A British court has approved the freezing of £6 million ($7.6 million) worth of assets belonging to Craig Wright in order to prevent him from evading court costs related to his claim of being Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of the Bitcoin network. This decision was made after Wright moved some of his assets out of the UK following a court ruling that rejected his claim. According to a court document, Wright transferred shares of his London company, RCJBR Holding, to a Singaporean entity on March 18. The judge, James Mellor, endorsed the “worldwide freezing order” requested by the Crypto Open Patent Alliance (COPA) to cover their total court costs of $8,471,225 (£6,703,747.91).
COPA, founded in 2020 to promote the adoption and advancement of cryptocurrency technologies and eliminate patents as a barrier to growth and innovation, includes members such as Coinbase, Block, Meta, MicroStrategy, Kraken, Paradigm, Uniswap, and Worldcoin.
Wright, an Australian computer scientist, used his claim of being Satoshi Nakamoto to file copyright claims related to the Bitcoin network. For example, he demanded that two websites remove the Bitcoin white paper in January 2021.
In April 2021, COPA filed a lawsuit against Wright challenging his claim of being Satoshi Nakamoto and therefore having copyright ownership of Bitcoin. After receiving testimonies from early Bitcoin developers like Martti Malmi, the judge concluded on March 14 of this year that the evidence overwhelmingly suggests Wright is not Nakamoto.
In 2023, Wright sued 13 Bitcoin Core developers and a group of companies, including Blockstream, Coinbase, and Block, for copyright violations related to the Bitcoin white paper, its file format, and database rights to the Bitcoin blockchain.
The Bitcoin Legal Defense Fund responded to the lawsuit, highlighting the trend of abusive lawsuits against prominent Bitcoin contributors that discourage development due to the associated time, stress, expenses, and legal risks. Wright registered the copyright for the Bitcoin white paper and its code in the United States in 2019.
The Bitcoin white paper is now subject to an MIT open-source license, allowing anyone to reuse and modify the code for any purpose. A court injunction would prevent Wright from making further copyright claims on it.