Who Is the Real Satoshi Nakamoto?
Craig Wright Again Challenged on His Claim
Will the real Satoshi Nakamoto please stand up?
Bitcoin’s real, pseudonymous creator has never shown his real identity. Even though it is widely known that Satoshi, whoever he/she/they are, owns 1.1 million Bitcoins. That’s worth about $48 billion right now. Billion. With a B.
The coins in Satoshi’s wallet have have never moved.
Australian computer scientist Craig Wright claims to be Bitcoin’s creator. Wright insists that he is the real author of the Bitcoin whitepaper, which was released on Halloween in 2008.
And now, a group dubbed “Crypto Open Patent Alliance (COPA),” led by Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, has challenged Wright’s claim. Dorsey and his non-profit group have accused Wright of forging documents to support his cliam of being Satoshi Nakamoto.
Wright has maintained, over several years, that he was at least a part of the team that developed Bitcoin and that none of his co-creators have helped him retrieve the keys to his statsh of 1.1 million Bitcoins.
The non-profit COPA lodged its complaint in a London court in an attempt to prevent Wright from suing Bitcoin developers and to preserve the open-source nature of the Bitcoin code.
Wright had previously been sued by the family of the late David Kleiman, who claimed that Wright, as a co-creator of Bitcoin, owed Kleiman’s family over $28 billion. However, a jury ruled that Wright was not Satoshi Nakamoto, and as such, did not owe the Kleiman family the value of over a half a million Bitcoins.
The jury did award $100 million in intellectual property rights to a joint venture between the two men, a fraction of what Kleiman's lawyers were asking for at trial. (Per zdnet.com article, December 7, 2021.)
The COPA v. Wright trial in London continues next week.
Critics of Wright say that he could easily prove that he is Satoshi by performing a simple transaction involving the Satoshi Bitcoin wallet, but Wright says he has misplaced his private keys to the wallet.
Wright has been widely criticized and ridiculed on social media. He has not proven, so far, to be Bitcoin’s creator. But the saga continues. Stay tuned.
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Issue No. 130, February 9, 2024
Rick Mulvey is a CPA, crypto consultant, and frequent contributor to Bitcoin Magazine. He writes about all things Bitcoin, and yells at the Yankees and Giants. He also runs marathons and makes wine, neither professionally.