Court Decision: Craig Wright Dismissed as Satoshi Nakamoto

According to a ruling by Judge James Mellor in the United Kingdom on March 14, as reported by BitMEX Research, Craig Wright is not Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous creator of the Bitcoin network.

The proceedings concluded in London on March 12 in a lawsuit initiated by the Crypto Open Patent Alliance (COPA) against Wright, an Australian computer scientist who has asserted himself as Nakamoto since 2016.

COPA sought injunctive relief to halt Wright from continuing to assert his identity as Nakamoto. Accusations of extensive document forgery have been levelled against Wright in support of his claim to be the anonymous founder of Bitcoin. As stated in COPA’s closing submission:

“Dr. Wright has been shown to have lied on an extraordinary scale. […] He has invented an entire biographical history, producing one tranche after another of forged documents to support it.”

The trial commenced on February 5th. Despite Craig Wright’s offer to settle the case out of court on January 24th, COPA declined the proposal.

Established in 2020 with the mission “to promote the adoption and advancement of cryptocurrency technologies while eliminating patents as a hindrance to growth and innovation,” COPA boasts 33 members, including prominent entities such as Coinbase, Block, Meta, MicroStrategy, Kraken, Paradigm, Uniswap, and Worldcoin.

In 2023, Wright filed a lawsuit against 13 Bitcoin Core developers and several companies, including Blockstream, Coinbase, and Block, alleging copyright violations pertaining to the Bitcoin white paper, its file format, and database rights associated with the Bitcoin blockchain.

In response to the legal action, the Bitcoin Legal Defence Fund issued a statement:

“For years, prominent contributors to the Bitcoin community have been the subject of abusive lawsuits […] These lawsuits are frivolous but effective. Many developers have decided it’s not worth the time, stress, money, and legal risk to continue working on Bitcoin.”

In 2019, Wright submitted a copyright registration application in the United States for both the Bitcoin white paper and its contained code.

Presently, the Bitcoin white paper operates under an MIT open-source licence, granting individuals the freedom to utilise and adapt the code for various purposes. A court injunction would bar Wright from pursuing additional copyright claims related to it.