On March 14, 2024, Justice Mellor of the UK High Court handed down judgment in COPA (Crypto Open Patent Alliance) v. Craig Steven Wright, [2024] EWHC 1198 (Ch) — the trial of the Identity Issue: whether Dr. Wright is the person who created Bitcoin under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto. At the conclusion of closing submissions, having reached the conclusion that the evidence was overwhelming, the judge made four declarations, set out at [7] of the Judgment:
7.1. First, that Dr Wright is not the author of the Bitcoin White Paper.
7.2. Second, Dr Wright is not the person who adopted or operated under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto in the period between 2008 and 2011.
7.3. Third, Dr Wright is not the person who created the Bitcoin system.
7.4. Fourth, Dr Wright is not the author of the initial versions of the Bitcoin Software.
On the evidence for Dr. Wright’s claim [5]:
The true position is far simpler. It is, however, far from simple because Dr Wright has lied so much over so many years that, on certain points, it can be difficult to pinpoint what actually happened. Those difficulties do not detract from the fact that there is a very considerable body of evidence against Dr Wright being Satoshi. To the extent that it is said there is evidence supporting his claim, it is at best questionable or of very dubious relevance or entirely circumstantial and at worst, it is fabricated and/or based on documents I am satisfied have been forged on a grand scale by Dr Wright.
The judgment’s Overall Conclusions section addresses the scale of that forgery directly. By the end of trial, the pleaded allegations of forgery numbered 47 [921]:
I have dealt with numerous points of detail in relation to those 47 forgery allegations, both in the body of this Judgment and in the Appendix. I have found all of them proved.
On Dr. Wright’s conduct at trial [926]:
Overall, in my judgment, […] Dr Wright’s attempts to prove he was/is Satoshi Nakamoto represent a most serious abuse of this Court’s process. […] In all three jurisdictions, it is clear that Dr Wright engaged in the deliberate production of false documents to support false claims and use the Courts as a vehicle for fraud. Despite acknowledging in this Trial that a few documents were inauthentic (generally blamed on others), he steadfastly refused to acknowledge any of the forged documents. Instead, he lied repeatedly and extensively in his attempts to deflect the allegations of forgery.
The judge’s overall conclusion on the Identity Issue [928]:
Having (a) reached conclusions on COPA’s allegations of forgery, (b) accepted the remaining allegations of inauthenticity which, as far as I am aware, cover Dr Wright’s Reliance Documents, (c) not had my attention drawn to any other documents which appear to support Dr Wright’s claim and which can be considered reliable, (d) considered the largely circumstantial evidence from the witnesses of fact called to support Dr Wright’s case, (e) considered the evidence given in Dr Wright’s own witness statements and (f) considered all the evidence adduced by COPA and the Developers, the case that Dr Wright is not Satoshi Nakamoto is overwhelming.
This ruling is treated as the legal context for Adam Back’s deposition by the February 2024 Adam Back retrospective testimony entry, which documents Back’s in-person sworn testimony during this trial as the moment the complete Satoshi-Back email chain entered the public record.
The ruling also settled an earlier, smaller dispute Wright’s claim had produced. Nearly three years before this judgment, Cobra, the pseudonymous steward of bitcoin.org, had accepted a default judgment rather than reveal his identity to contest Wright’s whitepaper-copyright suit; this ruling’s finding that Wright had no legitimate claim to the whitepaper rendered that 2021 judgment retroactively hollow.
