A High Court judge has determined that Australian computer scientist Craig Wright is not the founder of Bitcoin, known by the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto.
Dr. Wright, who has asserted that he is Satoshi, was challenged in court by the Crypto Open Patent Alliance (Copa), a coalition of cryptocurrency companies. Copa accused Dr. Wright of fabricating a complex false story and forging documents to support his claim of being Satoshi, and of intimidating those who disputed his claim.
Wright faced a challenge from the Crypto Open Patent Alliance (COPA), a non-profit organization aiming to definitively refute Wright’s claims to bitcoin. COPA has criticized Wright for failing to provide convincing proof of being Satoshi Nakamoto, despite his repeated public promises. They have pointed out instances where evidence presented by Wright was either inauthentic or of dubious origin.
COPA’s legal filings include 38 pages of evidence contesting Wright’s claim of authoring the original bitcoin whitepaper, “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System.” They accuse him of submitting forged documents created in a typesetting system different from the one used for the original whitepaper. According to COPA, the whitepaper was produced in OpenOffice 2.4, not LaTeX, as suggested by Wright’s documents.
Despite attending the beginning of the five-week trial to establish the truth of his alleged pseudonymous identity, Dr. Wright has consistently refuted these accusations.
In a brief verdict delivered today, Mr. Justice Mellor concluded that Dr. Wright is not the individual behind the Satoshi pseudonym.
The court had earlier been informed that the seminal bitcoin white paper, titled “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System,” was published in 2008 under the name of Satoshi Nakamoto.
Dr. Wright’s first public claim to be Satoshi Nakamoto was made in 2016.
