With an IQ of 183, 14 masters degrees, and at least two PhDs, Craig Wright would seem intelligent enough to be the legendary founder of Bitcoin.
The computer scientist candidly admitted that he was the real Satoshi Nakamoto, the anonymous creator of the trillion-dollar cryptocurrency, after being exposed by reporters about a decade ago.
And over the years, he has produced a trove of evidence that he believes supports his claims, from contemporary notes indicating his intention to create a digital currency to, most importantly, the private keys that would unlock it.
But now, the 53-year-old's claims have finally and conclusively been proven to be complete bullshit, as many in the cryptocurrency community have believed for years.
After a five-week trial in the High Court, Judge James Mellor concluded that Wright had not only lied “extensively and repeatedly” but also committed forgery “on a large scale”.
“Dr Wright portrays himself as a very intelligent man,” the judge wrote drily in a scathing 231-page decision, “but in my judgment he is not as intelligent as he thinks he is.”
The news was greeted with an overwhelming sense of relief among the cryptocurrency community, which had been highly skeptical of Wright's claims since they first emerged in 2015.
The bitter Australian has spent years targeting doubters with costly lawsuits and threatening to personally hound them “until they're bankrupt and alone”.
The Mysterious Identity
But ultimately, it was this “arrogance” that led to his downfall, the judge said, adding that the real Satoshi would never have pursued the lawsuit.
The mysterious identity of Bitcoin's creator has puzzled journalists and crypto enthusiasts since the cryptocurrency's “white paper” was first published in 2008. The white paper describes Bitcoin as a “peer-to-peer electronic cash system,” or “electronic coin” that is an alternative to remittances currently controlled by the monetary system.
The white paper's author exchanged hundreds of messages with collaborators under the name Satoshi Nakamoto, but suddenly stopped contact in 2011.
Several claims to be Nakamoto emerged over the next few years but were quickly discredited — until the name of a little-known IT security consultant, Wright, emerged.
The twice-married father-of-three from Brisbane, Australia, who operates on the fringes of the cryptocurrency industry, was “discovered” by the tech publication. Wired and Gizmodo.
The evidence comes from leaked emails and records, including one in which Wright says he “tried hard to hide the fact that he had been operating Bitcoin since 2009.”
Wright has denied being behind the leak, but it may not have been a coincidence that he was planning to reveal his identity as Nakamoto at the time.
Having fallen into financial difficulties and become embroiled in a dispute with the Australian tax office, he had agreed to transfer “exclusive rights” to his life story as the creator of Bitcoin to billionaire Canadian businessman Calvin Ayer.
In return, he received a loan of around £1.3 million – a lifeline at the time – to cover tax problems and was appointed chief scientist at a new cryptocurrency company that was looking to make money off of his name.
To prove his claims were genuine, the sponsors planned for Wright to release the proof of the code and end the mystery forever. But the big reveal never materialized.
Instead, Wright published a jargon-heavy blog post that fell far short of the required burden of proof. Some of the most trusted figures in the bitcoin industry, some of whom had previously supported Wright, suggested they had been duped.
Legal battle
But despite widespread rejection from members of the cryptocurrency community, the stubborn Wright simply doubled down – and aggressively.
On social media, he said he would launch a “jihad” against any doubters, boasting that “I am God's punishment in crypto,” while expensive lawsuits, backed by Ayre, quickly became his weapon of choice.
In 2019, he further raised tensions within the cryptocurrency community by registering U.S. copyrights on both the Bitcoin whitepaper and code, leading to his legal battle spanning multiple jurisdictions from the U.S. to Norway.
By 2021, a leading group of industry leaders decided they had enough and formed the Crypto Open Patent Alliance (COPA), whose mission statement was to openly share technology and “stand up to bullies like Wright.”
They filed suit in the UK High Court to “expose Mr Wright's delusions of grandeur” and ultimately prove once and for all that he is not Satoshi Nakamoto.
Dr Wright was questioned for five weeks this spring at length about 100 documents which he claimed were evidence he wrote the white paper.
One key piece of “evidence” was a one-page note scribbled on a quill pad, dated August 2007. It outlined a meeting where Wright and a colleague discussed a new form of digital currency that could be passed from person to person without an intermediary, and included a list of follow-up steps that referred to a “paper” to be published in 2008.
However, an affidavit from Quill's parent company, Hamelin Brands, revealed that the pads were not in circulation until 2012, several years after Bitcoin was created.
In court, Wright argued that the company was wrong, to which COPA's lawyer responded, “Dr. Wright, you're making this up on the spot.”
“Lies and excuses”
To many who have studied Wright over the years, his ability to exaggerate the truth is no surprise. Raised Catholic, Wright had what his mother acknowledged was “a long-standing habit of adding a little something to the truth to make it seem bigger.”
Scottish author Andrew O'Hagan, who spent nearly nine months with Dr Wright in 2016, also saw similar traits in Dr Wright. He wrote: “His mother's comments related to something I noticed: he went further in his statements than he needed or should have. It was as if he started with the truth and then slowly inflated his parts until the whole story suddenly seemed weak.”
In Judge Mellor's own assessment, he stated that “as soon as one lie was uncovered, Dr. Wright resorted to further lies and evasions,” and concluded that as the challenges to Dr. Wright's claims became greater and more serious, his lies and falsifications reached ever greater levels.
Judge Mellor counted 47 forgeries in total and suggested that Mr Wright's attempts to explain them quickly degenerated into “technical talk”.
But he said the most scathing criticism was directed at Wright's personality, which was completely at odds with Nakomoto's writings and letters, which portrayed him as “gentle, knowledgeable, supportive, and meticulous with very little arrogance.”
So what happens to Mr. Wright? And will we ever find the real Satoshi Nakamoto?
Unsurprisingly, Wright said he intends to “fully appeal” the ruling, but this may finally be closure on the identity of Bitcoin's creator.
At the heart of Bitcoin is the idea that it is a decentralized currency that is not owned by anyone and cannot be tampered with by human influence. Does Wright or anyone else have the right to claim Bitcoin? However, it is possible that this fuss will do no harm to Bitcoin.
Gavin Andresen, an American software developer who played a key role in the creation of Bitcoin, said: “It's a great creation myth to have a mysterious creator. People love creation myths. Knowing the truth might make Bitcoin less interesting to people.”
