London:

A court case starting in London on Monday will seek to determine whether Australian computer scientist Craig Wright invented Bitcoin, the world’s first and largest cryptocurrency.

Wright said he is Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonym for the creator of Bitcoin and the author of the 2008 white paper that introduced the cryptocurrency to the world.

The Cryptocurrency Open Patent Alliance (COPA), a non-profit group formed to make cryptocurrency technology immune to patents, is prosecuting claims first made by Wright in 2016, resulting in a London High Court trial that is set to last six months. week.

The mysterious programmer describes himself on X as the “creator of Bitcoin.”

“I conceived Bitcoin and showed it to the world,” he wrote in a post on the platform, formerly known as Twitter, last month.

Wright, who describes himself on his website as a businessman, has been involved in several lawsuits he has filed but this time was asked to defend himself.

“The concept of Bitcoin has been open source from the beginning,” a COPA spokesperson told AFP.

It “raises a legitimate question: Is Satoshi Nakamoto the kind of person who would sue people for (re)releasing a white paper? We think clearly not”.

– ‘Faketoshi’ –

COPA brings together industry heavyweights including cryptocurrency platform Coinbase and Block, which specializes in digital payments.

It accuses Wright, nicknamed “Faketoshi” by his critics, of lying about his identity and of forging and manipulating documents submitted in an attempt to prove his claims.

“Craig Wright claims to be Satoshi Nakamoto, the mysterious creator of Bitcoin. But he is not,” Coinbase Chief Legal Officer Paul Grewal insisted before the London hearing began.

“However, Wright ignored this basic fact and used its substantial financial backing to file endless baseless lawsuits based on this lie against cryptocurrency developers, many of whom were unable to even provide the most basic defense. .”

The outcome of the upcoming case could determine a separate lawsuit between Wright and 26 developers, including Coinbase, over alleged infringement of its intellectual property.

– Other Bitcoin “inventors”? –

If it is determined that Wright is not the inventor of Bitcoin, then determining who is the inventor of Bitcoin will be another major challenge.

Newsweek magazine reports that Dorian Nakamoto, the mastermind behind the digital token, was one of the first people suspected of shaking up the currency world.

The Japanese-American engineer denies being Satoshi Nakamoto.

Others believe that a job of this magnitude is more likely to be completed by a collective rather than a single developer.

The case comes as Bitcoin becomes more popular.

U.S. regulators last month gave the green light to a group of Bitcoin exchange-traded funds that allow investors to gain exposure to asset price movements without directly owning the underlying asset.

Bitcoin was trading around $42,500 on Friday, well below its 2021 all-time high of nearly $69,000.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)