UK court freezes over $8M of Craig Wright’s assets
A United Kingdom court has approved the freezing of 6.7 million British pounds ($8.4 million) of Craig Wright’s assets to prevent him from evading court expenses.
The decision was made after Wright transferred some of his assets outside of the U.K. after a court verdict debunked his claim to be Satoshi Nakamoto, the founder of Bitcoin 
BTCUSD. According to a U.K. court document, this prompted him to shift shares of his London firm, RCJBR Holding, to a Singaporean entity on March 18. Judge James Mellor stated:
The judge endorsed a “worldwide freezing order” by the Crypto Open Patent Alliance (COPA) to address its total court expenses amounting to 6.7 million British pounds ($8.4 million).
COPA was founded in 2020 “to encourage the adoption and advancement of cryptocurrency technologies and to remove patents as a barrier to growth and innovation.” Its 33 members include Coinbase, Block, Meta, MicroStrategy, Kraken, Paradigm, Uniswap and Worldcoin.
An Australian computer scientist, Wright falsely claimed he was Nakamoto to file copyright assertions concerning the Bitcoin network. He demanded two websites remove the Bitcoin white paper in January 2021.
In April 2021, COPA filed a lawsuit against Wright, contesting his claims. On March 14, Mellor ruled that Wright is not Nakamoto.
In 2023, Wright sued 13 Bitcoin Core developers and a group of companies, including Blockstream, Coinbase and Block, for copyright violations relating to the Bitcoin white paper, its file format and database rights to the Bitcoin blockchain.
The Bitcoin Legal Defense Fund responded, highlighting the trend of abusive lawsuits against prominent Bitcoin contributors, deterring development due to the associated time, stress, expenses and legal risks. Wright filed for United States copyright registration for the Bitcoin white paper in 2019.
The Bitcoin white paper is now subject to an MIT open-source license, allowing anyone to reuse and modify the code for any purpose.