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An Australian computer scientist who claimed to have invented bitcoin has turned to prosecutors for perjury
A London judge who found that an Australian computer scientist falsely claimed to be the mysterious creator of the cryptocurrency Bitcoin said he would refer the case to British prosecutors over possible perjury charges.
From
BRIAN MELLEY, Press Associate
July 16, 2024, 6:46 AM ET
• 3 minute read
LONDON — An Australian computer scientist has been caught falsely claiming to be the mysterious creator of the Bitcoin The cryptocurrency will be referred to British prosecutors for “large-scale perjury and falsification of documents,” a London judge said Tuesday.
Judge James Mellor, who ruled after a civil trial in March that Craig Wright was not the man behind “Satoshi Nakamoto,” the pseudonym that masked the identity of the creator of Bitcoin, said he would refer evidence in the case to the Crown Prosecution Service to consider whether to bring charges.
“In supporting his false claim to be Satoshi through multiple legal actions, Dr Wright has committed ‘a very serious abuse’ of the process of the courts in the UK, Norway and the US,” Mellor said. “If what happened in this case does not justify referral to the CPS, it is difficult to imagine a case that does.”
During the trial, Mellor had established that Wright did not invent Bitcoin, was not the man behind Nakamoto nor the creator of the Bitcoin software.
Bitcoin’s murky origins date back to the height of the 2008 financial crisis, when a person or group using the pseudonym Nakamoto published a paper explaining how the digital currency could be sent around the world anonymously, without banks or national currencies.
Speculation about Nakamoto’s identity has circulated for years, and several candidates emerged when Wright emerged to claim the identity in 2016, only to quickly return to the shadowsclaiming he did not “have the courage” to provide further evidence.
In what was seen as a major victory for open source developers, a nonprofit group of technology and crypto companies successfully sued the High Court to prove that Wright is not Nakamoto.
The Crypto Open Patent Alliance (COPA) had argued that Wright had committed “industrial-scale forgery” to support a “blatant lie” that he was Nakamoto. The alliance said he had used his claim as the inventor of bitcoin to “terrorize” developers by filing a lawsuit to prevent them from further developing the open-source technology.
Wright, who testified for several days of the five-week trialhas denied the allegations. In May, he stated on the social media platform X that he intends to appeal the decision “on the question of identity.”
The case had implications for the control of intellectual property rights of the world’s most popular virtual currency. The ruling affected three pending lawsuits filed by Wright based on his claim to have intellectual property rights to bitcoin.
On Tuesday, Mellor granted two injunctions barring Wright from threatening to sue or filing lawsuits against the developers.
It also ordered Wright to publish the details of the ruling against him to “dispell lingering uncertainty” about whether he is not Nakamoto, and to post notices to that effect on his website and his profile on X, the social media platform, and on his Slack channels.
Messages seeking comment from Wright’s lawyers did not immediately receive a response.
Bitcoin is the world’s most popular digital currency and, like others, is not tied to any bank or government. Like cash, it allows users to spend and receive money anonymously, or mostly. It can be converted into cash when deposited into accounts at set prices in online trading.