Since the beginning of the digital cryptocurrency market, bitcoiners around the world have been wondering: Who invented the original bitcoin?
It was a mysterious online personality with the nickname Satoshi Nakamoto who first published an academic paper that became the blueprint for cryptocurrency in 2008.
But the true identity of the author of that "white paper" titled Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System, remains a mystery.
"Part of me thinks I'd love to know, being a bitcoiner for so long," said bitcoin advisor Chris Pavlesic.
"The other part of me thinks... it would be better if we didn't know. Because there is no leader. It's a faceless movement."
Over the years, the names of Tesla entrepreneur Elon Musk and programmer-turned-drug lord Paul Le Roux have been included as possible candidates for Satoshi.
Then, eight years ago, controversial Australian businessman Craig Steven Wright publicly claimed to be the brains behind bitcoin.
"I was the main part [and] Other people helped me," he told the BBC in 2016.
"Some people will believe, some won't, and to tell you the truth, I don't really care."
The announcement caused a stir and was followed by several lawsuits.
Recently, a consortium of cryptocurrency companies filed a case in the UK High Court, seeking to establish whether Dr. Wright was the real Satoshi Nakamoto.
In a shocking ruling issued in mid-March, Judge James Mellor decided that Dr. Wright was not Satoshi and was not the inventor of bitcoin.
A detailed ruling will be published in a few weeks.
Leaving for London, after the ATO investigation
Dr. Craig Wright worked at an accounting firm and then as an adjunct academic at Charles Sturt University before fully committing to the crypto industry.
In 2015, he was living in Sydney when the Australian Tax Office (ATO) began investigating his technology businesses.
In December that year, ATO officers raided his upper North Shore home on suspicion he had falsely claimed $3 million in tax deductions.
Dr. Wright denied the allegations of tax fraud.
"We've told the ATO everything, we've told them about the tax issues," he said in 2016.
"Because no one understands bitcoin very well... it's still an ongoing issue.
"We have lawyers negotiating how much taxes I owe."
That investigation was not resolved before Dr Wright left Australia and settled in London.
Dr. Wright used the 2016 claim that he was the real Satoshi to promote another cryptocurrency, Bitcoin Satoshi Vision (BSV). The initiative was supported by several of his wealthy supporters.
BSV is still active on the cryptocurrency exchange market. On its website, BSV says it is the "original bitcoin blockchain."
"Deliberately false evidence"
Many in the industry doubted that Dr. Wright was the brains behind bitcoin.
In response, Dr. Wright began suing some bitcoin software developers for copyright infringement. He also sued bloggers and podcasters who publicly criticized him.
One of the people Dr. Wright sued for defamation was English podcaster Peter McCormack, who in 2019 posted a series of tweets about Dr. Wright.
"I didn't realize this would be a five-year lawsuit costing millions of pounds," McCormack told 7.30.
In the case against McCormack, the court decided that the tweets were defamatory, but also reached damning conclusions about Dr. Wright's conduct, ruling that the evidence presented by Dr. Wright was "deliberately false."
Because of these lies, the judge awarded Dr Wright a nominal compensatory award of ยฃ1.
"He stated that it was [uninvited] but he wasn't invited in the first place," Mr. McCormack said.
โHe basically committed perjury, so the judge awarded him a ยฃ1 judgment, making it the smallest sentence he can give to someone in a defamation claim.โ
Although Mr. McCormack's affair was seen as a partial success, the question remained: was Dr. Wright the real Satoshi?
'Intimidation, harassment and threats'
In 2021, a consortium of crypto companies known as COPA (Crypto Open Patent Alliance) filed a case in the British High Court against Dr. Wright.
The case sought to establish a definitive legal judgment on whether Craig Wright was the real Satoshi Nakamoto.
Some of the case's high-profile supporters included Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, who runs Block (a company that launched a bitcoin cryptocurrency hardware wallet), and cryptocurrency exchange giant Coinbase.
Paul Grewal, legal counsel at Coinbase, who was vice president of Facebook, said at 7:30 that COPA's main goal has been to prevent Dr. Wright from suing individuals and companies in the crypto industry.
"This has not just been a litigation campaign, it has been a campaign of intimidation, harassment and threats that has worked to discourage good faith actors who support bitcoin and all the underlying principles," Grewal said.
During a 22-day trial, COPA's legal representatives claimed that Dr. Wright presented falsified evidence to support his claim to be Satoshi.
COPA alleged that he backtracked Word files, reproduced handwritten documents, deliberately altered PDF copies of the white paper to look like earlier versions, forged emails, and produced a hard drive with material created by ChatGPT.
Mr. Grewal was amazed by the process.
"As a judicial official, I have never seen such a clear example of a scorched earth litigation campaign, based on fraudulent representations and falsified documents," he said.
not satoshi
Earlier this month, UK High Court Judge James Mellor stated that due to overwhelming evidence he had concluded that Craig Wright was not the author of the white paper, that he was not Satoshi Nakamoto and that Dr Wright did not create the bitcoin system or initial software.
Grewal said the ruling was of great importance.
