Craig Wright has been awarded damages in his libel case against Peter McCormack
Australian computer scientist Craig Wright, who claims to be the creator of bitcoin, has won a defamation lawsuit against prominent cryptocurrency blogger and podcaster Peter McCormack.
However, as a result of a legal battle that lasted for several years, the academic was awarded an infinitesimal £1 in damages. It’s worth noting that Wright sued for up to $122,000.
Despite ruling in Wright’s favour, UK High Court Justice Martin Chamberlain awarded only minor damages in the case, as it turned out that Wright had lied about certain key parts of his evidence. In particular, he lied about McCormack’s withdrawal from academic conferences. The judge wrote:
The controversial academic filed its lawsuit against McCormack in April 2019 after the self-proclaimed Satoshi was later called a fraud.Dr. Wright put forward a deliberately false case in his revised statement of claim and a disclaimer from academic conventions in his first witness statement.
McCormack, host of the podcast “What Bitcoin Did”, thanked his lawyers for their “hard work” in his statement. He claims to be “very pleased” with the result.
Wright’s Pyrrhic victory has drawn much ridicule on Twitter. Paolo Ardoino, Chief Technology Officer of Bitfinex and Tether, chuckled That the amount of money the nChain scientist won won’t be enough to buy a cup of coffee at Starbucks.
In the past, the controversial computer scientist had even sued Ethereum’s Vitalik Buterin for defamation, but the case was eventually dropped. Their lawsuits against Blockstream CEO Adam Back and Bitcoin Cash proponent Roger Ver were dropped and dismissed, respectively.
Is Craig Wright Satoshi?
Notably, the court has not ruled on whether Wright actually created bitcoin, despite a favorable ruling.
It is worth noting that McCormack offered Academia up to $315,000 if the latter could sign bitcoin transactions with the help of Satoshi’s private key.