The only man who claims to be the inventor of bitcoin

He claims that if he were not the one who invented bitcoin, someone would have already appeared claiming to be so. It is the main argument of the Australian computer scientist Craig Steven Wright (Brisbane, Australia, 1970), who these days he is defending in the London courts, against the crypto sector organization COPA, which is the one behind the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto.

The Crypto Open Patent Alliance (COPA), whose members include Twitter founder Jack Dorsey's payments company Block, wants the courts to stop Wright from suing bitcoin developers and preserve its open source nature. The computer scientist publicly stated in 2016 that he was the one who devised bitcoin and that this gives him rights over it, and since then he has been involved in multiple legal conflicts.

Wright maintains that he is the author of a 2008 white paper, the founding text of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, published under Nakamoto's signature. COPA says it has never provided any authentic evidence, and accuses him of repeatedly altering documents. Wright blames others, including former lawyers and partners, for the forgeries.

COPA's lawyer, Jonathan Hough, has pointed out in court that “there are elements of Wright's conduct that border on farce,” such as his alleged use of ChatGPT for adulterations. COPA claims, for example, that one writing contains a manipulated timestamp, with numbers in visibly different fonts to make it appear to predate the Bitcoin white paper. Wright responded: “If I forged that document, it would be perfect.”

The computer scientist studied his engineering at Charles Sturt University (Bathurst, Australia), while, he says, he was simultaneously training as a chef, and his doctorate was titled Quantifying the risk of information systems. He asserts that he holds another doctorate, this one in theology, comparative religious studies and classics, awarded in 2003 by the United Theological College (Bangalore, India).

He worked, always according to his story, in information technology for several companies, including Ozemail (internet provider), K-Mart (US online retailer) and the Australian Stock Exchange, in addition to working as a consultant for security for Mahindra & Mahindra (Indian automotive multinational). He claims that he designed the architecture of what was possibly the world's first online casino, Lasseter's Online, launched in 1999, and that he was director of information systems at accounting firm BDO Kendalls.

He founded the company DeMorgan Information Security Systems, from which he resigned in 2003. A year later, he was found guilty of contempt by the Supreme Court of New South Wales, and sentenced to 28 days in jail for failing to comply with a court order preventing him from approaching to DeMorgan clients. The sentence was suspended on condition that he perform 250 hours of community service. He founded the technology company Hotwire Preemptive Intelligence Group, which planned to launch Denariuz Bank, the world's first bitcoin-based bank, although it took only a year to go bankrupt.

In 2015, parallel investigations by the specialized media Wired and Gizmodo suggested that Wright could have been the inventor of bitcoin. But later reports from those and other publications raised the possibility that it was an elaborate hoax. Hours after Wired After publishing his accusations, Australian police raided Wright's home for a tax investigation by the Inland Revenue. The computer scientist promised to provide “extraordinary evidence of an extraordinary claim,” but experts believe that until now he has not provided definitive proof, such as Nakamoto's private cryptographic key.

In 2019, Wright said he created bitcoin with Dave Kleiman and Hal Finney. The first of them had sued him in 2018 in Florida, for rights to bitcoins worth more than $5 billion, alleging that Wright had defrauded him in the currency and intellectual property rights. A judge ruled in 2019 that Kleiman owned half of the bitcoins he mined with Wright between 2009 and 2013, and ordered him to transfer half of the company's intellectual property, but said it did not enter into the question of whether Wright was or was not Satoshi Nakamoto. “The story defies common sense and real-life experience,” the judge said.

Wright, however, believes that this and other convictions against him are actually arguments in favor of his main claim. He also defends himself with the fact that no one else claims to be Nakamoto. The trial hearing, which began on Monday, will last five weeks.

Follow all the information Five days in Facebook, x and Linkedinor in our newsletter Five Day Agenda

_