What Happened to Craig Steven Wright?

Craig Steven Wright, an Australian computer scientist, first rose to prominence in the cryptocurrency world in late 2015 when reports by Wired and Gizmodo identified him as potentially being Satoshi Nakamoto, the anonymous creator of Bitcoin. In May 2016, Wright publicly claimed to be Satoshi but then controversially retracted his promise to provide 'extraordinary proof,' citing an inability to handle public scrutiny.

Over the years, Wright has been embroiled in numerous legal disputes stemming from his Satoshi claim. A significant case was the Kleiman v. Wright lawsuit, initiated by the estate of his deceased business partner, Dave Kleiman. The estate alleged that Wright misappropriated Bitcoin and intellectual property. In December 2021, a U.S. jury found Wright liable for conversion and awarded W&K Info Defense Research $100 million in intellectual property rights, though it did not rule on whether he was Satoshi. As of June 2025, reports indicated Wright still owed $143 million from this judgment.

Wright also pursued several defamation lawsuits against individuals who publicly called him a fraud, achieving mixed results. While he won a nominal £1 in damages against podcaster Peter McCormack in 2022, the judge notably stated that Wright was 'not a witness of truth' and had 'advanced a deliberately false case.' Conversely, he lost a defamation case against 'Hodlonaut' (Magnus Granath) in a Norwegian court in October 2022.

The most decisive legal challenge to his claim came from the Crypto Open Patent Alliance (COPA), which filed a lawsuit in the UK High Court in 2021 seeking a declaration that Wright is not Satoshi Nakamoto. After a five-week trial, in March 2024, Justice James Mellor delivered an oral verdict, unequivocally ruling that Wright is not the author of the Bitcoin whitepaper, did not operate under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto, and did not create the Bitcoin system or its initial software. The detailed written judgment, released in May 2024, further stated that Wright 'lied to the Court extensively and repeatedly' and that his attempts to prove his claim constituted 'a most serious abuse of the court's process' and 'an attempt to use the courts as a vehicle for fraud.'

Following this landmark ruling, the UK High Court took further action. In July 2024, Justice Mellor referred Wright's case to the Crown Prosecution Service for potential prosecution for perjury and forgery. In October 2024, despite the COPA ruling, Wright filed a new lawsuit against Bitcoin Core developers, claiming intellectual property rights and seeking over £911 billion in damages, alleging that modifications like SegWit and Taproot deviated from Satoshi's original vision. However, in December 2024, he was sentenced to a 12-month suspended prison sentence for contempt of court due to breaching anti-suit injunctions by filing new claims. In May 2025, a UK court issued a three-year General Civil Restraint Order against Wright, preventing him from initiating any new claims or applications without prior court permission, citing his 'continuing and brazen abuse of the court's process' and use of 'litigation as a means to terrorise perceived opponents.'

As of August 2026, Wright continues to be a vocal figure in the crypto space, particularly as a proponent of Bitcoin SV (BSV), a cryptocurrency he championed as the 'true Bitcoin' adhering to Satoshi's original vision of large blocks and on-chain scaling. He has renewed his criticism of Bitcoin's governance model, advocating for a permanently fixed protocol. In August 2026, a UK court also ruled against his claim to halt the Bitcoin blockchain via copyright in a lawsuit where he sought to compel developers to grant him access to 111,000 BTC, which he claimed were lost due to a hack.