Yahoo Finance “Lied extensively and repeatedly”: Craig Wright slammed for High Court evidence in bitcoin trial
Craig Wright, the controversial crypto entrepreneur, lost an attempt to prove he was the inventor of bitcoin in the High Court when Mr Justice Mellor made his ruling at the end of a five-week trial in March.
Wright has long claimed to be Satoshi Nakamoto, the author of the bitcoin white paper and inventor of the famed cryptocurrency.
In a written judgment handed down today to accompany the March verdict, Mr Justice Mellor rules that Wright “engaged in the deliberate production of false document to support false claims and use the Courts as a vehicle for fraud.”
In just the second paragraph of the Judge’s summary, Justice Mellor said Wright is “not nearly as clever as he thinks he is” and says he is “entirely satisfied that Dr Wright lied to the Court extensive and repeatedly.”
The evidence presented by Wright was “at best questionable or of very dubious relevance or entirely circumstantial and at worst, fabricated and/or based on documents I am satisfied have been forged on a grand scale by Dr Wright”.
In a 1736-paragraph judgment, Justice Mellor also says Wright failed to understand basic aspects of bitcoin technology and displayed an “arrogance” Nakomoto would not have made.
“The picture painted by Dr Wright in his evidence was, in essence, that he was solely responsible for creating Bitcoin, that he was much cleverer than anyone else, that anyone who questioned his claim or his evidence was not qualified to do so or just didn’t understand what he was saying. In my judgment, the arrogance he displayed was at odds with what comes through from Satoshi’s writing. In short, in his writing and attitude Dr Wright just doesn’t sound or act like Satoshi,” Justice Mellor writes.
Justice Mellor concluded in the document: “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 case was brought by a group of bitcoin and crypto companies, the Crypto Open Patent Alliance (COPA).
Wright was accused of chilling the development of new technology due to his penchant for pursuing legal cases.
A COPA spokesperson said: “This decision is a watershed moment for the open-source community and even more importantly, a definitive win for the truth. Developers can now continue their important work maintaining, iterating on, and improving the Bitcoin network without risking their personal livelihoods or fearing costly and time-consuming litigation from Craig Wright.”
