Author: Lucy, BlockBeats
The two-month-long legal battle finally came to an end today. Craig S. Wright (CSW for short) officially issued a public statement admitting that he is not Satoshi Nakamoto.
Since Craig Wright first claimed to be Satoshi Nakamoto on December 8, 2015, he has been using this identity to frequently move in the public eye. On May 20 this year, the High Court of England and Wales made a significant ruling, clearly stating that Craig Wright is not Satoshi Nakamoto, the founder of Bitcoin.
According to the court ruling, Craig Wright promoted his false identity in the UK, Norway and the US through multiple legal channels, and the court called his behavior a "serious abuse of judicial process." The court conducted a detailed review of Craig Wright's words and evidence, believing that he "frequently and repeatedly lied" when providing evidence and tried to support his false claims through "massive forgery of documents." Finally, it was ruled that Craig Wright's claim to be Satoshi Nakamoto was full of fraud.
Craig Wright has long been targeted by the court
The identity of Bitcoin developer Satoshi Nakamoto has always been a mystery. Although there have been many people who claim to be Satoshi Nakamoto, it is probably difficult to find another person as "persistent" as Craig Wright. Therefore, Craig Wright's long-term activities as Satoshi Nakamoto have already burdened him with various legal "debts".
COPA sued Craig Wright in April 2021, accusing him of "massive forgery" in his attempt to prove he was Satoshi Nakamoto and questioning the legitimacy of his claim to copyright Bitcoin.
Note: COPA refers to the Cryptocurrency Open Patent Alliance, a non-profit organization founded in 2020. COPA is committed to promoting the adoption and advancement of cryptocurrency technology and removing patent barriers to industry growth and innovation. Its members include 33 institutions such as Coinbase, Block, Meta, MicroStrategy, Kraken, and support from cryptocurrency participants such as Twitter founder Jack Dorsey.
However, the focus of his lawsuits to date has never been on revealing his anonymous identity as Satoshi Nakamoto, but rather on ensuring that Bitcoin remains faithful to its core principles. To protect the continuity of these principles, Craig Wright filed copyright claims against the "Bitcoin developers" and issued a non-negotiable settlement offer. The settlement offer preserves Wright's goal of maintaining the integrity of the Bitcoin system he originally developed, while limiting the unnecessary expenses of all parties in a lengthy High Court trial.
To clearly demonstrate the sincerity of his proposal, Wright agreed to waive his database rights and copyrights related to the BTC, BCH and ABC databases and provide a perpetual irrevocable license to the counterparties that control, operate and/or own these databases to encourage open commercialization of the technology in a competitive and fair market, where intellectual property is respected and utilized. He hopes that this proposal will enable them to compete fairly with BSV.
It is worth noting that the core principles of Bitcoin upheld by Craig Wright are set out in the Bitcoin white paper, but the final court ruling shows that Craig Wright is not the author of the Bitcoin white paper, nor is he the copyright owner of the Bitcoin white paper.
Since Craig Wright's settlement terms have not been agreed to by all parties, the trial against Craig Wright continues. On January 24, Craig Wright, "Australian Satoshi", stated in his personal blog that he will face a group of individuals and corporate entities in the High Court of London in February to safeguard his intellectual property rights as the creator of Bitcoin.
On February 13, during Craig Wright's trial in the UK High Court, COPA's lawyers conducted a cross-examination of Craig Wright for several days, asking Craig Wright to stop making "irrelevant accusations" and "answer questions." Craig Wright accused COPA members of turning Bitcoin into a "speculative coin" scam.
Craig Wright arrives at a London court for his COPA trial. Image credit: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images, coindesk
At the same time, Craig Wright himself was accused of providing different versions of the same story in court. When Craig Wright protested, the presiding judge James Mellor intervened and said the focus of the case was whether Wright was Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous author of the Bitcoin white paper. Subsequently, Craig Wright admitted on February 23 that he had made changes to the version of the Bitcoin white paper submitted in the COPA trial.
After testimony from early Bitcoin developers like Martti Malmi, the judge concluded on March 14 that the evidence overwhelmingly showed Wright was not Satoshi Nakamoto.
After losing the first trial, Craig Wright transferred some of his assets outside the UK, further causing COPA to worry that he was evading court costs. On March 30, the British court approved a global freezing order on Craig Wright's assets worth 6 million pounds (about 7.6 million US dollars) at the request of COPA.
No one ever believed Craig Wright
In 2019, Bitcoin user and podcast host Peter McCormack called Craig Wright a liar and fraud and said he was "not Satoshi Nakamoto". Craig Wright claimed that these comments caused him to lose invitations to various events and conferences, resulting in financial losses. The judge concluded in August that Craig Wright provided false evidence in his claim and awarded him only a symbolic compensation of 1 pound ($1.23).
Not only did he fail to regain the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto, Craig Wright's copyright claim to the Bitcoin white paper was also stripped away that year.
The Bitcoin white paper was published under the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) open source license, allowing anyone to reuse and modify the code for any purpose. Craig Wright registered the copyright of the Bitcoin white paper and the code in it in the United States in 2019, but then the court issued an injunction preventing Wright from making further copyright claims against it.
On October 1, 2023, Christen Ager-Hanssen, former CEO of nChain Group, stated on social media that "after reporting several serious issues to the nChain Group's board of directors, he has immediately resigned as CEO of the company."
One of the reasons for Christen Ager-Hanssen's resignation was that he no longer believed that nChain chief scientist Craig Wright was Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto. Hanssen subsequently released a screenshot of a report that claimed to show evidence of Wright's browsing history, contradicting Wright's long-standing claim that he was Satoshi Nakamoto.
Not only did Craig Wright claim to be Satoshi Nakamoto, he even sued others in the name of Satoshi Nakamoto.
In early 2022, Craig Wright registered a new Twitter account with the Twitter profile "The Creator of Bitcoin". Subsequently, Norwegian citizen Magnus Granath posted harsh remarks about Craig Wright on the social media platform, calling him a "scammer", claiming that he had committed a "scam", and even created the "#CraigWrightIsaFraud" tag.
Craig Wright and his team considered it defamation and asked Granath to remove these statements and apologize publicly. Granath refused the apology request, and the two parties sought court mediation, and the Norwegian judge supported Granath's point of view. Subsequently, Craig Wright sought to appeal this loss.
But the matter continued until April 12 this year. Perhaps because his own identity as Satoshi Nakamoto was not secure, Craig Wright stopped his appeal against Granath after losing the case in the British court.
Yesterday, British judge James Mellor approved COPA’s injunction, which will prohibit Craig Wright from suing others in the name of Satoshi Nakamoto again. James Mellor also stated that Craig Wright will be referred to the Royal Prosecution Service to consider prosecuting him for perjury.
Craig Wright attends the COPA trial on March 1. Image source: Camomile Shumba, CoinDesk
In the end, Craig Wright lost the legal battle and issued a statement today, admitting that he is not Satoshi Nakamoto. The High Court’s ruling specifically stated:
Craig Wright is not the author of the Bitcoin white paper.
Craig Wright is not the copyright owner of the Bitcoin white paper.
Craig Wright was not the person who acted under the name Satoshi Nakamoto between 2008 and 2011.
Craig Wright is not the creator of the Bitcoin system.
Craig Wright was not the author of the original version of the Bitcoin software.
The detailed judgment and appendix reveal various documents forged by Craig Wright. In addition, the court ordered Craig Wright not to initiate any legal proceedings based on his false claims or encourage others to do so, nor to threaten to file similar lawsuits explicitly or implicitly.
In 2019, Craig Wright came to Beijing to attend the BSV Beijing Conference. In an interview with BlockBeats, he said that he didn't care how others ridiculed him. He also reiterated that Bitcoin is not anonymous, but private, and is centered around government regulation. He made his own comments on BTC, Ethereum, and many other projects. He also said that those who advocate "democratized finance" are scammers, and bluntly stated that the crypto industry is a scam, including many projects such as Tron and Akon.
This legal battle ended with Craig Wright losing the case. It may not be important who Satoshi Nakamoto is. What is important is the Bitcoin, the groundbreaking invention he created, and the basic consensus Bitcoin has laid for the crypto world. As the community said, "Everyone can be Satoshi Nakamoto, except Craig Wright."