Bitcoin Inventor Impostor Faces Legal Scrutiny for Perjury

LONDON — Craig Wright, an Australian who claimed to be the inventor of bitcoin, has been referred to British prosecutors for alleged perjury.

On Tuesday, British High Court Judge James Mellor referred Wright’s case to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) — the organization responsible for prosecuting criminal cases in England and Wales. The CPS will now consider whether Wright should be prosecuted for what Mellor described as “wholesale perjury and forgery of documents,” and will decide if a warrant for arrest and possible extradition is necessary.

Wright has remained mostly silent since a High Court ruling asserted that he had lied “extensively and repeatedly” in his evidence attempting to prove that he was bitcoin’s inventor, Satoshi Nakamoto. Wright’s efforts in the London court to establish himself as the original inventor of bitcoin, and thus the holder of intellectual property rights, were scrutinized. This included claims of ownership of the bitcoin white paper and early versions of the bitcoin software. The bitcoin protocol is a decentralized, open-source network that no single entity can control.

Judge Mellor concluded that Wright attempted to fabricate a false narrative by forging documents “on a grand scale” and presenting them as evidence in court. He added that by pursuing his claim to be Satoshi Nakamoto through legal action in the U.K., Norway, and the U.S., Wright committed “a most serious abuse” of the court process.