Australian businessman who falsely claimed to be Satoshi Nakamoto
On May 2, 2016, Craig Wright publicly declared himself to be Satoshi Nakamoto in coordinated interviews with the BBC, The Economist, and GQ. He offered cryptographic proof — a digitally signed message using keys associated with early Bitcoin blocks. Within hours, security researchers showed he had reused an existing signature from a 2009 Bitcoin transaction rather than producing a new signature with the claimed keys.
Eight years later, Justice Mellor delivered the ruling in the case brought by the Crypto Open Patent Alliance:
James Mellor (UK High Court judgment, March 14, 2024)
- Dr. Wright is not the author of the Bitcoin White Paper.
- Dr. Wright is not the person who adopted or operated under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto in the period 2008 to 2011.
- Dr. Wright is not the person who created the Bitcoin System.
- Dr. Wright did not author the initial versions of the Bitcoin software.
The judge characterised Wright as an extremely dishonest witness and concluded he had engaged in deliberate and extensive forgery of documents to support his false claim of being Satoshi Nakamoto. The self-claim, the arguments it rested on, and the counter-evidence are laid out as a Satoshi-identity hypothesis in Was Craig Wright Satoshi?
On February 21, 2024, Adam Back testified at the COPA trial and submitted his complete five-email Satoshi correspondence as evidence against Wright’s claim, the same day Martti Malmi testified via video link with his own 260-email archive.
Craig Steven Wright is an Australian computer scientist and businessman, born in October 1970 in Brisbane, Australia.
The December 2015 Wired and Gizmodo investigations had preceded the May 2016 claim — the journalists had been the first to suggest Wright as a possible Satoshi candidate, citing materials later shown to be fabricated. After the May 2016 “proof” collapsed under scrutiny, Wright promised further evidence but never delivered. He instead posted an apology:
Craig Wright (drcraigwright.net statement, May 05, 2016)I believed that I could do this. I believed that I could put the years of anonymity and hiding behind me. But, as the events of this week unfolded and I prepared to publish the proof of access to the earliest keys, I broke. I do not have the courage. I cannot.
In February 2021, Wright sued the pseudonymous operator of bitcoin.org (Cobra) over Bitcoin whitepaper copyright. On June 28, 2021, the court issued a default judgment in Wright’s favor — not because the claim had merit, but because Cobra chose to protect his anonymity rather than reveal his identity to defend himself. Hours later, Cobra posted a public rebuttal declaring cryptographic rules superior to rules a court can buy.
Wright’s identity claims rested on signing with the keys to early blocks (1–9) but never extended to the genesis-block coinbase key — the single demonstration that would be dispositive, and one that no one, including Wright, has ever performed (see the genesis-block hardcode analysis).
In November 2018, Wright and Calvin Ayre’s nChain organization led the side of a “hash war” that split Bitcoin SV away from Bitcoin Cash, restoring larger blocks and opcodes disabled in earlier Bitcoin code under the banner of “Satoshi Vision.” It became the chain most associated with Wright’s claim in the years before the COPA trial settled the matter. In the twelve-chain design comparison, Bitcoin SV is listed as led by Craig Wright’s nChain. It is the only one of the twelve chains whose leader has an existing fabrication finding against him.
Wright sought permission to appeal the COPA ruling, and lost. On March 6, 2025, he was ordered to pay £225,000 in costs after Lord Justice Arnold found that he had improperly used AI to prepare his submissions, which risked seriously misleading the court; COPA’s lawyers said the AI use had led him to rely on non-existent case law and on false statements about the trial. Reports differ on how the sum divided: the Press Association put £100,000 to COPA and £125,000 to the developers he had also sued, all ordered by the Court of Appeal, while the Law Society Gazette put £125,000 to COPA in the Court of Appeal and £100,000 on the indemnity basis in the High Court. It is reported as the first time a UK civil court has ordered costs over a litigant’s misuse of AI.
21 entries
Craig Wright's May 2, 2016 blog post, published the day he publicly claimed to be Satoshi, walking through an OpenSSL verification of a signature he presented as proof.
Craig Wright's May 3, 2016 blog post, the day after his public claim to be Satoshi, promising a series of posts and a transfer of bitcoin from an early block as proof.
The apology Craig Wright posted on May 5, 2016 in place of his site, three days after claiming to be Satoshi and before any promised proof appeared.
Gavin Andresen's blog post of May 2, 2016, stating that he believed Craig Wright was Satoshi after a private signing session in London, with the note he added in February 2023.
A curated way in: questions about Satoshi Nakamoto and Bitcoin history, each pointing to the page that answers it in full.
Bitcoin Cash inherited Bitcoin's ledger and 21 million cap at the 2017 fork, then split twice more under implementation teams with no single founder to arbitrate.
No block-size limit, one company's reference client, and five 51%-attack reorgs in a single year — Bitcoin SV's design record, measured against the 'original protocol' it set out to restore.
The only candidate who claimed the identity himself — declared in coordinated BBC and Economist interviews in May 2016, cryptographic proof in hand. The evidence, weighed.
Bitcoin SV (Satoshi Vision) split from Bitcoin Cash on November 15, 2018, and a hash war with the Bitcoin ABC faction followed. The SV chain restored larger blocks and 'original' opcodes.
Genealogy of every Bitcoin protocol fork that left a separate chain alive (Bitcoin Cash, SV, Gold) and the adjacent cryptocurrencies derived from Bitcoin (Namecoin, Litecoin, Dogecoin).
Satoshi has been hunted in public for years and left a large trail of material, yet remains unidentified. Why all that searching and all that material have not led to a name.
Twelve recurring Satoshi candidates, compared across four independent layers: profile match, stylometric attribution, direct correspondence and development environment.
Bitcoin's genesis block, read from the v0.1 source: how hardcoded constants build it, the five-day gap as a timestamp artifact, who counts as its author, proof-of-work headroom, and who holds the key.
Mike Hearn testifies at the COPA v Wright trial, recounting his direct interactions with Satoshi and describing how Wright failed his technical check questions at a 2016 dinner.
After the London High Court ordered bitcoin.org to remove the Bitcoin whitepaper, Cobra responded on Twitter with a critique declaring cryptographic rules superior to court-enforced ones.
Cobra (also Cøbra): Pseudonymous operator and guardian of bitcoin.org, the website originally registered by Satoshi in 2008. Chose to lose a copyright suit by default rather than reveal his identity.
Craig Wright declared himself Satoshi in coordinated interviews with the BBC, The Economist and GQ. The cryptographic proof on his blog was soon debunked: he had reused a 2009 transaction signature.
Craig Wright sued bitcoin.org operator Cobra over Bitcoin whitepaper copyright. Cobra refused to reveal his identity, resulting in a default judgment ordering bitcoin.org to remove the whitepaper.
During Day 13 of COPA v Wright, Martti Malmi testified via video link and submitted 260 emails (140,000 words) exchanged with Satoshi between May 2009 and February 2011, published on GitHub.
Wired and Gizmodo simultaneously publish articles identifying Australian computer scientist Craig Steven Wright as the probable creator of Bitcoin, based on leaked documents and emails.
The UK High Court rules definitively that Craig Steven Wright is not Satoshi Nakamoto, finding that he fabricated evidence on a grand scale to support his false claim.