On Monday, Judge James Mellor dropped the published version of the ruling in the Crypto Open Patent Alliance [COPA] v. Craig Wright case. The judge reiterated his March ruling that Wright - the self-claimed creator of Bitcoin - is not Satoshi Nakamoto and asserted that there’s no misunderstanding. The summary of the ruling noted,
“In both his written evidence and in days of oral evidence under cross-examination, I am entirely satisfied that Dr Wright lied to the Court extensively and repeatedly… All his lies and forged documents were in support of his biggest lie: his claim to be Satoshi Nakamoto.”
The Plaintiff - COPA - was pleased with the judgment. Via a recent thread on X [formerly Twitter], COPA asserted that the latest ruling was the result of “a concerted and united effort” of the community, right from developers to funding contributors and everyone else on the specturm. The alliance further noted that this was a step in the right direction for open sourced development and added,
“We look forward to developers continuing their work on Bitcoin without fear of baseless litigation.”
Wright: An ‘Accomplished’ Liar?
In the ruling, Judge Mellor pointed out that many of Wright’s lies contained a “grain of truth” and commented within parenthesis that this is sometimes said to be the mark of an “accomplished liar.” However, there were many assertions which did not match, and were tagged as outright lies. Wright presented himself as "an extremely clever person.” Nevertheless, according to Judge Mellor, he “is not nearly as clever as he thinks he is.”
Commenting on the latest ruling, software developer Akin Fernandez, aka Beautyon, who has been in the crypto industry’s trenches since 2010, posted on X that the judge had put the nail in the coffin of Craig "Faketoshi" Wright. He added,
“... and in case you didn't know, calling someone "clever" in this manner is a very subtle insult that the English deploy. That word is used to mock people trying to appear intelligent for making something more complicated than necessary. OUCH!”
Notably, Beautyon is also the owner of the London-based Bitcoin voucher service Azteco. Given that he has been in the space since inception, Beautyon is known and respected for his accurate predictions and in-depth technical commentary.
Wright to Appeal Ruling
COPA initially filed the case against Wright in 2021 to stop him from taking legal action against developers and claiming IP rights over Bitcoin’s open source technology. The alliance alleged Wright of forgery and perjury.
Mellor noted that Satoshi would not have had any difficulty in proving that he was Satoshi. In that process, he said, the actual creator of Bitcoin would not have resorted to fraudulent practices like backdating records. He labeled Satoshi to be a collaborative, non-confrontational, calm, precise, and knowledgeable person with little or no arrogance. This, by and large, failed to match the character sketch of Wright.
Thus, the judge ruled that Wright is not Nakamoto, neither is he the author of the Bitcoin whitepaper, nor the creator of Bitcoin, or the coder of the initial versions of its software. The ruling can be further appealed, and Wright’s recent post on X confirmed that he was going to tread on the aforementioned path.
