Not the Bitcoin inventor: Craig Wright sentenced for annoying courts

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The Australian Craig Wright is not the Bitcoin inventor "Satoshi Nakamoto". This was established by an English court in March. However, Wright continued to harass over a hundred people with claims worth billions as "Satoshi Nakamoto". In July, the court therefore prohibited him from filing further lawsuits or threatening to do so. Because Wright did not stop, he was sentenced to one year in prison on Thursday.

This sentence is suspended for two years. However, Wright must pay 145,000 pounds in legal costs (a good 175,000 euros) within two weeks. It is difficult to get hold of the man: he has not complied with the court order to appear in person at the trial. According to his own statements, he is somewhere in Asia. "It looks as if he knows exactly which countries do not have an extradition treaty with the UK," the judge stated.

Wright claims to be resident in England but cannot afford to travel home from Asia. When the other side offered to reimburse him for the plane ticket, Wright demanded 240,000 British pounds for travel and loss of earnings for six months (a good 291,000 euros). This request was not only futile, but also late, so Wright was sentenced in absentia on Wednesday. On Thursday, the Australian joined the sentencing hearing via video link, as reported by the BBC.

Several hopeless lawsuits

In 2021 and 2022, Wright originally filed three lawsuits with the Chancery Division of the England and Wales High Court against a long list of companies, individuals and alleged civil law companies at home and abroad (Ref. IL-2022-000035, IL-2022-000036 and IL-2022-000069). He claimed hundreds of billions of pounds. The starting point was always the claim that he was the real Natoshi Sakomoto and that the defendants had infringed his intellectual property rights.

In a fourth lawsuit, Wright was the defendant: the industry association COPA demanded a declaration that Wright was not Sakomoto (case no. IL-2021-000019). This was to ensure that Wright stopped harassing people from the Bitcoin orbit.

In a fifth action (Ref. BL-2021-000313), brought on behalf of Wright's company Tulip Trading Limiteds, Wright sought to require Bitcoin programmers to manipulate the blockchain to recover 111,000 Bitcoin that had been lost. Mr. Sakamoto's identity played no role in these proceedings. An appeals court found last year that the blockchain manipulation claim was not hopeless, but Wright has since dropped the lawsuit.

Wright is not Sakomoto

Because four of the five proceedings depended on it, the court first clarified ([2024] EWHC 1198 (Ch)) whether Wright was Sakomoto or whether he was otherwise involved in the original development of Bitcoin software or the Bitcoin white paper. The result is devastating: "I have concluded that (Wright) falsified documents on a large scale and lied repeatedly and extensively to the court," summarized the judge in charge in his ruling on Wednesday, "I have concluded that Dr. Wright has not produced any robust evidence of having been involved in the early development of or investment in the Bitcoin system."

Wright's appeal against the defeat was unsuccessful. The remaining "Sakomoto" lawsuits were either dismissed by the court or dropped by Wright. Nevertheless, he is said to have continued to threaten various people with similar lawsuits. The industry association COPA then applied to the court for an injunction against Wright, which the court issued in July ([2024] EWHC 1809 (Ch)).

This prohibits Wright from threatening or initiating proceedings in which he either claims to be Nakamoto or to have been involved in the undertakings carried out under this name, or in which he asserts intellectual property claims relating to Bitcoin.

No rest

Despite this, Wright has continued, first threatening such proceedings and then, on October 10, actually filing a new lawsuit against two previous defendants (case no. BL-2024-001495). Wright is again asserting intellectual property claims, this time to the value of 911 billion pounds (a good 1.1 trillion euros). COPA therefore applied for a conviction for contempt of court.

With success. Wright argued in vain that he was not directly claiming to be Sakomoto in his new lawsuit. However, this is indirectly the case, as only Nakamoto could, if at all, claim the allegedly infringed rights. In addition, the judge points out that his July order not only prohibits Wright from impersonating Sakomoto, but also prohibits him from asserting a list of intellectual property claims relating to Bitcoin at all. Wright was thus convicted.

Troublesome litigant

Wright has not made any friends in court with his fisticuffs. Not only does he repeatedly put forward legally untenable arguments, he also violates the procedural rules. For example, he has lodged an appeal directly with the Court of Appeal, although it should be lodged with the court of first instance. He has also served documents on defendants abroad without the required authorization.

In addition, Wright has repeatedly accused the judge of bias. The central element of this allegation is apparently a typo in a tweet by a third party. According to this, the judge is said to have attended a COPA event, i.e. one of the plaintiff's events – not in itself a reason for bias. However, he was actually referring to CIPA, an organization of British patent attorneys. The judge noted that he had never been to a COPA event and rejected the claim of bias.

• May verdict: Wright is not Nakamoto , [2024] EWHC 1198 (Ch)
• The Conviction for contempt of court contains a summary of events to date from the court's perspective.

The current judgment of the England and Wales High Court can be cited as [2024] EWHC 3315 (Ch), the case number is IL-2021-000019. The court documents are subject to the Open Government Licence 3.0.

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