Joe Delich, a classmate who later worked with Mr. Roche at his law firm, remembers him constantly checking the price of Bitcoin on his laptop during classes. Mr. Roche cashed out before a big price drop, earning about $100,000 in profits. As a third-year student, Mr. Roche collaborated with a professor on a paper discussing Bitcoin’s virtues as the first currency free from government interference. By then, Mr. Roche was a first-year associate at Boies Schiller Flexner, where he was developing a reputation as the kid who understood crypto. But many people considered Dr. Wright a fraud, calling into question the notion that he had mined early blocks of Bitcoin, much less cheated someone out of them.

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Persons: Joe Delich, Roche, ”, Boies Schiller, Ira Kleiman, Craig Wright, Satoshi Nakamoto, Kleiman, Wright, David, David Kleiman Organizations: Purdue University, Northwestern University’s Pritzker School of Law, Mr, Street Locations: Miami