Craig Wright issued a legal disclaimer on the home page of his website on July 16, emphatically stating that he is not the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto.
The disclaimer cited the recent ruling from the United Kingdom High Court of Justice and directed website traffic to the summary of the findings presented by the Crypto Open Patent Alliance (COPA), a consortium of developers, exchanges and projects formed to foster innovation and facilitate an open-source environment in crypto.
Perhaps the most significant portions of the disclaimer were the first and second points admitting that Wright was not the author of the Bitcoin white paper and the concession that the computer scientist does not hold a copyright to the technology outlined in the white paper.
Crypto Open Patent Alliance v Craig Wright
In 2023, Wright sued several Bitcoin developers, alleging that they violated his copyrights on some of the underlying technology for the distributed ledger system and claimed rights to the Bitcoin database.
Wright had been making claims since 2016 that he was the fabled, pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto. The legal battle reached a crescendo in 2024 when the Crypto Open Patent Alliance presented over 50 pieces of evidence dismantling Wright’s claims.
Related: Craig Wright faces perjury charges over false Bitcoin creator claims
During the trial, COPA called on forensic experts and onchain analysts to testify that Wright had produced a trove of elaborate forgeries and metadata that showed signs of tampering.
Ultimately, Judge James Mellor agreed that COPA’s arguments showcased that the creator of a highly technical system like Bitcoin would not make the careless errors found in Wright’s forgeries and distorted metadata, conclusively ruling that Wright was not Satoshi.
More recently, Wright’s assets were frozen by the United Kingdom’s High Court to help podcaster Peter McCormack recoup $2 million in legal fees spent in defense against a defamation lawsuit filed by Wright in 2019.
Moreover, Wright’s legal troubles may not yet be over. Following the ruling from the United Kingdom’s High Court, Judge Mellor recommended that Wright be investigated by the Crown Prosecution Service for perjury.
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