Craig Wright has had his $7.6 million worth of assets frozen by a court in the UK.
United Kingdom court orders Craig Wright’s £6 million ($7.6 million) assets frozen. The purpose of this action is to stop Wright from trying to avoid paying for his recent legal struggle. Craig Wright, who claims to be the anonymous creator of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto, was recently involved in a legal dispute with the Crypto Open Patent Alliance (COPA).
The decision was partly based on Wright’s recent move to move assets out of the UK after his loss in court. A court filing from the UK states that on March 18, Wright transferred ownership of a portion of his London business, RCJBR Holding, to a Singaporean corporation. That was enough to make one wonder whether Wright was attempting to hide from what happened after his trial defeat.
The paper states that Judge Hames Mellor endorsed the order to freeze all of Craig Wright’s assets globally after COPA raised the alarm. Throughout the trial, COPA spent almost $8 million on court costs. Established in 2020, COPA’s mission is to remove obstacles to the development and expansion of the cryptocurrency industry while simultaneously encouraging its use and innovation.
Many prominent cryptocurrency platforms are members, including Coinbase, Block, Meta, Paradigm, Uniswap, MicroStrategy, and Block. By claiming to be the anonymous creator of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto, Craig Wright has been able to get copyrights for projects using Bitcoin.
Two websites hosted the Bitcoin white paper, which Craig Wright sought to have removed in 2021 via one of his lawsuits. Claiming to be Satoshi Nakamoto and the rightful proprietor of Bitcoin, COPA took him to court in April 2021. The court found that Wright was not Satoshi Nakamoto based on testimony from early Bitcoin engineers.
Craig Wright accused several crypto platforms of copyright infringement in relation to the Bitcoin white paper and launched thirteen separate lawsuits against them last year. The case included Coinbase, Blockstream, and Block, among others. As part of its response, the Bitcoin Legal Defense Fund voiced its disapproval of the recent practice of targeting prominent figures in the Bitcoin community.
There is a danger of disrupting the growth of the Bitcoin ecosystem, in addition to the stress and significant expenditures that come with litigation. Anyone with the desire to alter its code may now use it, even though Wright lodged the copyright claim to the Bitcoin white paper in the US. If Craig Wright were to be subject to yet another injunction, he would be unable to assert any copyright rights to the white paper.
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