The identity of Satoshi Nakamoto has become a bone of contention since two people are now claiming the title of Bitcoin creator. The first is Craig Wright, an Australian computer scientist who has been in the news of late, and now we have Wei Liu who has filed a copyright registration for the Bitcoin whitepaper with the United States Copyright Office on May 24, 2019.
Craig Wright and Wei Liu Claim Bitcoin Creator Title
Craig Wright has a legal contender for the Bitcoin creator pseudonym “Satoshi Nakamoto” and that is Wei Liu, a guy from China who recently filed a copyright registration (number TX0008726120) for the Bitcoin whitepaper. Lui’s catalog appeared on the Copyright Office on May 24, 2019, over a month after Wright had filed his on April 11 and April 13, 2019, for the Bitcoin whitepaper and Bitcoin code respectively.
Judging from the dates, it can be assumed that Wei Liu’s filing is in a bid to stop Wright from claiming ownership of fundamental bitcoin property. The filing could have been triggered by that of Wright after a press was sent to several media houses stating that the United States Copyright Office has granted copyright registration of Bitcoin whitepaper and code to Craig Wright.
Coingeek, for instance, a crypto website that is owned by Calvin Ayre, a supporter of Bitcoin Satoshi Vision (BSV) reported on May 21, 2019, that “Craig S. Wright has been granted U.S. copyright registrations” for the original Bitcoin white paper, and most of the original Bitcoin code.
The media further stated that it is the first government agency to recognize Craig Wright as Satoshi Nakamoto. It also claimed that the agency recognized that Wright wrote “most version 0.1 of the Bitcoin client software” and has, therefore, granted him registration to the areas he had written.
U.S. Copyright Office Gives Clarification on Registration Process
However, the U.S. Copyright Office made clarifications on May 23, 2019, through their publication that states that anyone can register their claims and certify that the statements they have made therein are true. Despite this, it does not carry out any measures or extra findings to ascertain if it is the truth or not.
A more intriguing part is the Copyright’s Office statement that: “It is possible for multiple, adverse claims to be registered at the Copyright Office.” That being the case, Wei Lui may not be the only one that can come forward after Craig Wright has, there’s still room for more claims.
Once upon a time, we were all wondering, who is Satoshi Nakamoto? But today, it has become a laughable issue given that there are two contenders to the title. While one seems to be quite popular, the other suddenly crept up on us and we’re still uncertain about the lengths each will go just to prove that they are Bitcoin’s creator.
