An Australian man is alleging that he is the inventor of Bitcoin and has now launched a very real $7.2 billion lawsuit in London over it.
Craig Wright, an Australian computer scientist living in London, is trying to retrieve 111,000 Bitcoins that he believes are rightfully his as the “creator” of Bitcoin.
Basically, Wright is demanding that developers allow him to retrieve 111,000 Bitcoins (worth over $7 billion) that are allegedly being held at two different digital addresses. Interestingly, he doesn’t have the private encrypted keys for either of them.
Wright claims that the keys were lost when his computer network was hacked in February 2020, an attack that is now being investigated by police. He alleges that the attack was a result of him being a controversial figure in the crypto industry.
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According to Wright, he’s been viewed as controversial ever since he alleged in 2016 that he wrote the original Bitcoin white paper under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto way back in 2008.
We already know that Satoshi Nakamoto is a pseudonym, with the anonymous Bitcoin creator not speaking under the alias since 2011. However, many people are skeptical of Wright’s claim that he is Satoshi, including Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, who publicly called Wright a fraud.
According to a court filing seen by Reuters, Wright’s case is against the developers behind four cryptocurrency networks — Bitcoin Satoshi Vision (BSV), Bitcoin Core (BTC), Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and Bitcoin Cash ABC (ABC).
“Our client has always maintained that he created bitcoin to operate within existing laws and that in the event of loss or theft, where legitimate ownership can be proven, the developers have a duty to ensure recovery,” said Paul Ferguson, a partner at law firm Ontier, which is representing Wright.
Wright isn’t the only person to claim he’s the real Satoshi Nakamoto, but he has been the most vocal and most persistent.
Is he the real Satoshi Nakamoto? That’s a secret we’ll probably never find out.