Suspended prison sentence for Craig Wright for “flagrant breach” of court order, after his false Bitcoin creator claims
Australian computer scientist Dr Craig Wright has been sentenced for continuing to sue developers, after his false claim to be Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin.
CoinDesk reported that Craig Wright has been found to be in contempt of court by a British judge, and has been sentenced to 12 months in prison, suspended for two years.
It comes after Mr Justice Mellor (a High Court judge) had in March 2024 ruled that Craig Wright was not ‘Satoshi Nakamoto’, and that he would give his full reasons for his decision at a later date.
Not Satoshi Nakamoto
In May 2024 in a written judgement, Mr Justice Mellor issued a damning ruling against the self-proclaimed Bitcoin inventor, stating that Craig Wright had lied “extensively and repeatedly” and forged documents “on a grand scale” to support his false claim that he was the inventor of bitcoin.
Following a court order, Craig Wright was forced to update the homepage of his personal website with a legal notice for six months, that publicly declared that he is not the inventor of Bitcoin.
Wright was also forced to display the admission notice on his Twitter/X account, as well as on the Slack channels where he communicates with his supporters.
It all began in May 2016, when Craig Wright had claimed in a blog post that he was Satoshi Nakamoto – the pseudonym used by the person (or persons) who developed bitcoin.
Nakamoto carried out the initial research underlying bitcoin and apparently ended his involvement in the digital currency in 2011.
Craig Wright in his blog post in 2016 provided a cryptographic signature that is among those known to have been used by Nakamoto.
But many in the crypto community were sceptical of Wright’s claim, in part because he had not moved any of the early bitcoin presumed to have been mined by Satoshi.
Then from May 2019, Craig Wright began using English libel law to sue people who had denied he was the inventor of bitcoin, and who called him a fraud.
His actions prompted a court case in London that began on 5 February 2024, after the Crypto Open Patent Alliance (COPA) took Dr Wright to court to stop him suing Bitcoin developers.
COPA – whose members include Twitter founder Jack Dorsey’s payments firm Block, said it had brought the lawsuit to preserve the open-source nature of Bitcoin.
COPA had accused Wright of repeatedly forging documents to substantiate his claim, including during the trial itself, which Wright denied when he gave evidence.
In the end the court ruled that Wright was not Satoshi Nakamoto, and Mr Justice Mellor issued his damning verdict against Wright, and in the summer referred him to Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) to be considered for perjury charges.
Legal nonsense
But that was not the end of the matter.
In early November Wright faced a contempt-of-court hearing after he filed a £911 trillion lawsuit against Jack Dorsey’s Block and the developers of Bitcoin Core in October.
Wright had said at that time that he should not be obliged to attend a contempt-of-court hearing in December due to his autism and Christmas activities.
Wright told the court his lawsuit against Square Up Europe, owned by Block, and Bitcoin Core was not based on his claim to be Nakamoto.
COPA however asked for Wright’s lawsuit to be halted until the contempt-of-court proceedings were concluded, and also asked for Wright to be obliged to attend an 18 December court session in person, but Wright argued he was too sensitive to lighting conditions due to his autism.
Now this week CoinDesk reported that Wright was found to be in contempt of court, and was handed a 12-month jail sentence.
“When it comes to the grounds of contempt I have found each of them proved beyond reasonable doubt,” Judge James Mellor was quoted as saying.
Mr Justice Mellor was also quoted by the BBC as saying that Wright arguments were “legal nonsense” but acknowledged that he was not in the UK and “appears to be well aware of countries with which the UK does not have extradition arrangements.”
The judge reportedly added the new lawsuit amounted to a “flagrant breach” of the original court order.
Wright had attended the court hearing virtually on Thursday to hear the sentence, and he declined to say where in Asia he was.
The BBC reported Wright as saying he would appeal the verdict.
If the UK wants to detain him, an international arrest warrant would have to be issued.