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A fascinating battle concerning Bitcoin is going on in the Southern District of Florida District Court between Ira Kleiman and Dr Craig Wright, who claims to be the inventor of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto. The case appears to relate to who is the owner of 1.1 million Bitcoin held in trust. Ira Kleiman is David Kleiman’s brother who was associated with Craig Wright and claims half the Bitcoin which is said to belong to Satoshi Nakamoto, according to the Sunday Times. Apparently the Bitcoin which would have paid for a pizza a few years ago would now be worth a small fortune.

Recently, Bitcoin has rocketed in value and the owner of these Bitcoin would be one of the richest people on the planet. The Bitcoin would be worth about $53 billion as at last week’s prices.

The case has gone to mediation twice, suggesting the parties would like to resolve the case. The most recent mediation session took place on 3 February 2021 and in Florida the mediator files a mediation report, which in this case stated that:

” MEDIATION REPORT
The parties conducted a lengthy mediation on February 3, 2021. All parties and counsel were present. The parties negotiated in good faith. Ultimately, the parties were unable to reach resolution. Therefore, the undersigned declares an impasse at this time.”

As mediation has so far failed, the epic case looks like it will go to trial this year. What strikes me as interesting is that Bitcoin only exists as a code and so does not really exist at all, and its value is debatable so in some respects it could be said that the parties are arguing over nothing.

Other stories about Bitcoin have also emerged:

Mr Thomas, who was born in Germany but lives in San Francisco, was given 7,002 bitcoins as payment for making a video explaining how cryptocurrency works more than a decade ago.

At the time, they were worth a few dollars each.

He stored them in an IronKey digital wallet on a hard drive.

And he wrote the password on a piece of paper he has lost.

After 10 failed attempts, the password will encrypt itself, making the wallet impossible to access.

Mr Thomas is not be the first potential Bitcoin millionaire to be locked out of their fortune.

Currently, about $140bn worth of Bitcoin is lost or left in wallets that cannot be accessed, according to cryptocurrency-data company Chainanalysis.

And businesses helping retrieve digital currency receive multiple requests each day.

The New York Times article also references an entrepreneur who lost about 800 bitcoins when a colleague reformatted a laptop containing the private keys to his wallet.

And in 2013, a Welsh man desperately searched a landfill site after throwing away a computer hard drive containing 7,500 bitcoins.

At the time worth more than £4m, this would now be valued at more than £250m.

It remains to be seen whether Bitcoin continues to rocket in value or comes crashing down. Whatever happens there is likely to be litigation concerning Bitcoin in future.

To instruct a mediator, in respect of Bitcoin or anything else, please get in touch. We will even take payment in Bitcoin!