A British judge has approved the freezing of £6 million ($7.6 million) worth of Craig Wright’s assets to avoid court costs related to his claim to be the founder of Satoshi Nakamoto. Bitcoin BTC
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“Understandably, this has raised serious concerns on the part of COPA that Dr. Wright is implementing measures to avoid the costs of loss at trial,” Judge James Mellor wrote in the document.
The judge granted a so-called ‘global freeze order’ on behalf of the Crypto Open Patent Alliance (COPA) to cover COPA’s total court costs of $8,471,225 (£6,703,747.91.).
“I have not yet heard a detailed discussion of the costs, but there is no doubt that COPA (and the developer) is a winner,” Mellor said. “They are very likely to get orders worth their cost.”
Wright is an Australian computer scientist who used his claim to be Satoshi Nakamoto to file copyright claims related to the Bitcoin network, including asking two websites to take down the Bitcoin whitepaper in January 2021.
COPA sued Wright in April 2021, challenging his claim that he holds the copyright to Bitcoin because he is Satoshi Nakamoto. As previously reported by The Block, the same judge found “overwhelmingly” that Wright was not Nakamoto on March 14 of this year after hearing testimony from early Bitcoin developers including Martti Malmi. It was ruled that there was evidence.
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About the author
MK Manoylov has been a reporter for The Block since 2020, joining just before Bitcoin surpassed $20,000 for the first time. Since then, MK has written nearly 1,000 articles for publications covering all cryptocurrency-related news, preferring NFTs, metaverse, web3 games, fundraising, crime, hacking, and cryptocurrency ecosystem stories. MK holds a graduate degree from New York University’s Science, Health, and Environmental Reporting Program (SHERP) and has also covered health topics for WebMD and Insider. X You can follow MK at @MManoylov and on LinkedIn.