Since the beginning of the digital cryptocurrency market, bitcoiners the world over have been asking the question: Who invented the original bitcoin?
It was a mysterious online personality with the moniker Satoshi Nakamoto who first published an academic paper that became the blueprint for the cryptocurrency in 2008.
But the real identity of the author of that “white paper” titled, Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System, remains a mystery.
“Part of me thinks I would love to know, being a bitcoiner for so long,” said bitcoin advisor Chris Pavlesic.
“The other part of me thinks … it might be better we don’t know. Because there is no leader. It’s a faceless movement.”
Over the years, the names of Tesla entrepreneur Elon Musk and programmer-turned-drug-dealer Paul Le Roux have been thrown into the mix as potential Satoshi candidates.
Then, eight years ago, controversial Australian businessman Craig Steven Wright publicly claimed to be the brains behind bitcoin.
“I was the main part of it [and] other people helped me,” he told the BBC in 2016.
“Some people will believe, some people won’t, and to tell you the truth, I don’t really care.”
The announcement sparked uproar and was followed by several court cases.
Recently a consortium of crypto businesses mounted a case in the UK High Court, which sought to establish whether Dr Wright was the real Satoshi Nakamoto.
In a bombshell ruling delivered in mid-March, Justice James Mellor decided that Dr Wright was not Satoshi and that he wasn’t the inventor of bitcoin.
A detailed judgement is due to be published in a few weeks.
Leaving for London, after ATO investigation
Dr Craig Wright worked at an accounting firm and later as an adjunct academic at Charles Sturt University before he fully committed himself to the crypto industry.
In 2015, he was living in Sydney when the Australian Tax Office (ATO) began investigating his technology businesses.
In December that year, ATO officers raided his upper North Shore home over suspicions he’d falsely claimed $3 million in tax deductions.
Dr Wright denied the tax fraud allegations.
“We have told the ATO everything, we’ve told them about the tax issues,” he said in 2016.
“Because no one understands bitcoin very well … it’s still an ongoing matter.
“We have lawyers negotiating how much tax I owe.”
That investigation was not resolved before Dr Wright left Australia and settled in London.
Dr Wright used the 2016 claim that he was the real Satoshi to promote another cryptocurrency, Bitcoin Satoshi Vision (BSV). The initiative was backed by a number of his wealthy supporters.
BSV is still active on the crypto exchange market. On its website, BSV says it is the “original bitcoin blockchain”.
‘Deliberately false evidence’
Many in the industry doubted Dr Wright was the brains behind bitcoin.
In response, Dr Wright began suing some bitcoin software developers for copyright infringements. He also sued bloggers and podcasters who called him out in public.
One of the people Dr Wright sued for defamation was English podcaster Peter McCormack, who in 2019 posted a series of tweets about Dr Wright.
“I didn’t realise this would be a five-year lawsuit that would cost millions of pounds,” Mr McCormack told 7.30.
In the case against Mr McCormack, the court decided the tweets were defamatory but the court also made damning findings about Dr Wright’s conduct, ruling that the evidence Dr Wright put forward was “deliberately false”.
Because of those lies the judge awarded Dr Wright nominal compensatory damages of £1.
“He claimed he was [uninvited] from conferences but he was not invited in the first place,” Mr McCormack said.
“He essentially perjured himself, and so the judge granted him a £1 judgement, so that’s the smallest judgement he can give for somebody in a libel claim.”
Even though Mr McCormack’s matter was seen as a partial success, the question remained: Was Dr Wright the real Satoshi?
‘Intimidation, bullying and threats’
In 2021, a consortium of crypto businesses known as COPA (Crypto Open Patent Alliance) mounted a case in the British High Court against Dr Wright.
The case sought to establish a final legal judgement on whether Craig Wright was the real Satoshi Nakamoto.
Some of the case’s high-profile backers included Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, who heads Block (a company that launched a bitcoin cryptocurrency hardware wallet), and the crypto exchange giant Coinbase.
Paul Grewal, Coinbase’s legal counsel, who was formerly vice-president of Facebook, told 7.30 COPA’s main goal has been to stop Dr Wright from suing individuals and companies in the crypto industry.
“This has not just been a campaign of litigation, it’s been a campaign of intimidation, bullying, and threats that have worked to discourage good faith actors who support bitcoin and all the principles underneath it,” Mr Grewal said.
During a 22-day trial, COPA’s legal representatives claimed Dr Wright produced forged evidence to support his claim to be Satoshi.
COPA alleged that he backdated word files, reproduced handwritten documents, deliberately altered PDF copies of the white paper to make it look like earlier versions, faked emails, and produced a hard drive with material created by ChatGPT.
Mr Grewal was astonished by the proceedings.
“As a judicial officer myself, I’ve never seen such a clear-cut example of a scorched earth litigation campaign, relying upon such fraudulent representations and forged documents,” he said.
Not Satoshi
Earlier this month, UK High Court Justice James Mellor stated that due to overwhelming evidence he had reached a conclusion that Craig Wright did not author the white paper, that he was not Satoshi Nakamoto, and that Dr Wright didn’t create the bitcoin system or initial software.
Mr Grewal said the ruling had great significance.
“Anyone working on the bitcoin protocol, whether they may be a software developer here in the United States, or a cryptocurrency podcaster in the UK, can know with certainty that they need not fear that they may face damages, or even potentially jail time as a result of these bogus allegations,” he said.
“That’s a big win for the cryptocurrency community. It’s a big win for all of us who care about the rule of law and, frankly, truth.”
Podcaster Mr McCormack said he’ll be watching Dr Wright’s next movements closely.
“What does he do now? He has no credibility in the cryptocurrency world, he’ll have very little credibility in the technology world,” Mr McCormack said.
“I’m fascinated by him. I want to interview him. I want to ask him what he’s doing next.”
Craig Wright did not respond to 7.30’s interview request or written questions.
On social media he said that he intends to consider his options for appeal.
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