Craig Wright, the Australian computer scientist who has long claimed to be the creator of bitcoin, faced fresh legal challenges on Friday after filing a £911 million ($1.18 billion) lawsuit against Block, a payments firm founded by Twitter’s Jack Dorsey.
Wright has previously asserted that he authored the 2008 white paper foundational to bitcoin under the pseudonym “Satoshi Nakamoto.”
However, the courts have cast significant doubt on this claim. A High Court ruling in May found “overwhelming evidence” that Wright did not write the document.
The Crypto Open Patent Alliance (COPA) initiated legal action to prevent Wright from suing bitcoin developers based on these claims. The court concluded Wright had lied “extensively and repeatedly” and forged documents “on a grand scale.”
In July, the High Court referred Wright to the Crown Prosecution Service to consider perjury charges and issued an injunction prohibiting him from pursuing litigation tied to his alleged identity as Satoshi Nakamoto.
Wright has denied falsifying documents and is currently appealing the court’s ruling. Permission to proceed with the appeal has yet to be determined.
On Friday, COPA’s lawyer Jonathan Hough argued that Wright violated the court’s injunction by filing a lawsuit against Square Up Europe Limited, owned by Block, earlier this month.
Wright, who attended the hearing via videolink from Singapore without legal representation, defended his actions, stating, “I do not believe I am in contempt.”
He added that he would be willing to modify his lawsuit to emphasise it was unrelated to the ownership or creation of bitcoin.
The court will hold a hearing in December to decide if Wright is indeed in contempt. Until then, his legal action against Block has been paused.
