Bitcoin entrepreneur Calvin Ayre has withdrawn from negotiations to acquire the estate of Dave Kleiman based on a legal analysis that concluded the estate holds no significant assets.
Ayre recently entered into negotiations with attorneys representing the estate of the late Dave Kleiman, a former associate of Dr. Craig Steven Wright, the individual behind the entity known as Satoshi Nakamoto, the inventor of Bitcoin. Craig Wright was never a party to these negotiations and any suggestion that contradicts this is a factual misrepresentation.
In August, a Florida magistrate issued a non-binding statement that Kleiman’s estate was entitled to 50% of the Bitcoin (BTC) mined by the Wright & Kleiman “partnership” up to December 31, 2013, as well as 50% of any intellectual property (IP) co-developed by Wright & Kleiman prior to Kleiman’s death in April 2013. There is no actual evidence of a partnership that could be found by lawyers researching on behalf of Ayre.
Following the statement, Ayre commenced good-faith negotiations to acquire the Kleiman estate based on public disclosures that the estate held valuable IP under U.S. law. Ayre’s attorneys have since determined that all of the IP claimed by the estate was created following Dave’s death and thus lies outside the scope of the non-binding statement.
Of the IP in question, Ayre’s attorneys concluded that the only IP on which Kleiman collaborated with Wright was the original Bitcoin code, which was released to the world as open source software in 2009.
Furthermore, Dr. Wright has indicated his intention to appeal, which if successful would reduce the estate’s significant assets to the roughly 320,000 BTC mined independently by Kleiman prior to his death. Dr. Wright and Dave Kleiman mined their respective portions of the Satoshi Coins separately as far as can be determined. There is no evidence that we could find that any assets were transferred to Dr. Wright after the death of Dave Kleiman.
However, Ayre’s attorneys have determined that the Kleiman estate only has the public keys for these BTC, and Kleiman’s brother Ira may have destroyed the private keys by over-writing Dave’s hard drives, leaving their accessibility in doubt.
Dr. Wright is considered the central architect of Bitcoin and the drafter of the Bitcoin white paper which he published as Satoshi Nakamoto. Calvin Ayre has given notice of passing on any interest in purchasing the estates assets until such time as the Kleiman estate was able to establish what if any assets are actually in the estate. At no point was any agreement entered into in these negotiations by Ayre or anyone else. Any suggestion that there was a misrepresentation of facts and possibly libelous.
Ayre is a celebrated entrepreneur who made the cover of Forbes magazine in 2006 for his success in building the Bodog online gambling brand. Since his retirement from the gaming industry, Ayre founded the CoinGeek cryptocurrency news site and the Bitcoin mining operation of the same name. Ayre supports Dr. Wright’s view that original Bitcoin BSV is the only technology with the potential to scale to meet the needs of the global financial community, become the world’s global ledger and so much more.
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