Self-proclaimed bitcoin inventor in contempt of court over $1.2 trillion UK lawsuit

LONDON (Reuters) – An Australian computer scientist who falsely claimed he invented bitcoin was on Thursday found in contempt of court for bringing a 911 billion-pound ($1.2 trillion) lawsuit against Twitter founder Jack Dorsey’s payments company Block in Britain.

Craig Wright had long claimed to have been the author of a 2008 white paper, the foundational text of bitcoin, published under the pseudonym “Satoshi Nakamoto”.

But a judge at London’s High Court found in May that Wright had lied “extensively and repeatedly” and forged documents to support his false claim, after a trial in a case brought by the Crypto Open Patent Alliance (COPA) to stop Wright suing bitcoin developers.

COPA argued that Wright’s recent lawsuit against Block and others breached an injunction preventing Wright from bringing litigation on the basis of his claim to be Satoshi or that he owned intellectual property rights over bitcoin.

Judge James Mellor ruled on Thursday that Wright was in contempt of court, following a hearing on Wednesday which Wright did not attend.

Wright was last month refused permission to appeal against Mellor’s ruling that he did not invent bitcoin.