Craig Wright, the Australian computer scientist who claims to be the creator of Bitcoin, was recently the subject of a U.K. contempt of court proceedings. The proceedings have now been dropped due to the judges' inability to determine the facts of the case. It is believed that Wright breached an embargo by revealing details of judgments made in a libel case against British journalist, Peter McCormack.

Under English law, breaching an embargo is considered deemed prejudice towards legal procedures and can carry a sentence of up to two years in jail. However, in this case the court has determined there to be no public interest in pursuing proceedings. Messages posted by Wright on a Slack channel seemed to imply that he revealed the contents of the judgment before publication. He claimed in an affidavit however that the evidence being used against him was submitted without his permission, and was made up of legally privileged material.

Wright had sued journalist McCormack for libel in 2019, after he suggested that Wright was not the true author of the Bitcoin white paper. The judge in the case found that Wright had advanced a deliberately false case until shortly before trial, and thus awarded him only one British pound in damages. Meanwhile McCormack was ordered to pay nearly a million pounds in costs.

In a ruling by the Oslo District Court in Norway, it was concluded that Wright had indeed lied and cheated in his attempts to prove he is the creator of Bitcoin. Therefore, the U.K. contempt of court proceedings have been dropped and, as of now, Craig Wright is free to continue as normal with no charges pressed against him.



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