The trial of Craig Wright, an Australian who claims to be the father of bitcoin, against an organization in the sector, opened Monday in London and is expected to last until mid-March. Present in the room, the 53-year-old computer scientist and entrepreneur, who has claimed for years to be the enigmatic programmer behind bitcoin, will not be questioned until Tuesday. For almost a month and a half, the British High Court of Justice will work to determine whether or not Craig Wright wrote the “white paper”, a text at the origin of bitcoin published under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto in October 2008.
The one who earned from his detractors the nickname “Faketoshi” (for “false Satoshi”) claims a copyright on this founding document, as well as on the code of this cryptocurrency. “A large number of people from all over the world have requested access to this trial,” noted the judge by way of introduction, who also noted having received an email Saturday evening from an individual also claiming to be Satoshi Nakamoto.
An association accuses him of lying about his identity
Craig Wright today faces the Crypto Open Patent Alliance (Copa), an association which aims to eliminate patents on technologies linked to cryptocurrencies, and which brings together heavyweights in the sector such as the exchange platform Coinbase and the company Block, specializing in digital payments. The organization accuses Craig Wright of lying about his identity, and of having forged and manipulated documents that he presented to prove his claims.
“Over a period of almost ten years, (Craig Wright) was heavily pressured to prove that he was Satoshi Nakamoto, but consistently failed to provide proof,” said one of the lawyers representing Copa. In the documents provided by Craig Wright, he notes that the software used does not correspond to that which made it possible to write the original “white paper”, according to experts from both parties, and there are traces of use of artificial intelligence conversational ChatGPT.
Another case pits him against 26 developers
The outcome of this case will determine that of another, pitting Craig Wright against 26 developers, individuals as well as companies like the Coinbase platform, which he accuses of having infringed on his intellectual property rights. The largest cryptocurrency by capitalization, bitcoin introduced the principle of the blockchain – a sort of large decentralized ledger on which all cryptocurrency transactions are recorded – and popularized digital currencies.