Craig Wright, the Australian entrepreneur who claimed to be Bitcoin's inventor, is now facing a $10 billion lawsuit over the digital currency's creation.

The lawsuit comes from the estate of a former business partner, David Kleiman, who may have owned over a million bitcoins, but died in 2013 of illness. Following his death, Wright schemed his way into stealing it all away, the lawsuit claims.

The legal action is the latest twist over the identity of Bitcoin's creator. In 2016, Wright publicly identified himself as the inventor, after years of ongoing speculation. However, critics were quick to cast doubt over his claims, citing a lack of proof.

Wright himself later backed away from the spotlight. He declined to offer any additional evidence, and apologized for the whole incident. Nevertheless, his decision to claim Bitcoin as his invention may have backfired. Kleiman's family is now demanding the Australian entrepreneur give up the bitcoin he supposedly owes them.

Their lawsuit contends that Wright did indeed develop Bitcoin, but with the help of Kleiman, who was an IT security expert. Starting in 2008, the two allegedly began working on making the digital currency operational. They then went on to mine over a million bitcoin, which was held through a Florida company Kleiman had registered in 2011.

However, when Kleiman died two years later, Wright successfully gained sole ownership of the company. He did so by lying to Kleiman's brother and falsifying documents and contracts that gave him control over the wallet that stored the bitcoin.

The lawsuit was filed on Feb. 14 in a Florida district court. As evidence, Kleiman's brother, Ira, has offered up emails and documents that Wright allegedly sent him regarding the bitcoin stash.

Nevertheless, the claims in the lawsuit should be viewed with skepticism. A team of anonymous Bitcoin specialists has pubished a blog post, pointing out why the whole legal battle may be based on false claims: Wright probably never held that much bitcoin in the first place.

For instance, the lawsuit references two bitcoin addresses that purportedly held the digital stash belonging to Kleiman and Wright. However, the addresses actually appear to belong to the now-defunct bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox. Wright may have simply tried to pass off the addresses as his own.

"This isn't some grand conspiracy of having stolen a million bitcoins," the blog post said. "It's some guy browsing a 'blockchain rich list,' picking out a couple of addresses at random and saying 'I own those' for whatever reasons."

So far, Wright hasn't publicly commented on the lawsuit, except to tweet that it's simply about "greed." He is currently serving as chief scientist at nChain, a developer of blockchain technologies.

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