Craig Wright loses appeal in case against Peter McCormack
- Craig Wright has maintained he’s the creator of Bitcoin.
- UK’s Court of Appeal has dismissed his appeal over judgement given by the trial judge in a libel case against Peter McCormack.
Craig Wright, the self-proclaimed Satoshi Nakamoto, has lost an appeal he filed in a UK court against bitcoiner Peter McCormack.
The libel case had moved to the Appeals Court after a trial judge had dismissed with $1 in damages, Wright’s claims that McCormack had damaged his reputation. Wright’s defamation case referenced various tweets in 2019 in which McCormack called Wright a fraud.
Judges say Wright exaggerated claims of defamation
In a ruling filed Wednesday, three appeals court judges dismissed Wright’s claims, noting that the trial judge was right in reducing the compensation after the appellant was found to have exaggerated his claims.
Commenting on the case, McCormack said:
“In the Court of appeal – Dr Wright has LOST his appeal and it has been dismissed. The judges agreed with the decision of Justice Chamberlain to reduce his damages to £1 for putting forward “deliberately false” evidence on serious harm.Multiple legal battles.”
Wright’s legal battles related to Bitcoin and its creator Satoshi Nakamoto also include one with the estate of a former colleague, Dave Kleiman. Currently, he faces potential contempt of court proceedings after he failed to disclose info needed in a $143 million crypto ownership tussle with the Kleiman estate.
Today’s ruling comes a day after Wright received what could be another blow to his case against cryptocurrency exchanges Coinbase and Binance.
On Tuesday, UK judge James Mellor ordered that Wright has to deposit 400,000 British pounds ($516,000) with the court to be filed as security for legal costs. According to the judge, the Australian computer scientist risks having the cases dismissed within weeks
