LONDON (AP) – An Australian computer scientist who falsely claimed to be the founder of the Bitcoin cryptocurrency was sentenced Thursday to 12 months in prison, suspended for two years, for contempt of a London High Court order. Ta.
In Thursday's ruling, Judge James Mellor found Craig Wright in “clear violation” of a March order barring him from initiating or threatening further legal action related to Bitcoin. said. During the 2008 global financial crisis.
Lawyers for the Crypto Open Patent Alliance (COPA), a group of technology and cryptocurrency companies, told the court on Wednesday that Mr Wright had claimed in October that he had received £900bn from companies and individuals related to intellectual property rights. He said he had made claims worth more than $1.1 trillion. Connected to Bitcoin.
The group argued that Wright's actions were in contempt of court because he was ordered in March to refrain from making any claims about Bitcoin, but at the time, Mellor ruled that Bitcoin is not the creator or creator of the mysterious digital currency. Initial version of Bitcoin software.
Mellor said there was “beyond a reasonable doubt” that Wright had in fact flouted the court order.
Wright, who is in either Indonesia or Singapore, attended Thursday's hearing via video link, according to court documents. He did not attend the meeting the day before when COPA made its allegations.
He said he plans to appeal the contempt charges.
For eight years, Wright claimed he was behind the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto, which hid the identity of Bitcoin's founder.
Bitcoin's murky origins date back to the height of the 2008 financial crisis. The paper, written by an individual or group using the pseudonym Nakamoto, describes how digital currencies can be sent anonymously around the world without using banks or national currencies. Nakamoto appears to have disappeared three years later, and their identities were never established.
Basically, a cryptocurrency is digital money designed to function through an online network without a central authority, meaning it is usually not backed by any government or banking institution, and transactions are made using a technology called blockchain. will be recorded.
Bitcoin is the largest and oldest cryptocurrency, but other assets such as Ethereum, XRP, Tether, and Dogecoin have also grown in popularity over the years. Although some investors consider cryptocurrencies to be a “digital alternative” to traditional money, most day-to-day financial transactions are still done using currencies such as the dollar.
Wright, who first claimed to be Nakamoto in 2016, has been accused of trying to profit from Bitcoin's massive jump in value. For example, when the COVID-19 pandemic began in early 2020, the price of Bitcoin was just over $5,000. Earlier this month, it breached the $100,000 level for the first time following the victory of Donald Trump, a big supporter of cryptocurrencies, in the US presidential election.
The currency remains highly volatile. It was trading at about $80,000 on Thursday, down nearly a fifth in just a few weeks.
