among the first Bitcoin to be created through
mining and could only be owned by a person
or entity involved with the digital currency
from its beginning — such as Bitcoin’s creator,
Satoshi Nakamoto.
Now the cryptocurrency community will be
looking to see if Wright follows through on his
promise to prove he is the owner of the Bitcoin.
Doing so would lend credence to Wright’s claim,
first made in 2016, that he is Nakamoto.
The case tried in federal court in Miami was highly
technical, with the jury listening to explanations of
the intricate workings of cryptocurrencies as well
as the murky origins of how Bitcoin came to be.
Jurors took a full week to deliberate, repeatedly
asking questions of lawyers on both sides as well
as the judge on how cryptocurrencies work as
well as the business relationship between the two
men. At one point the jurors signaled to the judge
that they were deadlocked.
Bitcoin’s origins have always been a bit of a
mystery, which is why this trial has drawn so much
attention from outsiders. In October 2008 during
the height of the financial crisis, a person or group
of people going by the name “Satoshi Nakamoto”
published a paper laying out a framework for a
digital currency that would not be tied to any legal
or sovereign authority. Mining for the currency,
which involves computers solving mathematical
equations, began a few months later.
The name Nakamoto, roughly translated from
Japanese to mean “at the center of,” was never
considered to be the real name of Bitcoin’s creator.
Wright’s claim that he is Nakamoto has been met
with skepticism from a sizeable portion of the
cryptocurrency community. Due to its structure,