[NEWS] Early Bitcoin collaborator refutes self-proclaimed "Satoshi Nakamoto" by releasing email exchange evidence

In a trial over the authenticity of computer scientist Craig Wright, who has long called himself "Satoshi Nakamoto," the creator of the cryptocurrency Bitcoin (BTC), an early collaborator appeared as a witness, raised objections, and released emails exchanged with Satoshi Nakamoto as evidence.

Satoshi Nakamoto, who is said to have developed Bitcoin, is a mysterious figure whose true identity is unknown.

With the help of a small number of collaborators, he developed Bitcoin, a concept for an electronic money system. Those early collaborators took the witness stand in court in London. The collaborators testified that Wright was a "fraudster."

Craig Wright, an Australian computer scientist, has been claiming since 2016 that he is "Satoshi Nakamoto." Wright has repeatedly filed lawsuits against the developers in an attempt to obtain intellectual property rights to Bitcoin, and has made his case.

The trial began in early February at the UK High Court. The purpose is to challenge Wright's claim that he is the creator of Bitcoin.

The lawsuit was filed by the Cryptocurrency Open Patent Alliance (COPA), a non-profit consortium of cryptocurrency technology companies, and is asking the court to rule that Wright is not Satoshi. If COPA's request is granted, Wright's ability to bring new lawsuits against this claim will be limited.

COPA states that Wright has fabricated evidence and repeatedly changed his story whenever inconsistencies are found. In order to prove this, they have asked his early co-developers to help them.

Multiple inconsistencies pointed out

The witnesses in this case were Adam Back, Mike Hahn, Marti Malmi, and Zuko Wilcox-O'Hearn, who challenged Wright's claims. All of them were involved in the early development of Bitcoin.

Malmi released emails exchanged with Satoshi as evidence in court. In court, he claimed he had been in contact with Satoshi, a person believed to be a different person from Wright. Malmi also challenged Wright's timeline of when the Finnish programmer first approached Satoshi, arguing that it contradicted Wright's knowledge of the co-founder of the dark web marketplace Silk Road.

In his admission, Back also presented evidence from 2009 that he described "B-Money" to Nakamoto, contradicting Wright's claim that he was inspired by the concept. B-Money is a decentralized token proposal proposed by computer scientist Wei Dai in 1998.

COPA said in a statement: "Wright is involved in several legal actions in the UK, which are based on the veracity of claims made by Wright, alleging that multiple organisations and individuals in the cryptocurrency community have infringed the Bitcoin whitepaper, the Bitcoin database and other intellectual property related copyrights. These claims have halted Bitcoin development, intimidated and silenced developers with threats of litigation, and harmed the entire ethos of the open source community."

Reference:Email documents
Image: Shutterstock

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