On April 26, 2013, only four days remained before he had to…

On April 26, 2013, only four days remained before he had to transfer 323,000 bitcoins.

That day, Dave Kleiman was found dead in his home in Florida, USA. His body was already highly decomposed. There was a bullet hole in the mattress and a loaded handgun beside him, yet there were no gunshot wounds on the body and no bullet casings at the scene. Blood was mixed into the imprints of his wheelchair. Official conclusion: natural death.

To understand why this murder case matters, we first need to answer a question the world has been asking for fifteen years: Who exactly is Satoshi Nakamoto?

This article starts from a piece of buried history, then moves to the life-and-death route war inside Bitcoin today, and finally lands on an opportunity that I believe is currently being severely underestimated.

### 1. Satoshi Nakamoto Was Never One Person

In everyone’s fixed impression, Satoshi Nakamoto was a mysterious, low-profile cryptography expert. But in my version of the story, Satoshi was never one person — it was an organization. Two known individuals: one responsible for ideas and strategy, the other for code and operations.

**Dave Kleiman**, a computer forensics expert from Florida, former police officer, paralyzed from the waist down after a car accident and permanently in a wheelchair. He authored multiple books on digital forensics, had strong technical skills, and was extremely good at keeping secrets — a natural fit for “going dark.”

**Craig Wright**, an Australian with degrees in cryptography, law, accounting, and even theology, holder of over 4,000 patents (more than Edison). Paranoid, arrogant, classic strategist personality.

In 2007, the two co-authored a professional book on computer forensics.

In 2008, building on Wei Dai’s b-money, Hal Finney’s RPOW, and Adam Back’s Hashcash, they co-wrote the Bitcoin whitepaper that changed the world. Wright led the vision and strategy; Kleiman led the implementation. If you look back at “Satoshi’s” British spelling, restrained writing style, and day-sleep/night-active time zone, it looks more like a team-crafted persona than a single individual.

On January 3, 2009, the genesis block was born. In the very early days, almost only Satoshi was mining. According to this narrative, the two mined around 1.1 million BTC — the legendary “Satoshi coins” that have never moved to this day. These coins were placed into a structure called the Tulip Trust, held under the company W&K Info Defense Research (likely the initials of Wright and Kleiman).

The story took a sharp turn in the spring of 2013. On April 2, the two signed a share sale agreement: Dave sold his shares in W&K to Craig. The company was carrying about $40 million in debt. To secure this debt, Dave had to transfer 323,000 BTC from the trust to Craig, with a deadline of April 30.

On April 26, four days before the transfer, Dave died. The death certificate cited coronary artery disease combined with MRSA infection; toxicology found cocaine, benzodiazepines, and alcohol. But the scene looked extremely suspicious: a loaded gun, a bullet hole in the mattress, yet no gunshot wounds and no casings. His family still believes he was murdered.

2013 was also the year the FBI raided Silk Road and seized massive amounts of Bitcoin. It was a dangerous time when early large Bitcoin holdings, murder rumors, and black money settlements intertwined. Whoever held hundreds of thousands of coins was sitting on a volcano. (Note: The official police conclusion was natural death; “murder” remains only a suspicion with no conviction.)

This is the most critical part of the entire narrative. After Dave’s death, Craig immediately sensed the danger: Satoshi’s email and P2P Foundation forum accounts were hacked. He judged that he might be next. So he did something that later looked “self-destructive” but may have been for survival at the time: he destroyed almost all early keys and materials that could prove he was Satoshi, and moved his family to the UK. This is exactly why he could never later produce “ironclad evidence from before 2014.”

On December 8, 2015, Wired and Gizmodo simultaneously published articles based on leaked documents, identifying Wright (along with the deceased Kleiman) as highly likely to be Satoshi. Interestingly, on the same day, Australian federal police raided his Sydney home on tax-related grounds.

In May 2016, Wright publicly claimed to be Satoshi through BBC, The Economist, and GQ, and even demonstrated signing with Satoshi’s private key. Gavin Andresen and Jon Matonis from the Bitcoin Foundation publicly stated they believed him. But this verification, which should have been conclusive, quickly fell apart: the community discovered that the “signature” he posted was simply copied from an old on-chain transaction. He then left the line “I’m sorry, I don’t have the courage,” and withdrew further proof.

This is the part that confuses me the most and also makes him seem “least like a scammer.” A real sca…