcoin’s pseudonymous creator Satoshi Nakamoto. Those claims have been widely dismissed by most analysts for lack of any true hard evidence.
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