The cryptocurrency entrepreneur whose false claim to be bitcoin inventor ‘Satoshi Nakamoto’ has filled more than 80 days of court hearings should be prosecuted for perjury, the High Court heard yesterday.
Dr Craig Wright had mounted a five-year campaign of ‘litigation terrorism’, Jonathan Hough KC told a one-day hearing following Mr Justice Mellor’s ruling last month that the Satoshi claim was fabricated. In defending his position Wright produced hundreds of forged documents and made ‘literally thousands of lies under oath’, Hough said. ‘If there were ever a case for a referral of the papers to the authorities with a view to prosecution, it is that of Dr Wright in this case.’
Court 15 in the Rolls Building was hearing an application for a court order by a US-based trade body whose action resolved the so-called ‘Satoshi identity’ issue, along with costs applications in four other cases which had hinged on Wright’s assertions about the intellectual property in bitcoin.
Hough, for the Crypto Open Patent Alliance (COPA), asked the judge for injunctive relief, including, as well as costs on the indemnity basis:
- an anti-suit injunction preventing Wright from attempting to re-litigate the case
- an order requiring Wright to disseminate the Mellor judgment
- the court’s permission to re-use disclosed documents in the case
- a refusal of permission to appeal
- referral of the case to the Crown Prosecution Service.
The draft application also included a request for permission to dispense with personal service as Wright is understood to be out of the country but in contact with his solicitors, City firm Shoosmiths.
For Wright, Craig Orr KC argued that many of the ‘unprecendented’ terms sought by COPA were unnecessary. Rather, they were ’motivated by a desire for revenge and a desire to punish and humiliate Dr Wright’, he said. Any order barring Wright from repeating his claim to be ‘Satoshi’ would infringe his article 10 right to free speech, Orr said. He told the judge that, even following a criminal conviction for a serious crime, it would ’be unheard of to injunct a defendant against asserting their innocence’.
Meanwhile Wright had no intention of threatening or pursuing future proceedings, ’and no wish to waste time and resources debating the point’.
However the court heard that on the very day of the hearing, Wright had posted a YouTube video in which he referred to authoring the seminal ‘Satosh’ white paper first describing bitcoin.
Scheduling a further hearing next Friday, Mellor said that he would deal with the costs applications before ruling on injunctive relief.
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