For years, the real identity of Satoshi Nakamoto has been a controversial subject. A handful of people have attributed the pseudonym, which is tightly associated with the birth of cryptocurrencies and, most specifically, Bitcoin. Dave Kleiman and Craig Wright are recognized within the industry as the two most important people behind BTC, but a sizable portion of the field still has its doubts.
In a development that took place in recent hours, Wright filed United States (US) copyright registrations for the whitepaper that explains the technology, modus operandi, and other details about Bitcoin. The document is purportedly authored by Satoshi Nakamoto.
The Struggle to Cement his Place as Satoshi Nakamoto
According to documents from the court, the US Copyright Office has registrations of the white paper and Wright’s name is shown as the author. In the paper, the majority of the code implemented to build the world’s biggest and most prominent cryptocurrency is shown.
Amid doubts from relevant sectors of the industry, Wright, an Australian businessman and computer scientist, has claimed to have written the paper for a long time, under the Satoshi Nakamoto pseudonym. The first time that Wright claimed to be behind the nickname was 2016.
Now, after a press release that confirmed the information, American officials received confirmation that Wright is actually behind the pseudonym, but that development has not escaped questioning and skepticism in a field that seems to need quite the proof package for it to fully believe that someone is Satoshi Nakamoto.
After all, having one’s name officially associated to the creation and rise to prominence of Bitcoin, arguably the most important crypto asset of all, would be consagratory, to say the least.
Criticism Has Already Started
For instance, the Executive Director of Coin Center, a well known non-profit organization, expressed via Twitter that “registering a copyright is just filing a form. The Copyright Office does not investigate the validity of the claim; they just register it. Unfortunately there is no official way to challenge a registration. If there are competing claims, the Office will just register all of them.”
The news piece reads that the reason behind Wright’s attempts to establish himself as the person behind the birth of Bitcoin is because he has been “dismayed to see his original Bitcoin design bastardized by protocol developer groups.”
A Little Bit More about Craig Wright
Wright’s plans, allegedly, are to assign the copyright registrations to the Bitcoin Association. Wright, born in October 1970, in Australia and the owner of a successful career in information technology, is currently the Chief Scientist at nChain, a startup.
He is also one of the masterminds behind Bitcoin SV, a blockchain with an associated cryptocurrency that appeared last year, in mid-November, after a Bitcoin Cash (BCH) hard fork that resulted in a split, with Bitcoin ABC being the other entity. Wright is not a stranger to controversy, and this piece of news will further back up that theory.
By Andres Chavez
