Last week, London's High Court gave an Australian computer scientist named Dr. Craig Wright the green light to move forward with a copyright infringement lawsuit. The target of the lawsuit is the operator of a website called bitcoin.org.
The website operator – who may reside abroad and does not presently have a known address or full name – goes by the web handle "Cobra".
Why should you care about a random copyright lawsuit, which is officially known as Wright v Person(s) unknown? Because the heart of this lawsuit is Craig Wright's claim that he is the true original creator of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto.
If he's telling the truth, Craig Wright might have just outed himself as one of the 25 richest people on the planet.
Quick Satoshi Background
The domain name Bitcoin.org was registered in August of 2008.
Two months later, someone going by the name of Satoshi Nakamoto published a paper titled "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System" and submitted it to a cryptography mailing list. This paper is the first time Satoshi Nakamoto's name appeared on the internet related to cryptocurrency.
Nakamoto implemented the bitcoin software on January 3, 2009. On that date, he mined what is now called the "genesis block of bitcoin".
His reward? 50 bitcoins.
Only 21 million bitcoins will ever exist and only 20 million will ever available to mine by the general public.
Why?
Because Satoshi set aside 1 million coins for himself at inception.
In 2011 he stopped working on Bitcoin and hasn't been heard from since.
The Lawsuit
Craig Wright's lawsuit is actually quite simple. Craig claims to be the author of the Satoshi white paper and therefore he owns the paper's copyright and therefore can demand the website bitcoin.org remove said white paper from its website.
In other words he is claiming to actually be the real Satoshi Nakamoto.
Cobra has refused to remove the white paper from bitcoin.org for months, calling Wright's claims and lawsuit "without merit."
Wright's lawyer released the following statement last week after the London High Court paved the way for the lawsuit to proceed:
"In bringing this copyright claim our client, Dr. Wright, will be serving evidence in support of his assertion that he authored the bitcoin white paper, that he released in 2008. The case will turn on whether the court is satisfied that Dr. Wright did indeed author — and owns the copyright in — the white paper and, therefore, that he is Satoshi Nakamoto."
Show Us The Money!
Craig reportedly has evidence to support his various claims. Namely that he is Satoshi Nakamoto and is the author/copyright holder of the white paper.
He hasn't yet indicated how he intends to prove the claims, but there is one simple method that would silence all doubters…
ACCESS SATOSHI'S BITCOIN WALLET!
As we mentioned earlier, Satoshi Nakamoto set aside 1 million BTC for himself back in 2008. Those 1 million BTC have been sitting untouched in a digital wallet for 10 years!
At today's BTC price of $57,000, Satoshi is sitting on an untouched personal fortune worth…
$57 BILLION
According to our real time tracking of the 100 richest people in the world, whoever controls that $57 billion digital wallet is 24th richest person in the world. This person is $2 billion richer than Nike founder Phil Knight. They are $3 billion shy of the $60 billion fortunes controlled by the Walmart heirs and Michael Bloomberg.
We will be paying very close attention to this lawsuit and will update you whenever there are new developments.
How amazing would it be if finally… after 10 years… we finally learned the true identity of Satoshi Nakamoto?!
This article originally appeared on Celebrity Net Worth.
