Craig Wright, the Australian businessman who famously claimed to have invented Bitcoin, now faces a criminal investigation for alleged perjury in the United Kingdom.

For years, Wright claimed to have authored a foundational Bitcoin white paper under the pseudonym ‘Satoshi Nakamoto’, carrying out brutal lawsuits against members of the cryptocurrency community while offering tenuous pieces of “evidence” to support his claim.

In May, Wright was handed a damning judgement as part of a years-long lawsuit initiated by the Crypto Open Patent Alliance (COPA), during which London High Court judge James Mellor concluded Wright “lied to the court extensively and repeatedly”, and was a “thoroughly unreliable witness” who engaged in forgery on a “grand scale”.

Now, Wright faces the possibility of being arrested for perjury.

In a Tuesday ruling, Mellor declared he would be referring Wright to Britain's Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) to consider if Wright should be prosecuted for “wholescale perjury and forgery of documents”.

“I have no doubt that I should refer the relevant papers in this case to the CPS,” said Mellor.

“As COPA submitted, if what happened in this case does not warrant referral to the CPS, it is difficult to envisage a case which would.”

According to barrister Quentin Hunt, the offence of perjury is considered a particularly serious offence which is “perceived as undermining the administration of justice”, and carries a maximum penalty of seven years imprisonment and/or a fine.

“In advancing his false claim to be Satoshi through multiple legal actions, Dr Wright committed ‘a most serious abuse’ of the process of the courts of the UK, Norway and the USA,” Mellor added.

Wright on the run?

The CPS is also expected to consider “whether a warrant for [Wright’s] arrest should be issued” and/or whether extradition should be sought from “wherever he now is”.

The latest ruling from Mellor reports evidence that Wright has “left his previous residence in Wimbledon” and “appears to have left the UK” altogether.

COPA submitted that Wright may either be “deliberately evading service or at least is peripatetic and is very difficult to locate”, which Mellor agreed seemed to be “fully justified”.

As Wright’s whereabouts remain murky, it was further decided in court that he would pay all of COPA’s costs on an indemnity basis.

Wright’s last post to social media platform X was on 20 May, when he announced he fully intended “to appeal the decision of the court on the matter of the identity issue”.

“No application for permission to appeal was made to me”, Mellor said on Tuesday.

COPA seeks powerful injunctions

COPA sought a number of injunctions against Wright as part of its collective lawsuit – the first of which essentially aimed to prevent Wright from pursuing further proceedings to relitigate his claim to be Satoshi.

The second injunction sought to prevent him from threatening such proceedings, while the third expressly aimed to prevent him from “asserting legal rights as Satoshi”.

Information Age understands Mellor granted versions of the first two injunctions, effectively protecting developers from facing or being threatened with lawsuits by Wright.

Meanwhile, the fourth injunction aimed to prevent Wright from republishing his fraudulent

claim to be Satoshi, while the fifth and final injunction sought by COPA would effectively require him to “delete published statements of that fraudulent claim”.

Information Age understands Mellor rebuffed this fifth injunction, noting evidence of some 18,500 posts on just one of Wright’s X accounts since March 2020.

“I am in no doubt that an Order in terms of the fifth injunction or anything close to it would be disproportionate,” said Mellor.

“It is simply unnecessary to erase all such statements, let alone those made by Dr Wright or any of his associates.”

Wright’s website update

Finally, Mellor ordered Wright to publish details of the ruling against him to “dispel residual uncertainty” regarding his claims of being Satoshi, and to post a notice on his website, X and his Slack channels.

Wright appears to have abided by this order on his website this week, which currently displays a legal notice titled “DR CRAIG STEVEN WRIGHT IS NOT SATOSHI NAKAMOTO”.

“Dr Wright has been ordered not to commence any legal proceedings based on his false claims (by claim or counterclaim) or procure any other person to do so,” reads the notice.

“He has also been ordered not to threaten any such proceedings (explicitly or implicitly) or procure any other person to do so.”

Mellor noted Wright “clearly has a number of disciples who will not accept that he is not Satoshi,” before hinting there may be more to come from the long-running cryptocurrency debacle.

“It remains to assess what residual momentum his claim still has, both now and in the future,” said Mellor.