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A man who has spent the last eight years claiming to be the inventor of bitcoin has finally admitted that he did not create the world’s first cryptocurrency.
Dr Craig Wright posted a legal notice to his website stating that he is not bitcoin’s pseudonymous creator Satoshi Nakamoto following a High Court ruling in March that dismissed his claims.
The case was brought against the Australian computer scientist by a coalition of crypto businesses, who accused him of “industrial scale” forgery in his previous efforts to sue bitcoin developers for using the technology.
The presiding judge, Justice Mellor, said at the time that Dr Wright lied “extensively and repeatedly” in his attempts to convince people he was Satoshi Nakamoto.
“The evidence is overwhelming that Dr Wright is not the author of the bitcoin white paper,” Justice Mellor said after the case concluded.
“Most of his lies related to the documents he had forged, which purported to support his claim… Dr Wright’s attempts to prove he was/is Satoshi Nakamoto represent a most serious abuse of this court’s process.”
Justice Mellor has now said he will refer the case to the Crown Prosecution Service “for consideration of whether a prosecution should be commenced against Dr Wright” for wholescale perjury and forgery of documents.
Dr Wright, who is currently based in the UK, also faces potential extradition proceedings.
The statement posted to his website on Tuesday acknowledged that he had been dishonest in his claims to be the creator of the world’s first cryptocurrency.
“The court found that Dr Wright ‘lied to the court extensively and repeatedly’ in his evidence and that he attempted to create a false narrative by forging documents ‘on a grand scale’ and presenting them as evidence… Dr Wright is not the author of the Bitcoin White Paper,” the legal notice states, referring to the 2008 document authored by the pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto, which first introduced the concept of bitcoin to the world.
“Dr Wright is not the person who adopted or operated under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto in the period between 2008 and 2011… Dr Wright is not the person who created the bitcoin system.”
