The Bitcoin white paper has been reuploaded to Bitcoin.org following Craig Wright’s unsuccessful legal battle to prove he is Satoshi Nakamoto, the protocol’s pseudonymous creator.
White Paper Reinstated
Hennadii Stepanov, the current maintainer of Bitcoin.org, announced the return of the white paper by sharing a link to its PDF on platform X. This reinstatement marks a significant moment for the cryptocurrency community.
UK Access Restrictions
Despite this victory, UK-based users still face restrictions. Legal constraints have forced Bitcoin.org to block access to the white paper for these users. Instead, the website displays a quote from Satoshi Nakamoto: “It takes advantage of the nature of information being easy to spread but hard to stifle.”
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Background on Legal Battles
In 2021, Craig Wright sued the anonymous group, Cobra, running Bitcoin.org for copyright infringement. The court ruled in Wright’s favor by default as Cobra chose not to defend the case, resulting in the removal of the white paper PDF and a payment of £35,000 ($40,100) in legal fees to Wright. Wright had filed for US copyright registration of the white paper in 2019.
In 2023, Wright expanded his legal battles, suing 13 Bitcoin Core developers and several companies, including Blockstream, Coinbase, and Block, for copyright violations related to the white paper and Bitcoin blockchain.
Response from the Bitcoin Community
The Bitcoin Legal Defense Fund criticized these lawsuits as abusive, arguing they deter development by imposing time, stress, expenses, and legal risks on prominent Bitcoin contributors.
However, Wright’s legal victories are now overshadowed by a decisive ruling against him. The Crypto Open Patent Alliance (COPA) successfully argued that Wright’s claims of being Satoshi Nakamoto were based on forgery and deceit. This ruling invalidated Wright’s copyright claims over the Bitcoin white paper.
Following the COPA case, Wright’s assets, totaling 6.7 million British pounds ($8.4 million), were frozen by a UK court to ensure he could cover court expenses.
