A court in the United Kingdom has approved the freezing of £6 million ($7.6 million) worth of assets belonging to Craig Wright, in order to prevent him from evading court expenses related to his claim of being Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of the Bitcoin network.
This decision came after Wright moved some of his assets out of the UK following a court ruling that disproved his assertion of being Nakamoto. According to a court document, he transferred shares of his London firm, RCJBR Holding, to a Singaporean entity on March 18. Judge James Mellor, in the document, supported the “worldwide freezing order” requested by the Crypto Open Patent Alliance (COPA) to cover COPA’s total court expenses of $8,471,225 (£6,703,747.91).
COPA, founded in 2020, aims to promote the adoption and advancement of cryptocurrency technologies and remove patents as a barrier to growth and innovation. Its 33 members include Coinbase, Block, Meta, MicroStrategy, Kraken, Paradigm, Uniswap, and Worldcoin.
Wright, an Australian computer scientist, used his claims of being Satoshi Nakamoto to file copyright claims related to the Bitcoin network. For example, in January 2021, he demanded that two websites remove the Bitcoin white paper.
In April 2021, COPA filed a lawsuit against Wright, challenging his claims of being Nakamoto and having copyright over Bitcoin. After hearing testimonies from early Bitcoin developers such as Martti Malmi, the judge concluded on March 14 of this year that the evidence overwhelmingly suggests that Wright is not Nakamoto.
In 2023, Wright sued 13 Bitcoin Core developers and a group of companies, including Blockstream, Coinbase, and Block, for copyright violations related to the Bitcoin white paper, its file format, and the database rights to the Bitcoin blockchain.
The Bitcoin Legal Defense Fund responded to the lawsuit, highlighting the trend of abusive lawsuits against prominent Bitcoin contributors, which hinders development due to the associated time, stress, expenses, and legal risks. In 2019, Wright filed for United States copyright registration for the Bitcoin white paper and the code within it.
The Bitcoin white paper is now subject to an MIT open-source license, allowing anyone to reuse and modify the code for any purpose. A court injunction would prevent Wright from making further copyright claims on it.