The Aussie who claims he invented Bitcoin

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Good morning and welcome to the Daily os. It's Friday, the ninth of February.

I'm Zara, I'm Saram.

Bitcoin is absolutely everywhere right now. But who actually invented the coin? Where did it come from? Well, it turns out that we actually don't have the answer to that, and there is an ongoing dispute as to who.

Invented the coin.

It's a dispute that has made its way all the way up to the UK's High Court. An Australian man says he founded the popular cryptocurrency in two thousand and eight, but on.

The flip side, a group of tech have launched legal action.

Accusing him of forging his identity. We're going to explain everything there is to know about the creation of bitcoin in the deep.

Dive but first Sam that's making headlines.

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The two bitcoins to Lores? I know is that one of the earliest transactions using bitcoin was buying a pizza.

Okay, but that's not answering my question.

Sorry, so. And the other one was that I think it was someone called Santoshi.

Okay, do you know anything more than that that?

We don't know who Santoshi is.

So it's a pseudonym. Yes, Okay, you're right.

Cool.

Ten points for you.

Thank you.

I love that I was asking you that with the full expectation that you wouldn't know the answer. I when I was researching this story, was reflecting on this thing that my friends and I do that sounds really lame when I say it out loud, but it is actually a really valuable exercise, which is that every few months, and certainly last year, we got together to learn something new.

We realized that we all have heaps.

Of skills and understanding and knowledge in certain areas, and that that's never transferred through like social groups. Anyway, I digress. The reason I'm saying it was we did one on crypto right, like a full deep dive on crypto, and that was the first time that I heard the name Satoshi Nakamoto, which I thought was the real name of the person that created bitcoin, but it turns out is

So why do you give me a really quick tail dr from that night with your friends and quickly explain what bitcoin is before we jump into this story in this current court case.

So Bitcoin became the world's first cryptocurrency and exchange platform. It launched in two thousand and eight, and the central idea behind bitcoin was the ability to make payments without going through traditional banking channels. So the digital currency runs via something called the blockchain, where all transactions are verified and connected in sequence, and it goes to this whole idea of decentralizing the way that we understand financing and money and.

Power really in the world around us. You're right.

In twenty ten, a man in the US state of Florida made the first commercial purchase using bitcoin when he brought two pizzas.

And so the discussion this week is about who invented it. And you said before that the person who invented it, what we do know is that they used a fake name.

Right. So Bitcoin's first white paper, as it's called, which is just a document describing how bitcoin would work, that was drafted under the name I mentioned before, Satoshi Nakamoto, And in twenty fifteen several tech publications named somebody called Craig Wright, who funnily enough, is an Australian scientif.

Wow, there's a local angleton I know.

As the possible creator of bitcoin. Wright alleges that he wrote the paper under this pseudonym Totoshi Nakamoto. A bit about Craig Wright, who I truly had never heard of until this week and had no idea that there was any local connection to the story of bitcoin. Craig Wright describes himself like this in his Twitter bio. He says, the creator of bitcoin, eternal student and researcher in chain, consultant, lawyer, economist, pastor, investor, mathematician and husband.

That's does he have more hours in the day?

What I mean that a normal person? What an incredible buyer?

I mean some of those make sense together, some of them are a bit confusing anyway.

So he says he is the creative of bitcoin.

So in all the spare time he has from being a loyer, economist, pastor, investor, and mathematician, son and husband, why not create bitcoin?

He claims that.

But not everyone is on board with this idea that he is actually the creator of bitcoin. Some online reports have questioned the claims and have said that he forged some of his academic credentials. He's right, talking to Kipko News in twenty twenty two.

In twenty fifteen, Wyatt and Gizmoto put a whole lot of clap trap out outing me. I didn't want that out and a number of other people in Core did that to basically muddy the waters about what I was doing. I mean, then they came out with a whole lot of stuff about fake degrees, et cetera, which there's all proven wrong, but I didn't really want to face sort of media or any of that at the time.

Nakamoto's identity has never been verified. And now there is this, as I said, ongoing lawsuit as to who actually is the real founder. Is it this Australian professor or is it someone else?

And so who's the lawsuit between? Like how does that actually work in court?

So Craig Right, the Aussie scientist, he's launched multiple lawsuits against people who have developed bitcoin technology without his consent. He claims to hold the copyright to the cryptocurrency.

You know what's interesting about that claim is that the whole idea.

There's no ownership, Yeah, yeah, is meant to decentralize ownership, right, and he were talking about.

But like if I created something like bitcoin, you.

Want to cut it.

Yeah, So he brought a defamation lawsuit against a blogger and a podcaster who said that he wasn't the creator of bitcoin. And then now the case that we're talking about is a group of tech developers who are suing him. They're saying that he falsified his identity and that his copyright claim to bitcoin is delaying innovation to the cryptocurrency technology. And the group that is suing Right is called the Cryptocurrency Open Patent Alliance. We're going to call them COPA.

Who's a former CEO of Twitter.

Correct, he is financially backing COPA.

Okay, so they're well funded.

Yes, So that's a.

Group that is taking legal action against RIGHT, and they claim that developers have been silenced by thread of legal action from RIGHT, and they've suggested that the future of the crypto.

Industry is at stake.

The main aspect of the case is looking to prove that Right is not Satoshi Nakamoto last month writes intermedia release out saying that he had tried to settle the case with COPA. The settlement offer included inviting the involved parties to make a donation to a specific Australian church

So we've now got that core case playing out. What's been happening in the courtroom.

Yes, so, Copa's lawyers this week alleged that Wright had committed forgery on an industrial scale.

It's a direct quote there.

He stands by his claims obviously that he is the founder, insisting that he never forged any of these documents. Part of his defense rights defense will also rely on proving that COPA can't actually provide an alternative for who this pseudonym actually is.

Right. I think it's so if you don't know any better, it could be me, I do. I think I'm not saying I invented bitclaim. It definitely wasn't me. When I was fourteen, I was thinking about you know, footy.

No one has successfully proven that it was them, right, and so in the absence of being able to identify it right as saying, well, if you can't identify anyone else, and I'm saying it's me, you know, go forth with that knowledge, And that's the case that's playing out in the court at the moment.

I think it's just absolutely fascinating to think about how much this technology has changed the world and has the potential to be even more embedded into our financial systems. I mean, in the last twelve months, it's just been adopted by a country as a sovereign coin for the first time, that's El Salvador. But yet despite that impact, we don't know who the owner is, whether it's Craig Right from Australia or well.

I think that's why it's you know, we always talk about this news versus noise. I think ordinarily, if I was reading a piece about something like this, I would think it's noise.

But I think you're right.

I think that the significant impact it has made in kind of all economic spheres means it actually is really important where it came from, what its origin is, what the use of it was originally, and what the intention was because it's reshaped everything.

But interestingly, it wouldn't matter who invented it if Craig Wright wasn't taking action to stop the development of it. So in some ways he's trying to kind of stand his authority on this coin. I mean, we don't know who invented money. I'm sure somebody does, but if there was a claim to patent money that would be very interesting as well. Well, you've got the answer of wow, those existential questions. Ends the week.

Thanks for joining us for another week on the Daily Odds. If you have found us through the Daily Drive, welcome. We're back next week for another big week in the news, but until then, have a fabulous weekend

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