The High Court in London referred to the case of the self-proclaimed creator of Bitcoin, Craig Wright, to the Crown Prosecution Service. He is accused of tampering with evidence and making numerous false statements in an attempt to prove his involvement in the creation of cryptocurrencies.

Australian scientist and entrepreneur Craig Wright has been claiming to be the creator of Bitcoin Satoshi Nakamoto since 2016. He tried various ways to claim intellectual rights to the open-source Bitcoin program code and the authorship of its concept (white paper).

In May 2024, after a five-week trial, the court recognized that Wright was not Satoshi Nakamoto. The case was brought about by the Crypto Open Patent Alliance (COPA), a group that includes the X page of founder Jack Dorsey. They accused Wright of falsifying documents and perjury, saying he had "lied on an incredible scale" for years. The judges agreed with their arguments.

Once the case is handed over, prosecutors will have to decide whether to issue an arrest warrant for Wright or seek his extradition, as he has already left the UK.

The beginning of the story – the Wired investigation

In general, Craig Wright had no intention of declaring himself Satoshi Nakamoto; perhaps he simply took advantage of the situation. In 2015, The Wired conducted a journalistic investigation in an attempt to de-anonymize Satoshi Nakamoto’s identity, and in their article, they wrote that he was Craig Wright. They drew this conclusion from Wright's personal correspondence given to them by one of his acquaintances as well as a number of coincidences. For example, Wright's blog posts in 2008 concerned ideas for a decentralized payment system similar to Bitcoin, a year before Satoshi Nakamoto himself did so.

In 2013, he invested more than one million BTC in a project to create his Bitcoin Bank, supposedly an amount that only the creator of Bitcoin himself could own. However, these million bitcoins may have been stolen by David Kleiman, a man who may have been one of the original developers of the Bitcoin core. Kleiman died in 2013, and Wright, his colleague, took advantage of this and stole all of his BTC. This is reported in a lawsuit filed against Wright by Kleiman's family, which Wright has yet to refute.

Craig Wright himself has not commented on this investigation - apparently not realizing at the time that he could profit from it. However, the Australian police took notice and searched Wright's house almost immediately after the article was published on The Wired. They suspected that he would fail to pay a huge tax on the profits he could potentially make if he were the real creator of Bitcoin.

Craig Wright's lies

Wright first publicly claimed to be Satoshi Nakamoto in 2016, providing The Economist, the BBC, and GQ magazine with "irrefutable evidence" of his involvement in the creation of Bitcoin. He has since sued cryptocurrency developers and exchanges worldwide. COPA says Wright has never provided credible evidence to support his claims and accuses him of repeatedly falsifying documents to support his lawsuits. Wright denies falsifying documents. 

In 2020, Wright promised to "destroy" Bitcoin by collapsing its value, after which he promised to launch a so-called 51% attack on Bitcoin, seizing more than half of its operating resources in order to manipulate data. Since then, Bitcoin has multiplied in value, and its blockchain has continued to function smoothly.

Former Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao has repeatedly called Craig Wright "a disgrace to the crypto industry.” According to Zhao, Australian scientists cannot be the real Satoshi Nakamoto because he is "not talented enough.” The exchange founder stressed that if Wright was indeed the creator of Bitcoin, he could prove it many times and in many ways.

Trial

The Crypto Open Patent Alliance (COPA) process against Wright began in 2021. The organization sued the Australian businessman to prevent him from suing developers and other members of the crypto community, as well as claiming intellectual property rights to Bitcoin technology.

In March 2024, Judge James Mellor ruled that Wright, contrary to his claims, is not Satoshi Nakamoto, the author of the Bitcoin white paper or the creator of the first cryptocurrency. 

Two other cases involving “pseudo-Satoshi’–against Coinbase and Jack Dorsey's Block–were also included. 

The court subsequently froze Wright's assets worth £6 million (about $7.58 million) to ensure that the costs were covered. The court decided against the backdrop of the businessman's withdrawal of funds from the UK after a verdict unfavorable to him.

OnIn May 20, 2024, Judge Mellor issued a written ruling in which he found Wright guilty of perjury, falsifying documents, and “using the courts as a vehicle for fraud.” 

Last events

Since then, Dr. Wright has continued to lie and told everyone that he is Satoshi Nakamoto. This relationship culminated just this month when Craig and his Bitcoin SV "colleague" said they would sue anyone who defamed Wright, calling him "Not-Satoshi" or "False-Satoshi" and generally denying his credit for creating Bitcoin.

While he put on a clown show claiming to be the creator of Bitcoin, everyone tolerated and ignored him. The cryptocurrency community is full of such cranks, the same as John McAfee with his statement about eating his dignity if BTC is not worth 1,000,000,000,000 by the end of 2020. However, Wright started threatening to sue anyone who disagreed with his lies — that is when the crypto community decided to punch the lying Australian professor in the nose.

On July 22, Craig Steven Wright tweeted the statement from his personal Twitter/X account along with an updated notice of his intent to appeal Mellor's decision.