Following Craig Wright’s failed attempt to prove his identity as Satoshi Nakamoto, the anonymous creator of the Bitcoin protocol, the Bitcoin white paper has been reuploaded to the Bitcoin.org website. Hennadii Stepanov, the maintainer of the website, announced this by sharing a link to the white paper PDF on platform X.
Due to legal restrictions, Bitcoin.org had previously limited access to the white paper for users in the UK. Instead, a quote from Satoshi Nakamoto emphasizing the difficulty of stifling information was displayed.
In 2021, Wright successfully sued Cobra, the anonymous group behind the website, for copyright infringement, resulting in the removal of the white paper PDF. Cobra, the website’s pseudonymous owner, chose not to defend the case, leading to a default win for Wright. As a result, Cobra had to pay £35,000 ($40,100) towards Wright’s legal fees. In 2019, Wright had filed for United States copyright registration of the Bitcoin white paper.
In 2023, Wright filed copyright violation lawsuits against 13 Bitcoin Core developers and several companies, including Blockstream, Coinbase, and Block, regarding the white paper, its file format, and database rights to the Bitcoin blockchain. The Bitcoin Legal Defense Fund responded by highlighting the negative impact of such lawsuits on Bitcoin development, citing the associated time, stress, expenses, and legal risks.
However, Wright’s copyright victory no longer holds weight as his claims of being Satoshi Nakamoto and authoring the white paper have been thoroughly debunked, rendering his copyright claim invalid. This ruling came in response to a case brought against Wright by the Crypto Open Patent Alliance (COPA), a coalition of prominent companies aiming to prevent him from asserting ownership over Bitcoin’s core intellectual property. COPA accused Wright of engaging in an elaborate scheme of forgery and deceit to support his claim.
As a result of a UK court’s approval, Craig Wright’s assets worth £6.7 million ($8.4 million) have been frozen to prevent him from evading court expenses.
The Bitcoin white paper is now subject to an MIT open-source license, allowing anyone to reuse and modify the code for any purpose.