High Court "entirely satisfied" Dr Craig Wright not Bitcoin inventor

Dr Craig Wright's claims to be the inventor of Bitcoin - the pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto - have formed the basis for various proceedings both in the English courts and elsewhere. These include:

• a claim by the Crypto Open Patent Alliance (COPA), a US-based non-profit corporation, for a declaration that (in summary) Dr Wright is not the Bitcoin inventor (the "COPA Claim");
• claims by Dr Wright and associated companies against various defendants, including COPA and various of its corporate members, alleging breach of database rights over the Bitcoin blockchain and breach of copyright in the Bitcoin White Paper and Bitcoin File Format (the "BTC Core Claim"); and
• claims by Dr Wright and associated companies against certain crypto exchanges alleging passing off in respect of the use of the term "Bitcoin" in relation to certain cryptocurrencies (the "Kraken and Coinbase Claims").

The question of whether or not Dr Wright is the Bitcoin inventor is obviously crucial to all of these claims. The trial of the COPA Claim was therefore treated as a trial of a preliminary issue in the BTC Core Claim, and the Kraken and Coinbase Claims were stayed on the parties' agreement to be bound by the court's findings on that issue in the COPA Claim.

Following the trial in March, the High Court (Mellor J) made declarations that Dr Wright is not: the author of the Bitcoin White Paper; the person who adopted or operated under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto in the period between 2008 and 2011; the person who created the Bitcoin system; or the author of the initial versions of the Bitcoin Software. The present judgment gives the court's detailed reasons, extending to almost 400 pages, for granting those declarations: Crypto Open Patent Alliance v Wright [2024] EWHC 1198 (Ch).

In the judgment, Mellor J states that he is "entirely satisfied that Dr Wright lied to the Court extensively and repeatedly", both in relation to the documents he had forged which purported to support his claim and in relation to "his biggest lie: his claim to be Satoshi Nakamoto". He finds that Dr Wright's attempts to prove that he was Satoshi Nakamoto represent a serious abuse of the court's process, and an attempt to use the courts as a vehicle for fraud.

Bearing in mind that the court will not make negative declarations unless satisfied that they would serve a useful purpose, the judge said that he had firmly concluded that the declarations had utility and were necessary to do justice between the parties. This included the relevance of these declarations for Dr Wright's claims in the BTC Core Claim and the Kraken and Coinbase Claims, as well as the various claims for defamation that Dr Wright had brought against various people who have said or implied that he is not Satoshi Nakamoto. The judge commented that:

"...in view of the extremely unpleasant threats which Dr Wright has made in the past against some of the individual Developers in particular, I was minded to make declarations to ensure that Dr Wright would not have any possible basis on which to threaten them with copyrights or database rights stemming from the work done by Satoshi Nakamoto".

Dr Wright has said that he intends to appeal, though of course he will first need to obtain permission to do so. Subject to any such appeal, the court's decision would seem to put an end to Dr Wright's claims in the English court based on his alleged identity as Satoshi Nakamoto.

Note: Permission to appeal was refused on 29 November 2024.