He claims to be the inventor of bitcoin: an Australian on trial in London
Starting this Monday, February 5 and lasting nearly a month and a half, a London court will try to determine whether or not Australian Craig Steven Wright is the enigmatic programmer behind bitcoin, as he has claimed since then. 2016.
The total value of the bitcoin market is around 768 billion euros. A success that attracts desire. REUTERS - DADO RUVIC
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His detractors nickname him “Faketoshi”, named after
Satoshi Nakamoto
– a pseudonym – who published the text on the origin of bitcoin in October 2008. Claiming to be the legendary inventor of the famous cryptocurrency and owning the rights to it, without ever being able to prove it, Craig Steven Wright has been increasing his legal actions for several years. Two years ago, in a Norwegian court, he claimed to have destroyed the computer's hard drive which would have allowed him to access the code.
This 53-year-old Australian, who until recently resided in England, will have to defend himself from this Monday against the Crypto Open Patent Alliance (Copa), an association which aims to eliminate patents on technologies linked to cryptocurrencies, and which brings together heavyweights in the sector, such as the Coinbase exchange platform and the company Block, specializing in digital payments. Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, also joined the alliance at the beginning of 2022, but on Thursday, its name no longer appeared on the Copa website on the members' page.
The organization accuses Craig Wright of lying about his identity, and of having forged and manipulated documents that he presented to prove his claims. The outcome of this case will determine that of another pitting the serial entrepreneur against 26 developers, individuals as well as companies like the Coinbase platform, which he accuses of having “
infringed his intellectual property rights
”.
Craig Wright is not the first to claim the authorship of bitcoin or to be suspected of it. One of the first suspects, Dorian Nakamoto, a Japanese-American engineer identified as Satoshi by a journalist from Newsweek magazine in 2014, currently denies any involvement in the creation of the legendary cryptocurrency. Others have theorized that a work of this magnitude would more likely be the work of a collective rather than a single developer.
The total market value of this cryptocurrency today amounts to around 768 billion euros.
Also listen to Media Workshop - “The Satoshi Mystery” sheds light on the origins of bitcoin
(
With
AFP)
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