US Court of Appeals rules in favor of Craig Wright in Bitcoin ownership dispute

The United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit has sided with self-proclaimed Bitcoin inventor Craig Wright in his legal dispute with Ira Kleiman over the rights to billions of dollars worth of Bitcoin (BTC).

According to the official document, the appeals court relied on the wrong legal standard and will uphold the district court's ruling because there is no evidence and there will be no new trial for the case.

Wright's Bitcoin ownership controversy

In the year In 2018, Clayman sued Wright, seeking ownership of 50% of the 1.1 million BTC mined in the cryptocurrency's early days. Kleiman said his late brother, Dave Kleiman, was in partnership with Wright when bitcoins were invented and they needed to acquire some assets.

Three years after the lawsuit was filed, Wright said they were no longer business partners with Dave before his death in 2013. He explained that they were just friends, and that the deceased helped him edit a Bitcoin white paper, denying the plaintiff's claim to the mining property.

In the year In 2021, a Florida court ordered the self-proclaimed Satoshi Nakamoto to pay $100 million in damages to W&K Info Defense Research for stealing the company from Clayman. The jury ruled that Wright and Clayman were not business partners and that the damages were to be paid in fiat, not BTC.

The court rejected the appeal.

Following the jury's ruling on collusion, Clayman appealed the case, arguing that the verdict should not have stood on several grounds, including the trial court's application of the wrong legal standard and abuse of discretion in the decision. The plaintiffs contend that the trial court abused its discretion by denying a new trial because the defendant entered an order barring evidence of a sibling relationship between Dave and Ira.

However, the appeals court said it had considered each argument but found no reason to overturn the jury's verdict.

“Regarding this decision, the district court did not abuse its discretion by vacating the sanctions imposed by the trial judge who viewed the property partnership's claims as factually significant.” “The court has not relied on the wrong standard of law or committed a clear error of judgment,” the court said.