Craig Wright accuses Coinbase and Kraken of trading ‘fake’ Bitcoin

The self-proclaimed founder of digital gold, Craig Wright, has filed a lawsuit against cryptocurrency exchanges Coinbase and Kraken. According to Ontier, the law firm reported.

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Together with Wright, the two entities Wright International Investments Limited and Wright International Investments UK Limited joined the suit. They allege that the platforms misrepresent information by offering clients the asset Bitcoin Core as Bitcoin.

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“The plaintiffs allege that these and other exchanges […] encouraged investors and consumers to trade and invest in [Bitcoin Core], presenting this asset as Bitcoin, even though it was created in 2017 as a software implementation differing from the Bitcoin protocol established by Dr. Wright when the electronic money system was created over 13 years ago,” Ontier said in a statement.

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According to Wright, the sole digital asset that remains true to the original Bitcoin protocol is Bitcoin Satoshi Vision (BSV).

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The plaintiffs seek a court injunction prohibiting promotion of Bitcoin Core as Bitcoin, which they say includes the BTC ticker. They emphasised that the defendants have misused the mark and name of the asset.

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The complaint was filed with the England and Wales Business and Property Court on 29 April 2022.

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In 2019, Wright registered copyright for the Bitcoin white paper and the source code. Later, the U.S. Copyright Office clarified that it did not recognise him as the creator of digital gold Satoshi Nakamoto.

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In January 2021, Wright accused the sites Bitcoin.org and Bitcoincore.org of copyright infringement and demanded delete the white paper.

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The owner of Bitcoin.org, Cobra, refused to take that step. Later he said about murder threats from a person linked to the Bitcoin SV community.

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With a similar request, Ontier’s lawyers approached the payments firm Square, on whose site hosted is a copy of the document. In February, the Cryptocurrency Open Patent Alliance (COPA) asked Wright to explain on what basis he asserts copyright in the white paper.

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In April the alliance filed a lawsuit against the self-styled Bitcoin creator. COPA representatives demanded that the defendant be recognised as not having any involvement in the authorship of the document.

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In June Wright won the case concerning the Bitcoin white paper against Cobra. Cobra was barred from infringing copyright in the United Kingdom “both by making the white paper available for download from the Bitcoin.org site, and by any other means.”

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As reported in December, COPA won the first hearing in the case against Wright.