The Bitcoin white paper has returned to Bitcoin.org. This important document, which introduced the cryptocurrency to the world, was removed due to legal battles involving Craig Wright, who claims to be Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of BTC.
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Wright’s attempt to prove his claim in court failed, leading to the white paper’s re-upload. Hennadii Stepanov, the maintainer of Bitcoin.org, announced this event by sharing the PDF link to the white paper on X.
bitcoin.pdf is back on Bitcoin Core's domain 🧡 https://t.co/rGnLOXrSvc
— Norbert ⚡️ (@bitnorbert) May 23, 2024
Court Invalidates Wright’s Claims to Bitcoin’s White Paper
In 2021, Wright sued Cobra, the anonymous group managing Bitcoin.org, for copyright infringement. He won by default because Cobra chose not to defend the case. Consequently, Cobra had to pay £35,000 ($40,100) in legal fees, and the white paper was removed from the website. Wright had filed for a U.S. copyright registration for the white paper in 2019.
Last year, he filed another lawsuit against 13 Bitcoin Core developers and several companies, including Blockstream, Coinbase, and Block, for similar copyright violations. The Bitcoin Legal Defense Fund stepped in, highlighting the trend of abusive lawsuits targeting prominent contributors.
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They argued that such legal actions hinder development due to the time, stress, expenses, and risks involved. However, Wright’s claims were decisively debunked. His assertion of being Satoshi Nakamoto was invalidated, rendering his copyright claim on the white paper null.
Wright Accused of “Grand Scale Forgery”
The UK High Court, led by Justice James Mellor, ruled against Wright, stating he lied “extensively and repeatedly” and committed forgery “on a grand scale.” Mellor’s judgment, published on May 20, declared that he deliberately produced false documents to support his false claims.
It is clear that Dr. Wright engaged in the deliberate production of false documents to support false claims and use the Courts as a vehicle for fraud.
Mellor
This ruling came after a detailed examination by the Crypto Open Patent Alliance (COPA), a coalition aiming to protect Bitcoin’s core intellectual property. COPA alleged that Wright fabricated evidence to support his claim. His assets, worth 6.7 million British pounds ($8.4 million), were frozen to prevent him from evading court expenses.
Wright Dumps Several Lawsuits
Following the ruling, Wright abandoned several lawsuits about his claim of being Bitcoin’s creator. On April 11, he dropped an appeal of a lawsuit in Norway against crypto influencer, Magnus Granath, who had called Wright a “pathetic scammer.” A parallel claim in the UK was also dropped.
There are still pending lawsuits. Like the one Wright accused Coinbase and Kraken of violating his intellectual property rights over BTC. However, they are expected to be affected by the COPA ruling.
“We’ve seen a cascading effect from the pronouncement on a host of other litigations globally,” Coinbase Chief Legal Officer ,Paul Grewal, said. “For people outside of crypto, [all this] might sound cartoonish. But with Wright’s claims falling by the wayside, the community can exhale. We think it’s a real win.”
Cryptopolitan reporting by Jai Hamid
