Craig Wright Not Recognised As Sathoshi Nakamoto By Copyright Registrations

The new copyright registrations for the Bitcoin (BTC) source code and white paper by the United States Copyright Office do not mean that Craig Wright is recognised as Satoshi Nakamoto by the government, as reported by the Financial Times on May 22nd.

As reported by Coinbeat, this news follows after Wright’s filing for copyright registrations for the Bitcoin white paper authored under the mythical pseudonym, Satoshi Nakamoto. A press release published on May 21st claimed that U.S. officials had received confirmation that Wright is indeed the legendary Nakamoto, but this news has not been met without scepticism from the crypto industry.

Wright’s spokesman told the Financial Times that “the registrations issued by the U.S. Copyright Office recognise Wright as the author — under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto — of both the white paper and code,” claiming the Office to be the first and only government arm that recognises Wright as the inventor of the original and top cryptocurrency.

However, the claim holds no real basis in reality. This is because when the Copyright Office receives an application for registration, it doesn’t conduct any investigations as to the truth of any statements made in an application. Furthermore, the Office doesn’t confirm the identities of people applying for a copyright.

The Office told the Financial Times in a statement:

“In a case in which a work is registered under a pseudonym, the Copyright Office does not investigate whether there is a provable connection between the claimant and the pseudonymous author.”

In addition to this, the registration of the bitcoin source code does not provide protection of the intellectual property of the cryptocurrency as an invention.

Of course, the Copyright Office reserves the right to cancel any application if it deems that any information is false and the person who claims to be the author of a piece of work is indeed not the person they’re claiming to be.

Notably, a scandal surrounding bitcoin S.V. (BSV) which is backed by Wright, placed the Australian computer scientist at the epicentre of international attention when several exchanges began delisting the coin as a result of Wright’s campaign to deanonymize user Hodlonaut, one of his critics.

Hodlonaut took to Twitter to attack Wright with offensive tweets calling him “a very sad and pathetic scammer. Clearly mentally ill,” and additionally is also said to have started the #CraigWrightIsAFraud hashtag.