1 week Ago By Anthony Garreffa
Australian computer scientist Craig Wright falsely claimed he invented bitcoin and has been sentenced for contempt of court on Thursday for his 911 billion-pound ($1.2 trillion USD) lawsuit against Twitter founder Jack Dorsey's payments company, Block, in Britain. Reuters reports that Wright has long claimed to be the author of a 2008 white paper which was the foundational text for Bitcoin, published under the pseudonym "Satoshi Nakamoto".
A judge at London's High Court found that back in May 2024, Wright had repeatedly lied and forged documents to support his claim, after the trial of a case brought by the Crypto Open Patent Alliance (COPA) to stop Wright suing bitcoin developers. COPA said that Wright's recent lawsuit against Block and others breached an injunction preventing Wright from bringing litigation on the basis of his claim to be the creator of bitcoin, or that he owned intellectual property (IP) rights over bitcoin. The group's lawyer Jonathan Hough told the court that Wright's latest lawsuit was "a desperate publicity stunt to keep his cultish supports engaged".
Judge James Mellor ruled on Thursday that Wright was in contempt of court, after a hearing on Wednesday that the purported bitcoin inventor didn't attend. Wright attended his sentencing hearing remotely, with Reuters reporting that he refused to say which country he was currently residing in when asked by Judge Mellor. The judge imposed a sentence of one year in prison for Wright, suspended for two years, for what Judge Mellor said was a "fragrant breach" of the court's order.
Mellor also chucked out Wright's lawsuit against Block and others. Wright said he would appeal against the findings that he was in contempt of court, and refused permission last month to appeal against Judge Mellor's ruling that he did not in fact invent bitcoin..
