Nearly 10 years after Craig Wright began terrorizing the Bitcoin (BTC) community by claiming to be Satoshi Nakamoto, a British court has ruled that Wright is not Satoshi.
The ruling was handed down by Judge James Mellor of the UK High Court in a civil suit led by the Crypto Open Patent Alliance (COPA) this month. His decision said Wright “lied extensively and repeatedly to the court” while engaging in “massive forgery” to prove he was Satoshi.
Mellor chastised Wright at length for his scathing judgments, writing:
Dr. Wright introduces himself as a very smart man. But in my judgment he is not as clever as he thinks he is. From both his written evidence and his oral evidence in cross-examination, I am entirely satisfied that Dr Wright lied extensively and repeatedly to the court. Most of his lies involved documents he forged to support his own claims. All of his lies and forged documents supported his biggest lie: his claim that he is Satoshi Nakamoto.
Hardcore Bitcoin enthusiasts haven’t thought much of Wright since he began making claims in 2015, but the mainstream media was quick to give him the popular platform he needed to harass and tarnish the image of the person, the company, and Bitcoin. provided to him.
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But thanks in part to the court’s decision, the industry has been shut down by Gizmodo, Wired, BBC, The Economist, The Financial Times, GQ and other publications. Too much media has simply failed to look at the facts, including the fact that encrypted data is easily verified.
In 2019, some media outlets still haven’t gotten the memo on Wright. When Wright filed a U.S. copyright lawsuit over the Bitcoin whitepaper in April 2019, the Financial Times quoted a Wright spokesperson as saying it was “the first government agency to recognize Craig Wright as Bitcoin’s creator, Satoshi Nakamoto.” “He said.
In addition to the press, Wright also tricked Gavin Andresen, who entrusted him with the Bitcoin source code when Satoshi stopped contributing and moved on to other tasks. Amid the chaos Wright caused, Bitcoin developers revoked Andresen’s commit access, citing a “congested environment.” This was a big event for the Bitcoin industry at the time. It was a time of great unrest when Wright arrived on the scene.
Satoshi, known only through text, appears to be a patient, disciplined, rational and disciplined person. He never sought the spotlight, even when he had the opportunity. He wanted early adopters to refrain from advertising Bitcoin because he did not think it was ready for further adoption. He left in 2011, perhaps uneasy, after WikiLeaks began accepting Bitcoin and Andresen made a presentation to the CIA.
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Wright, on the other hand, was always proud. He strongly hinted that he was Satoshi in person, on panels, and in previous blog posts to make it seem possible. “Faketoshi,” as Wright referred to him on the Bitcoin Internet forum, took advantage of every opportunity to get himself noticed. Mellor wrote that Wright’s attempt to prove he was Satoshi was “the most egregious abuse of this court’s process.”
The decision represents a clear defeat for Wright, but he has said he will appeal. In the meantime, he could face lawsuits from people who suffered adversely due to his antics, including content creators and companies like Coinbase and Peter McCormack.
If Wright is Satoshi, he can write a message (“Craig Wright is Satoshi”) and sign that message with the Genesis Block’s private key. And he can sign the message using the undated PGP key. But that never happened.
One person’s ability to engage in baseless legal action would astound us all. I hesitate to type words lest I get caught in the crosshairs. Bitcoin may finally be moving on from Craig Wright.
Cardan Stadelman He is a contributing author at Cointelegraph and Chief Technology Officer of the Komodo platform. He graduated with a degree in Information Technology from the University of Vienna in 2011 and then attended the Technical University of Berlin in the fields of Technical Informatics and Scientific Computing. He joined the Komodo team in 2016.
This article is written for general information purposes and should not be considered legal or investment advice. The views, thoughts and opinions expressed herein are those of the author alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.