Wright is not Satoshi, UK High Court rules

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In a decisive ruling, the UK High Court has declared that Craig Wright is not the creator of Bitcoin, putting an end to the long-standing legal battle between Wright and the Cryptocurrency Open Patent Alliance (COPA).

The bench ruling was delivered by Judge Mellor on March 14. The statement from the proceedings conclude that evidence overwhelmingly proves that Wright was not the author of the Bitcoin whitepaper, and thus did not create the Bitcoin system and its auxiliary technologies. The ruling also specifies that contrary to Wright’s claims, he did not operate under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto between 2008 and 2011.

According to a recorded transcription of the proceedings compiled by BitMEX Research , the court made four key declarations: that Wright is not the author of the Bitcoin whitepaper, that he is not Satoshi, as he claims, that he did not invent or create Bitcoin as a system and as a technology, and that Wright is not the author of initial versions of Bitcoin software.

Wright’s defense presented various pieces of evidence to support their claim, including a 2017 patent application filed by Wright and Jamie Wilson, and arguments surrounding the availability of the Quill notepad allegedly used by Wright to draft the Bitcoin whitepaper.

Despite the amount of evidence presented, the court found counter-filed evidence from the COPA to be more compelling. The primary assertion here is with how the print proof of the Quill notepad was only available after November 2009 and that the pad itself was not available until 2012, contradicting Wright’s claims.

The judgment also addressed the issue of injunctive relief sought by COPA, which detailed three declarations: that Wright did not author the Bitcoin whitepaper, that he has no copyright over Bitcoin, and that COPA is free to use Bitcoin and the whitepaper.

Wright first publicly claimed to be Satoshi Nakamoto in 2016. However, his claim has been met with widespread skepticism and a lack of conclusive proof. Despite filing several defamation suits against people who have accused him of falsely claiming to be Bitcoin’s inventor, his claims have not been conclusively proven

The ruling marks a watershed moment in the ongoing speculations and debate surrounding the true identity of Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin. While the court’s decision does not reveal who Satoshi is, it definitively states that Craig Wright is not the creator of the world’s first decentralized digital asset.

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