A high court in the United Kingdom is deciding on a case that could end up proving whether an Australian computer scientist's claim to be the mythical figure who created Bitcoin is true or false.
For years, Craig Wright, 54, has claimed to be the mysterious, anonymous crypto founder who wrote under the pseudonym "Satoshi Nakamoto" in 2008 the white paper that led to the creation of Bitcoin as the world's cornerstone cryptocurrency, but has so far failed to provide substantive evidence to prove his claims.
The widespread skepticism of Wright's claim to be the founding father of Bitcoin has led to numerous legal clashes over the years. The latest of these involves the Crypto Open Patent Alliance (COPA), an organization that seeks to remove all patents, litigation and other regulation that hinders the growth of the cryptocurrency industry. One of COPA's members is Block, a cryptocurrency payment company founded by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, and the cryptocurrency exchange platform Coinbase.
COPA is asking a high court in London for a ruling or a "negative declaration" on whether or not Wright is Nakamoto. (Related: Gold research firm explains Bitcoin's intrinsic value: It cannot be easily confiscated by governments.)
COPA noted that a ruling in its favor – that Wright is not Nakamoto – would help prevent the Australian computer scientist from challenging people around the world with litigation for seeking to develop Bitcoin-related projects. The trial is expected to last a month, and a COPA spokesperson said the organization hopes to "conclusively show that Dr. Wright is not Satoshi Nakamoto and will not be able to continue to threaten developers."
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The trial will be overseen by the High Court of Justice's Business and Property Courts of England and Wales in London. Wright's cross-examination is expected to take up at least six days.
In January, Wright offered to settle the case, but COPA rejected this deal. The settlement offer included inviting the involved parties to make a donation to a church in Australia and for his critics who have joined in the lawsuit to cease "any media campaign(s) against me."
Wright's proposal also requires people starting Bitcoin-related projects to cease claiming that their projects represent the original Bitcoin "as envisioned by me as Satoshi Nakamoto."
"I believe the settlement terms are broadly uncontroversial, beneficial to the industry as a whole, and intended to draw a fresh start in the history of bitcoin to guarantee its success in whatever form it takes," wrote Wright in his settlement offer.
COPA claims Wright's settlement offer comes with loopholes, including one which allows him "to sue people all over again" in the future and would not prevent the threats to bitcoin's evolution as an industry due to the fear of litigation from Wright.
Serious doubts surround Wright's claim to Nakamoto's identity
Bitcoin's foundational text – "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System" – was published on Oct. 31, 2008, by Nakamoto. Following its publication, Nakamoto intermittently exchanged emails with the cryptocurrency's first adherents before disappearing from the internet in 2011.
Speculation about Nakamoto's true identity has circulated ever since. Wright first stepped forward to claim he was Nakamoto in 2016, months after his name was first cited by media outlets investigating the matter.
The problem with Wright's claim to being Nakamoto is that he has so far failed to provide the private keys – a secure code comprising a hexadecimal string of numbers and letters – that would unlock access to the more than 1.1 million original Bitcoins mined by Nakamoto that are worth nearly $47 billion as of press time.
In a Norwegian court in 2022, Wright testified that he had destroyed the computer hard drive that would have given him access to the keys and would make him one of the biggest players in a bitcoin market that is now valued at over $838 billion.
In its most recent court filing in London, COPA claims that the evidence provided by Wright to support his claims has been forged. The filing alleges that the copy of the Bitcoin white paper produced by Wright is written in a different font from the original and was written using a software system called LaTeX even though the original document was written using OpenOffice.
Furthermore, COPA claims that experts who have examined both the original white paper and the copy produced by Wright conclude that his copy leads to a PDF "which only superficially resembles the Bitcoin white paper but which is in fact substantially different."
COPA also claims in its filing that an analysis of the metadata – information about the file itself – of the LaTeX file submitted by Wright was created not in 2008 but on Nov. 19, 2023. COPA added that one other document provided by Wright as evidence appears to have been written by the artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT.
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