Mr Justice Mellor, the judge overseeing a five-week trial at the Intellectual Property Court (a division of London's High Court) about who invented Bitcoin, has ruled that it was not Australian computer scientist Craig Wright.
Bitcoin has recently captured the headlines after reaching a new record high. The identity of the person or people who invented it has always been unknown. Other than that, they go by the name of Satoshi Nakamoto.
Dr Wright, who is from Australia, has claimed to be Satoshi since 2016, but cryptocurrency experts have long questioned this. For many years, he has been subject to legal battles with individuals who have challenged his claim.
The Crypto Open Patent Alliance (COPA), whose members include the payments firm Block (co-founded by the ex-Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey)—accused Dr Wright of damaging the development of cryptocurrency because of his aggressive legal cases.
During the hearing, COPA's legal team said Dr Wright had carried out a "massive campaign of dishonesty and forgery". It accused him of forging fresh documents while the proceedings were ongoing.
COPA's lawyer, Jonathan Hough, said elements of Dr Wight's conduct "stray into farce." He told the court it also had "deadly serious" consequences." Based on his dishonest claim to be Satoshi, he has pursued claims he puts at hundreds of billions of dollars, including against numerous private individuals," he told the trial.
Dr Wright's legal team put forward the defence that if he were not the inventor, then the real Satoshi Nakamoto would have come forward to discredit him.