Craig Wright, the computer scientist who decided to lie “over and over again” about being the founder of Bitcoin, has been given a one-year sentence by a UK judge after being found in contempt of court. The sentence was suspended for two years, meaning Wright will only face prison if he reoffends within that time.
At a hearing on Thursday at the UK Supreme Court, Justice James Edward Mellor ruled that Wright—in bringing a $1.15 trillion lawsuit in October against Bitcoin developers and payment company Square—had violated a previous court order. The order required Wright to stop publicly claiming to be Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of Bitcoin, and to take legal action on that basis, among other things.
Representatives for Craig Wright did not immediately respond to a request for comment. At the hearing of this case, it is reported that he said he will appeal the case he was found guilty of.
The contempt of court case was raised by the Crypto Open Patent Alliance (COPA), a non-profit organization of crypto companies, which in February took Wright to court in hopes of getting an official declaration that he is not Satoshi. The goal was to prevent Wright from pursuing multiple separate lawsuits against Bitcoin’s developers and other organizations, with which he was trying to assert intellectual property rights over Bitcoin—and to quash any future regulations.
On March 14, the last day of the six-week trial, Mellor issued a rare ruling: “The evidence is overwhelming,” he told the court. “Dr. Wright is not a person who accepted or worked under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto.”
“It is clear that Dr. Wright engaged in the deliberate production of false documents to support false claims and use the courts as a vehicle for fraud,” Mellor wrote in his judgment. “I am fully satisfied that Dr Wright lied to the Court many times and repeatedly. All his lies and forged documents supported his biggest lie: his claim to be Satoshi Nakamoto.”
At the hearing in July, in addition to imposing various rules on Wright, Mellor ordered the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), the body responsible for prosecuting criminal cases in the UK, to consider criminal charges against Wright for “all of his lies.” ” (CPS has not charged Wright with perjury.)
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