(London) Claiming to be the mythical inventor of bitcoin and owning the rights to it, an Australian computer scientist is starting Monday in a London court opposing an organization in the sector, which calls it an imposture.
For nearly a month and a half, this trial will try to determine whether or not Craig Steven Wright is the enigmatic programmer behind bitcoin, as he has claimed since 2016, according to legal documents consulted by AFP.
This 53-year-old Australian, who until recently resided in England, claims to have a copyright on the “white paper”, a text at the origin of bitcoin published under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto in October 2008, as well as on the code of this cryptocurrency.
“I designed Bitcoin and revealed it to the world,” this serial entrepreneur assured recently on his Twitter account.
“Faketoshi”
The man who has earned the nickname “Faketoshi” (for “false Satoshi”) from his detractors has been multiplying legal actions for several years, raising eyebrows in the “cryptosphere” in the process.
On Monday, he will have to defend himself against 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 Coinbase exchange platform and the company Block, specializing in digital payments.
Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, also joined the alliance at the beginning of 2022, but on Thursday, its name no longer appeared on the COPA website on the members’ page.
The organization accuses Craig Wright of lying about his identity, and of having forged and manipulated documents that he presented to prove his claims.
The outcome of this case will determine that of another pitting Mr. Wright against 26 developers, individuals as well as companies like the Coinbase platform, which he accuses of having infringed on his intellectual property rights.
Open source
Today 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. A success that generates much desire.
Craig Wright is in fact not the first to claim authorship or to be suspected of it.
One of the first suspects, Dorian Nakamoto, a Japanese-American engineer identified as Satoshi by a magazine reporter Newsweek in 2014, currently denies any involvement in the creation of the legendary cryptocurrency.
Others have theorized that a work of this magnitude would more likely be the work of a collective rather than a single developer.
“From the beginning, the very concept of bitcoin was based on the principle of open source,” notes a COPA spokesperson, interviewed by AFP, and who says he wishes to remain anonymous for fear of legal reprisals. .
“This begs the question: Was Satoshi the kind of person who would sue people for republishing the “white paper”? We obviously don’t think so. »
Computer experts from both parties concluded that the original file of this founding text of bitcoin would in fact have been produced in the OpenOffice software, and not via the LaTex document composition system as Mr. Wright claims.
In the files provided by the defendant, they also found traces of the use of the conversational artificial intelligence ChatGPT or even a version of the Calibri font which did not exist at the time.
Paul Grewal, Coinbase’s chief legal officer, calls Mr. Wright’s attacks on cryptocurrency developers a “campaign of harassment,” many of whom “don’t have the means to present even the most basic defense,” he said. he said in an open letter sent to AFP, initially published on the Coindesk website.
The Shoosmiths firm, which represents Mr. Wright, told AFP that it did not wish to comment on current cases.
In a separate case, a company owned by Mr. Wright, Seychelles-based Tulip Trading, filed a lawsuit against the Bitcoin Association and several developers, demanding that they provide him with access to billions of dollars in bitcoins that he claims to have.
In late January, the UK Supreme Court also refused Mr Wright’s appeal in a libel suit against a podcaster who called him a sham.