UK High Court Ruled Craig Wright Was Not Bitcoin’s Creator

A judge in the High Court of England and Wales ruled on March 14, 2024, that Australian computer scientist Craig Wright was not Satoshi Nakamoto, did not create Bitcoin and did not write its foundational documents or original software.

Mr Justice James Mellor announced the result from the bench after closing submissions in the joint trial of the “Identity Issue” in *Crypto Open Patent Alliance v Wright* and related litigation involving Bitcoin developers. He said the evidence was overwhelming and identified four conclusions: Wright was not the author of the Bitcoin white paper; he had not adopted or operated under the Satoshi Nakamoto pseudonym from 2008 through 2011; he had not created the Bitcoin system; and he had not written the initial versions of the Bitcoin software.

The scope of the March 14 development must be kept precise. Mellor announced the result and said declarations would follow, but he did not deliver his detailed reasoning from the bench. The transcript states that a written judgment would be issued later and that further relief would be addressed after that judgment.

Why the identity issue mattered

The Crypto Open Patent Alliance, or COPA, had asked the court to declare that Wright was not Satoshi. The question extended beyond authorship credit because Wright’s asserted identity supplied the factual foundation for claims to intellectual-property rights connected with the white paper, Bitcoin software and blockchain database.

The identity question was also being tried as a preliminary issue in litigation Wright and associated companies had brought against Bitcoin developers and businesses. Contemporaneous Associated Press reporting said the result was expected to affect three pending lawsuits based on Wright’s claimed intellectual-property rights. That was an expected legal consequence on March 14, not a completed disposition of every related case.

For developers, the ruling removed judicial support for the central identity assertion behind those claims. For the wider industry, it demonstrated how courts could examine authorship and ownership claims surrounding an open-source protocol without determining who Satoshi actually was.

What the event-day record established

The court transcript is the strongest record of what was decided on March 14. It contains Mellor’s four findings and records that the hearing concluded at 1:10 p.m. London time. COPA published the same four findings that day and characterized the decision as a victory for developers and the open-source community. That characterization was COPA’s position as the successful claimant, not an additional judicial finding.

During the trial, COPA alleged that Wright had relied on forged material and an elaborate false narrative. Wright denied the allegations and maintained in court filings that his evidence demonstrated authorship and creation. Because Mellor reserved his detailed reasoning, an event-day account could report those competing positions but could not yet present later findings about specific documents as though they had been explained on March 14.

Market and protocol limits

The ruling did not identify Satoshi Nakamoto, change Bitcoin’s consensus rules, transfer control of the network or establish ownership of any bitcoin. It was an institutional and legal development rather than a protocol activation or on-chain transaction.

No price, volume or derivatives figures are used here because the reviewed sources do not establish a defensible event-study window or show that the ruling caused a particular market move. Bitcoin trades continuously across venues, making any causal price claim dependent on a named exchange, trading pair, time boundary and comparison period.

Later context

On May 20, 2024, Mellor issued the full written judgment. That later primary record explained the March 14 conclusions and found that Wright had repeatedly lied and relied on forged documents. Those findings strengthen the evidentiary record but were not available when the result was announced on March 14, so they should not be projected backward into the event-day account.