Craig Wright, who has falsely claimed to be the pseudonymous founder of bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto, has been given a 12-month suspended jail sentence for violating a court order. The sentence, which is suspended for two years, was imposed after Wright initiated a lawsuit seeking $1.1 trillion over intellectual property rights related to the Bitcoin system. The lawsuit was deemed to be in contempt of a previous court ruling that barred Wright from pursuing claims related to his assertion of being Nakamoto. The case against Wright was brought by the Crypto Open Patent Alliance, which argued that his lawsuit breached a London court's ruling in July.
Judge James Mellor stated that the grounds for contempt had been proven beyond reasonable doubt. Wright, who attended the hearing virtually from an undisclosed location in Asia, has stated that he intends to appeal the verdict. This development follows a ruling in March that Wright was not the creator of bitcoin, and a subsequent court order preventing him from pursuing further claims related to this assertion in the UK and other jurisdictions.