LONDON \u2014 Craig Wright, the Australian man who claimed to be the inventor of bitcoin, has been referred to British prosecutors for alleged perjury. British High Court Judge James Mellor made the decision on Tuesday, referring Wright\u2019s case to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), which handles criminal prosecutions in England and Wales.<\/p>\n
The CPS will determine whether Wright should face prosecution for \u201cwholescale perjury and forgery of documents.\u201d They will also decide if a warrant for his arrest and potential extradition is necessary.<\/p>\n
This development follows a High Court ruling that Wright had lied \u201cextensively and repeatedly\u201d in his attempts to prove he was Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous creator of bitcoin. Judge Mellor ruled that Wright had forged documents \u201con a grand scale\u201d to support his claims.<\/p>\n
Wright\u2019s attempts to establish himself as the inventor of bitcoin included asserting intellectual property rights over the bitcoin white paper and initial versions of the bitcoin software. However, Mellor noted that the bitcoin protocol is a decentralized, open-source network, and no single entity can control it.<\/p>\n
The judge condemned Wright\u2019s legal actions in the UK, as well as in Norway and the US, as \u201ca most serious abuse\u201d of the judicial process.<\/p>\n
Following the ruling, Wright\u2019s official website was wiped of content. A legal notice posted on the site on Tuesday stated: \u201cDR CRAIG STEVEN WRIGHT IS NOT SATOSHI NAKAMOTO.\u201d The notice confirmed that Wright has been ordered not to initiate any legal proceedings based on his false claims and must not threaten such proceedings.<\/p>\n
This case marks a significant moment in the ongoing saga of bitcoin\u2019s mysterious origins and the identity of its creator. The outcome of the CPS\u2019s decision will be closely watched by the cryptocurrency community and legal experts alike.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Craig Wright Faces Possible Prosecution Over False Claims<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":331,"featured_media":48165,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[3925,15008],"class_list":["post-48164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tech","tag-bitcoin","tag-craig-wright"],"reading_time":"2 min read","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/331"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48164"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48164\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}