On Monday the self-proclaimed Satoshi Nakamoto, Craig Wright, dropped a lawsuit filed by his holding company against 12 Bitcoin developers.
It is reported by the Bitcoin Legal Defense Fund (BLDF), the foundation created in 2021 specifically to support Bitcoin developers in their defense against the lawsuit filed against them by Tulip Trading Ltd. of Craig S. Wright, based in the Seychelles.
The news should therefore be considered official, even if biased, since it actually comes from the same accused parties.
Satoshi Nakamoto: Craig Wright’s lawsuit against developers
The so-called “Tulip Trust” is the trust where the private keys of Satoshi Nakamoto’s addresses are said to be stored.
It was created in the early days of Bitcoin by three people, one of whom should be the same Satoshi Nakamoto, the other was the deceased Dave Kleinman, and the third was Craig Wright himself.
This is a trust that stores the keys in a repository protected by two other keys, one probably owned by Craig Wright, and the other owned by the deceased Dave Kleinman’s brother.
In theory there should also be a third key, held by Satoshi Nakamoto, but the latter disappeared into thin air in 2011 probably taking his trust private key with him.
In 2021, Craig Wright’s Tulip Trading sued 12 Bitcoin Core developers asking them to modify the code of Bitcoin in order to allow him to access 111,000 BTC stored in addresses of which he claims to have lost the private keys. In fact, Wright claimed that those keys had been stolen from his computer.
Obviously the 12 developers refused, also because they wouldn’t have been able to force the whole world to accept a modified version of the Bitcoin code that was not compatible with the one in use.
However, in the following years Wright relaunched, extending this lawsuit to three other Bitcoin Core developers, and to a group of companies including Blockstream, Kraken, Coinbase, and Block.
In that case, he claimed to be the owner of the copyright on the Bitcoin white paper, which implied that he was Satoshi Nakamoto.
The lost cause: Craig Wright is not Satoshi Nakamoto
Just to respond to the lawsuit for the hypothetical copyright infringement on the Bitcoin white paper, the companies sued founded the COPA (Cryptocurrency Open Patent Alliance), a non-profit association that in turn sued Craig Wright for presenting falsified evidence to the judge to prove he is the real Satoshi Nakamoto.
In March a judge ruled that COPA was right, and Craig Wright wrong, therefore establishing that according to British law Dr. Wright cannot claim to be Satoshi Nakamoto, and that this claim should be considered false.
The judge wrote:
“Firstly, Dr. Wright is not the author of the Bitcoin White Paper. Secondly, Dr. Wright is not the person who adopted or operated under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto from 2008 to 2011. Thirdly, Dr. Wright is not the person who created the Bitcoin system. And fourthly, he is not the author of the initial versions of the Bitcoin software.”
At this point, not only has Wright lost the case against COPA, but he would also have lost the one in which he claimed the copyright on the Bitcoin white paper, which belongs to Nakamoto and not to him.
The withdrawal of the lawsuit
Wright has had many open cases for a long time, although now several are closing with his defeat.
On Monday, he voluntarily closed another one, namely the one filed in 2021 against Bitcoin developers, and then extended to companies.
The BLDF writes that the suspension of this case “puts an end to a campaign of harassment and intimidation that lasted almost a decade and marks an important victory for Bitcoin developers and open source software in general”.
The verdict of the trial regarding the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto had important implications, because at that point the Tulip Trading case against 12 Bitcoin developers lost its meaning.
Why should they be forced to modify the code to give any person 110,000 BTC?
Furthermore, according to the BLDF, the withdrawal of this case would have important implications for the Bitcoin network and for open source software in general, because in the event of Wright’s victory, a precedent would have been established on the possibility that developers could be held responsible for their contributions to open source projects.
The role of Jack Dorsey
There is one last curious thing worth highlighting in this whole story.
In fact, both behind the BLDF and behind the COPA there is Jack Dorsey.
Dorsey is the co-founder and former CEO of Twitter, and in theory had nothing to do with the Tulip Trust lawsuit of 2021.
He was not among the 12 developers accused by Wright, and in fact before 2014 there is no official record of his involvement in the Bitcoin project.
This is his very first tweet ever where he mentions it:
Have bitcoin? You can now spend it on Square Market! http://t.co/qLRtFs6QNp
— jack (@jack) March 31, 2014
Yet he appears to be among the co-founders of the Bitcoin Legal Defense Fund, established in 2021. At that time, however, despite not being involved in the Tulip Trust case, he was already heavily involved in Bitcoin.
However, Dorsey also appears to be among the co-founders of COPA, in particular with his company Block, which in 2021 was still called Square. In this case, however, he was directly involved, since Square was one of the companies sued by Wright when he expanded the lawsuit in 2021.
However, it is not certain that Dorsey is more involved in Bitcoin than believed, but he is certainly one of its main supporters worldwide, as he is also a staunch defender to the point of helping and financing those who fight in court to support it.
