His antics are over.
Identity Crisis
The real identity of Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonym for the elusive creator of Bitcoin, remains a mystery — because he's definitely and legally not Craig Wright.
On Tuesday, Wright, an Australian man who has claimed to be Nakamoto since 2016, was referred to British prosecutors by a UK High Court for possible perjury charges for lying and forging documents to prove that he was the Bitcoin creator, NBC News reports.
Whether prosecutors decide to pursue these charges remains to be seen. But by a judge's order, he's no longer allowed to publicly claim to be Satoshi — which forced Wright to issue an embarrassing legal notice on his website and his Twitter page, in very loud all-caps.
"DR CRAIG STEVEN WRIGHT IS NOT SATOSHI NAKAMOTO," the disclaimer screams — which goes on to list five "Dr Wright is not"s that comprehensively unravel his years-long charade.
LEGAL NOTICE: DR CRAIG STEVEN WRIGHT IS NOT SATOSHI NAKAMOTO
On 20 May 2024, Dr Craig Steven Wright was found by the High Court of England and Wales to have been dishonest in his claims to have been the person behind the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto (the creator of Bitcoin).
The…
— Dr Craig S Wright (@Dr_CSWright) July 17, 2024
Bit Part
In a 2023 lawsuit filed in the UK, Wright tried to prove that he was the author of the Bitcoin whitepaper that laid out the foundations of the cryptocurrency, and sued other Bitcoin developers for allegedly infringing on his intellectual property rights. Filing these kinds of lawsuits in courts around the world is Wright's MO in a nutshell.
Crypto companies, not eager to let who they saw as a quack get a slice of their pie — not to mention undermine crypto's principles of being open source and decentralized — fired back this year with a lawsuit that asked the court to declare that Wright was not Bitcoin's creator.
This resulted in a six-week long trial in which Wright began to dig himself into a deeper hole. A brutal cross-examination was the shovel: he was presented with hundreds of botched Bitcoin documents and had to explain why, as this supposed crypto savant, he had made so many obvious errors in writing them.
Unconvinced by Wright's arguments, the judge quickly found that he had extensively and repeatedly forged the documents "on a grand scale" to falsely demonstrate he was Satoshi — and had some choice words about his character.
"Dr. Wright presents himself as an extremely clever person," the judge wrote in his ruling. "However, in my judgment, he is not nearly as clever as he thinks he is."
Arm of the Law
The worst of it may be yet to come for Wright. Per the High Court judge's referral, the UK's Crown Prosecution Service may pursue criminal charges against Wright for perjury.
That could mean a possible arrest and even an extradition. And so if Wright only makes out with a wounded ego and an order to shut up about his claims to fame, he might consider himself a lucky man.
Per his legal notice, he is not the author of the Bitcoin White Paper; not the owner of the copyright of the Bitcoin White Paper; not the person who originally adopted the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto; not the creator of Bitcoin; and not the author of the initial iterations of the Bitcoin Software.
But what he is, it looks like, is in a lot of trouble.
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