Craig Wright, the self-proclaimed creator of Bitcoin, is filing a new lawsuit to establish copyright ownership of the original white paper that seeded the idea for the world’s leading cryptocurrency.
Wright, an Australian computer scientist and businessman, has long declared that he is Satoshi Nakomoto, the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin.
Now, a London High Court will permit Wright to establish a new case that could place jurors at the center of the long-standing crypto controversy surrounding Bitcoin’s creator, allowing them to decide, once and for all, whether or not Wright is the real Satoshi.
Wright’s suit, led by litigation team Ontier LLP, is directed at “Cøbra,” the unknown entity affiliated with bitcoin.org where the Bitcoin white paper was originally published. According to Ontier, Wright aims to “uphold his right to protect his lawfully-held digital assets and his reputation as the creator of Bitcoin and his associated intellectual property.”
Wright’s legal team says that Cøbra has repeatedly ignored requests to remove the white paper from their website, triggering the lawsuit.
Bitcoin.org responded to Wright’s initial allegations of copyright infringement in a blog post by dismissing his claims and encouraging others not to take down the paper.
“We will continue hosting the Bitcoin whitepaper and won’t be silenced or intimidated. Others hosting the whitepaper should follow our lead in resisting these false allegations.”
They also told Reuters that they believed Wright was abusing the UK court system with his allegations.
“We’ve been threatened to take down the Bitcoin white paper by someone who obviously isn’t the inventor of Bitcoin (if he was, that would make him the 25th richest person in the world, which he obviously isn’t).
“Seems like he’s trying to abuse the UK courts to make them try to censor the white paper and harass small websites like us providing education content with his behavior.”
The Australian cryptographer first declared he was Satoshi in 2016, and very few believed him. The cryptoverse has repeatedly asked Wright to prove he is Satoshi by demonstrating he has access to the very first Bitcoin address, but he has given various reasons as to why he won’t do it.
Gavin Andresen, a top Bitcoin Core developer who received the original white paper from Satoshi, initially publicly supported Wright’s claim, but then quickly revoked it.
At time of writing, Bitcoin (BTC) is trading at $50,741, according to CoinGecko, which means that Satoshi Nakamoto, whoever it is and who is believed to have mined roughly 1 million BTC, has a net worth in excess of $50,000,000,000.
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