An Australian computer scientist who falsely claimed to be the creator of bitcoin has been given a one-year suspended prison sentence after London’s high court ruled he was in contempt because he kept suing people.
Judge Mellor had already found that Craig Wright, 54, repeatedly lied about his claim to be Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonym used by the person or people who launched bitcoin, the cryptocurrency that was first mined in 2009 and whose value recently it soared to £79,000.
Wright had claimed intellectual property rights associated with bitcoin, but that was demolished when the high court found that he lied about his role, deploying often clumsy “large-scale” forgeries and “technobabble.” The real Nakamoto is likely a billionaire because he is believed to own 1 million bitcoins.
Wright was then ordered to stop taking legal action against bitcoin developers, but defied that court order in October when he filed lawsuits against cryptocurrency developers worth more than £900 billion regarding his claimed intellectual property rights. related to bitcoin.
He also repeated his claim that he was Nakamoto, said Jonathan Hough KC, an attorney for the Crypto Open Patent Alliance (Copa), a nonprofit group that includes cryptocurrency companies and which filed the lawsuit against Wright.
On Thursday, Wright was sentenced on five counts of contempt of court. Sentencing him to 12 months in prison, suspended for two years and to pay £145,000 in costs within a fortnight, the court also dismissed his huge claim.
Hough told the court that Wright’s legal threats had “terrified” people, subjecting “developers and bloggers to… years of personal hell” and that the new claims were intended to “cause as much distress as possible.”
His latest legal actions were a “desperate publicity stunt to keep his followers engaged,” Hough said. He added that Wright had tried to resist alleging judicial bias and had even claimed that he was a victim of the British aristocracy because of the appearance of the word “Lord” in the judicial rulings against him. The judge found that Wright’s contempt was proven “beyond a reasonable doubt.”
Wright, appearing by video conference from somewhere in Asia (he declined to say where), said he would appeal. He had refused to comply with an order to attend in person during a hearing on Wednesday when he said he could only do so if he was paid £240,000 to cover his costs and loss of income.
The courtroom was packed with spectators, including a man wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the slogan: “This is just an elaborate fiction.”
In a high court ruling handed down in May, Mellor said Wright presents himself as an extremely intelligent person, “however, in my opinion, he is not as intelligent as he thinks he is.” He said he was an “extremely elusive witness.”
“Both in his written evidence and days of oral evidence under cross-examination, I am completely satisfied that Dr Wright lied to the court extensively and repeatedly,” the judge said. “Most of his lies were related to documents he had falsified that purported to support his claim. All his lies and forged documents supported his biggest lie: his claim to be Satoshi Nakamoto.”