An Australian computer scientist who falsely claimed he invented bitcoin was on
Thursday found in contempt of court for bringing a 911 billion-pound ($1.2 trillion) lawsuit against Twitter founder Jack Dorsey’s payments company Block in Britain.
The Australian Craig Wright had long claimed to have been the author of a 2008 white paper, the foundational text of bitcoin, published under the pseudonym “Satoshi Nakamoto”.
But a judge at London’s High Court found in May that Wright had lied “extensively and repeatedly” and forged documents to support his false claim, after a trial in a case brought by the Crypto Open Patent Alliance (COPA) to stop Wright suing bitcoin
developers.
COPA argued 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 Satoshi or that he owned intellectual property rights over bitcoin.
Judge James Mellor ruled on Thursday that the Australian Wright was in contempt of court, following a hearing on Wednesday which Wright did not attend. He was last month refused permission to appeal against Mellor’s ruling that he did not invent bitcoin.
The legal issues apart, bitcoin has been in the news for a number of reasons. El Salvador, which made bitcoin legal tender three years ago, is scaling back its bitcoin policies after sealing a deal worth more than $1 billion with the International Monetary Fund.
The cryptocurrency has rallied every since Donald Trump’s victory in the U.S. elections last month. He is seen as more friendly to bitcoin than the incumbent government of President Joe Biden.
Bitcoin is currently trading at $100,000. Blackrock, the world’s largest asset manager, has also warned that there’s no guarantee bitcoin’s 21 million supply cap won’t be changed in the future. In a video, Blackrock said this hard coded rule controls supply, purchasing power and helps avoid the potential misuse of printing more and more currency.”
With Reuters inputs
