Imagine for a moment I told you I was Banksy. I would hire PR agents to persuade gullible reporters that, despite any firm evidence, it was me who created those famous artworks in cities around the world. Not stopping there, I would file bogus copyright and defamation lawsuits against other artists who pointed out this was not true, and use the publicity from those lawsuits to further hype my claim. Would that make me Banksy?
Obviously, not. Yet, a scoundrel named Craig Wright pursued a version of this con for years, claiming he was Bitcoin’s pseudonymous founder, Satoshi Nakamoto. This nonsense started in late 2015 when he approached Wired and a few other publications with emails and other documents purporting to show he was Satoshi. The publications reported on Wright’s remarkable claim, which was reasonable enough since a few things in his biography lined up with what we knew about the Bitcoin creator—in the same way that I could point to my dabbling in the art world to say I am Banksy.
Wright’s story fell apart quickly enough, not least because he couldn’t back up his initial claim that he had the private key to Satoshi’s Bitcoin wallets. That should have been the end of the matter but Wright kept coming up with new angles, including with lawsuits he filed in Australia and England. None of the cases panned out but, as the judges didn’t come out and say the obvious (that Wright was not Satoshi), he was able to keep pushing the lie—helped along by numerous headlines, including in respected publications, that read something like “This man says he invented Bitcoin and is going to court to prove it.” It was a good story and all.
The reality, as is almost always the case in these situations, is that the whole thing was a grift. Wright, along with a shady billionaire named Calvin Ayres, pushed the claim to try and claim IP royalties off Bitcoin and then to claim a knockoff version of the currency—known as Bitcoin Satoshi’s Vision (BSV)—reflected the Bitcoin creator’s true hopes for the coin. The scoundrels owned a big supply of BSV, which they sought to pump through Wright’s fabrications.
This would all be funny but for the fact Wright used the U.K.’s dreadful libel laws (a disgrace in their own right) to sue people like the Bitcoin podcaster Peter McCormack who dared to point out the obvious fact—that he was not Satoshi. These lawsuits are expensive and terrifying for those who are sued and are the reason the U.S. passed the SPEECH Act, which blocks people like Wright from enforcing U.K. libel judgments over here.
Fortunately, this all came to an end on Thursday when a judge in another lawsuit—this one brought by Bitcoin developers who had been threatened with patent lawsuits by Wright—issued a ruling. The decision came after a weeks-long trial that turned on whether Wright was Satoshi. Many expected the decision to take months, as is usually the case, but Wright’s evidence was so flimsy that Justice James Mellor ruled from the bench.
While a full written decision is coming, the judge made his conclusions crystal clear, writing: “First, that Dr Wright is not the author of the Bitcoin White Paper. Second, Dr Wright is not the person who adopted or operated under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto in the period 2008 to 2011. Third, Dr Wright is not the person who created the Bitcoin System. And, fourth, he is not the author of the initial versions of the Bitcoin software.”
And that is that. The only thing left to resolve is whether Wright gets rung up on criminal charges of perjury, which is likely, and would be a well-deserved punishment in light of the people he has harmed. There is also the role of the media in this whole sorry affair. While Wright’s initial claim was indeed newsworthy, the fact so many journalists kept reporting on it after it was being debunked—often giving Wright the benefit of the doubt—reflects poorly on my industry. Let’s just hope news outlets can show a little more skepticism the next time a Bitcoin pretender comes around.
Jeff John Roberts
jeff.roberts@fortune.com
@jeffjohnroberts
DECENTRALIZED NEWS
Crypto watchers are divided over whether the SEC will approve an Ethereum ETF this year with some saying that political pressure and the issue of staking make it unlikely. (Fortune)
A new DeFi-focused blockchain called Berachain raised $69 million from Brevan Howard Digital and Framework Ventures, becoming the first new $1 billion crypto unicorn this cycle. (Bloomberg)
New Binance CEO Richard Teng quietly spun out Binance Labs, its $10 billion venture arm that also acts as an incubator. (Bloomberg)
Jack Dorsey's Block released its hardware wallet, which operates with a mobile app and finger sensor, and sells for $150. (Blockworks)
Bitcoin dropped to $68,000 as the recent rally cooled off, and an analytics firm predicted it will soon fall to $58,000. (Quartz)
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