Australian Craig Wright has finally admitted he is not the inventor of Bitcoin after losing several cases in the High Court of England and Wales, whose judge has suggested he be investigated for perjury.
Wright has for years claimed to be Satoshi Nakamoto – the pseudonym used by whoever wrote the whitepaper that defined Bitcoin and created the reference architecture for the cryptocurrency.
And he didn’t just claim to be Bitcoin’s secret mastermind, he demanded the Crypto Open Patent Alliance (COPA) – founded to fight for open access to crypto intellectual property – remove the Bitcoin whitepaper from its website as he held its copyright. COPA demurred, and the matter went to court in the UK, where the lobby group sought to prevent Wright from claiming to be the true brains behind Bitcoin. In truth, no one knows for sure the identity of Nakamoto, or at least isn’t saying so.
COPA – backed by Jack Dorsey, Twitter founder and boss of crypto outfit Block – has a roster of members that includes Coinbase and Block itself, who also commenced litigation.
The cases were bundled into a single High Court matter known as COPA v Wright Identity Issue Trial whose judgment saw Mr Justice James Mellor find that Wright “lied to the court repeatedly and extensively” and that his proof of being Satoshi Nakamoto was “forged … on a grand scale.” This was a reconfirmation of Mellor’s previous rulings in March and May that Wright was not the inventor of Bitcoin.
Please prosecute this guy, top judge says
In a judgment [PDF] delivered on Tuesday, Mr Justice Mellor noted Wright is yet to file an appeal.
The Aussie has satisfied at least one requirement of the judgment: Posting a message on his personal website restating the court’s findings that he is neither Satoshi Nakamoto nor the inventor of Bitcoin. (Two wrongs do make a Wright, eh?)
Mr Justice Mellor also ordered Wright to publish the same content on his X account and in Slack channels he frequents, so that it can receive wider attention. The judge did, however, deny a COPA demand that Wright place an ad in venerable UK newspaper The Times about his defeat in court. The group requested that penalty because the busted bit-bloke had used the organ for an ad of his own – in which he asked for a settlement that would have required COPA to accept his claim to be Nakamoto.
Wright will also have to pay more than £6 million of COPA’s costs – something that might be hard to enforce as the ruling notes that the not-Bitcoin creator makes about £160k a year.
But perhaps the worst part of the ruling for Wright is that Mr Justice Mellor has recommended the UK’s Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) act against Wright for forging documents and perjury – offenses that could see him fined, or even jailed, if convicted. ®