Craig Wright, who has claimed to have invented the bitcoin cryptocurrency under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto, has seen the firm built around his research sold to a private equity firm. The company, nChain Holdings, was sold to Malta-based High Tech Private Equity Fund SICAV in what they are claiming is the biggest blockchain-related deal in history.
nChain describes itself as “the world leader in blockchain-centric research and development.” There is no official notation on how much the deal is for, nor did the deal’s announcement involve Wright.
Previous reporting by Reuters and others had established a connection between nChain, formerly known as EITC Holdings, and Wright. The firm, in its previous instantiation, was a vehicle for filing hundreds of bitcoin and blockchain-related patents.
According to U.S. recordings, the firm holds over 80 bitcoin and blockchain-related patents. The investing fund is managed by Liechtenstein-based Accuro Fund Solutions, part of Zurich-based Accuro Group.
It is notable that there are many in the bitcoin community that do not believe Wright is really Satoshi Nakamoto — and Wright has been largely absent from the public eye since being unmasked. He has publicly stated of late, however, that he would like to be part of bitcoin’s future.
“We will scale and grow bitcoin to become what it was envisioned to be,” he said. “All I do is to help grow the use of bitcoin, and I want to see it in daily use by at least a billion people on-chain. We have the funds, the people and the technology to do this.”
Without confirming how many bitcoins he owns, Wright told Reuters he would never “dump bitcoin.”
“I will sell when I do this for goods on a daily basis, or I will go down with it. Past the basics of my family’s well-being, all I have is dedicated to building the systems and institutions needed to make bitcoin successful globally,” he said.
There is also some news about what Wright and nChain intend to do with its patents. The firm “intends to make some of its intellectual property assets available to the blockchain community through open-source software and royalty-free licensing.”
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