With an alleged IQ of 183, 14 master’s degrees and at least two PhDs, Craig Wright certainly seemed to have enough intelligence to be the mythical founder of Bitcoin.
The computer scientist had readily admitted that he was the real Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous creator of the trillion-dollar cryptocurrency, after he was discovered by reporters nearly a decade ago.
And over the years he had produced a wealth of evidence seemingly supporting his claim, from notes from his time demonstrating his intentions to set up the digital currency, to, crucially, the private key that unlocks it.
But now the 53-year-old’s claims have finally and conclusively proven what many in the crypto community had believed for years – nothing but complete nonsense.
After a five-week trial at the High Court, Judge James Mellor concluded that Wright had not only lied “extensively and repeatedly” but had also committed falsification “on a massive scale”.
“Dr. Wright presents himself as an extremely smart person,” the judge dryly noted in his scathing 231-page judgment. “In my opinion, though, he’s not nearly as smart as he thinks he is.”
The news was met with an overwhelming sense of relief within the crypto community, the majority of whom have been highly skeptical of Wright’s claims since they first emerged in 2015.
The aggressive Australian has for years targeted doubters with expensive legal action, threatening to hunt them down personally “until they are broke, bankrupt and alone”.
Mysterious identity
Ultimately, however, it was this “arrogance” that led to his downfall, according to the judge, who said the real Satoshi would never have resorted to lawsuits.
The mysterious identity of Bitcoin’s founder has puzzled journalists and crypto enthusiasts alike since the cryptocurrency’s “white paper” was first published in 2008. The article describes Bitcoin as “a peer-to-peer electronic cash system,” an ‘electronic currency’ that would replace the money transfers currently controlled by the financial system.
Under the name Satoshi Nakamoto, the white paper author had exchanged hundreds of messages with employees – before suddenly cutting off communications in 2011.
In the following years, several claims arose that he was the real Nakamoto, but these were quickly discredited. That was until the name Wright, a little-known IT security consultant, surfaced.
The twice-married father of three from Brisbane, Australia, operating on the fringes of the crypto industry, was ‘discovered’ by tech publications Wired And Gizmodo.
The evidence was based on leaked emails and transcripts, including one in which Wright said: “I have done my best to try to hide the fact that I have been managing Bitcoin since 2009.”
It could not have been a coincidence that Wright – who denies being behind the leak – orchestrated his own revelation as Nakamoto at the time.
Embroiled in financial troubles and embroiled in disputes with the Australian Taxation Office, he had agreed to transfer the “exclusive rights” to his life story as the creator of Bitcoin to a billionaire Canadian businessman, Calvin Ayre.
In return, he was loaned around £1.3 million to cover his tax problems – a lifeline at the time – and became chief scientist of a new crypto company that was about to cash in on his name.
To prove his claim was genuine, his sponsors devised a plan for Wright to make the cryptographic evidence public and end the mystery forever. But the big reveal never came.
Instead, he published a jargon-heavy blog post that fell far short of the required burden of proof. Some of Bitcoin’s most trusted figures, who had previously backed Wright, suggested they had been duped.
Legal battles
However, despite widespread rejection from members of the crypto community, the stubborn Wright simply doubled down – also aggressively.
On social media he said he would launch a ‘Jihad’ against doubters, boasting: ‘I am God’s punishment in cryptocurrency’, while expensive lawsuits backed by Ayre quickly became his weapon of choice.
In 2019, he further fueled tensions within the crypto community by registering US copyright on both the Bitcoin white paper and the code. His legal battle took him through multiple jurisdictions, from the US to Norway.
By 2021, an influential cabal of industry leaders decided enough was enough and formed the Crypto Open Patent Alliance (COPA). The company’s mission was to openly share technology and “stand up to bullies like Wright.”
They filed a case in the British Supreme Court to “debunk Wright’s delusions of grandeur” and ultimately prove once and for all that Wright was not Satoshi Nakamoto.
For five weeks this spring, Dr Wright was questioned in detail about the hundred or so documents he claimed were proof he had written the white paper.
A key piece of “evidence” was a page of notes scribbled on a Quill pad, dated August 2007. It was a summary of a meeting between Wright and a colleague where they discussed a new form of digital currency, that of person-to-person person would be transferred without an intermediary. , alongside a list of next steps that mentioned a ‘paper’ to be published in 2008.
Yet an affidavit from Hamelin Brands, Quill’s parent company, revealed that the trail had not come into circulation until 2012 – several years after Bitcoin was created.
In court, Wright insisted the company was mistaken. COPA’s attorney responded: “Dr. Wright, you are making this up as you go.”
‘Lies and evasions’
To many who have examined Wright over the years, his ability to exaggerate the truth comes as no surprise. Even his mother has admitted that Wright, who was raised Catholic, had “a long-standing habit of adding bits to the truth just to make it bigger.”
Scottish writer Andrew O’Hagan, who spent almost nine months with Dr. Wright in 2016, saw a similar trait. He wrote: ‘What his mother said was related to something I had noticed. In what he said he often went further than was necessary; further than he should have done. It seemed as if he started with the truth, and then, slowly, ramped up his role, until suddenly the whole story looked weak.”
Judge Mellor’s own judgment read: “As soon as one lie was exposed, Dr Wright resorted to further lies and evasions.” He concluded that as Wright faced greater and more significant challenges to his claim, he took his lies and falsifications to ever-higher levels.
Judge Mellor counted a total of 47 forgeries and suggested that any attempts by Wright to explain them quickly descended into ‘technobabble’.
But it was Wright’s character who received the most pointed criticism, which he said was completely at odds with Nakomoto, whose writing and correspondence represented “a calm, knowledgeable, collaborative, precise person with little or no arrogance.”
So where does that leave Wright – and will we ever find the real Satoshi Nakamoto?
Unsurprisingly, Wright has said he “fully intends” to appeal the ruling. But as for the identity of Bitcoin’s creator, this may close the chapter for now.
Fundamental to Bitcoin is the idea that it is not owned by anyone; it is a decentralized currency that cannot be corrupted by human influence. What right does Wright, or anyone else, have to claim it? And yet it is possible that the saga will do no harm.
As Gavin Andresen, an American software developer who played a key role in the formation of Bitcoin, put it: “Having a mysterious founder is a great creation myth. People love a creation myth. Knowing the real story could make Bitcoin less interesting to people.”