The UK Court of Appeal has been examining a claim related to the copyright of the Bitcoin File Format. The case is an appeal from an order of Mellor J, dated 7 February 2023, which refused to grant the Claimants permission to serve the claim form on Defendants outside the jurisdiction of England and Wales. The claim form is centered around an alleged infringement of copyright in a work referred to as the Bitcoin File Format.
The First Claimant, Dr. Craig Wright, asserts that he is the creator of the Bitcoin system, the author of the original Bitcoin source code, and the author of a document known as “the White Paper”. He alleges that he made the White Paper public on 31 October 2008 under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto. This claim is one of four in the Business and Property Courts involving Dr. Wright, with a common issue being whether it was Dr. Wright who adopted the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto when announcing the creation of the Bitcoin system. This issue is set to be determined at a trial in January 2024.
Dr. Wright claims that he owns the copyrights in two original literary works: the Bitcoin File Format and the White Paper. He also alleges to be the owner of database rights in three databases related to the Bitcoin blockchain. The Second and Third Claimants are companies controlled by Dr. Wright, which have joined the case in the event they own some or all of the rights claimed.
Dr. Wright has raised objections to two “airdrops”, which he claims made significant changes to the Bitcoin system without his consent. The first airdrop occurred on 1 August 2017, resulting in what Dr. Wright refers to as the BTC Network. The second airdrop occurred on 15 November 2018, creating another new peer-to-peer network, the BCH Network. Dr. Wright alleges that the operation of the BTC blockchain and the BCH blockchain results in the extraction and/or re-utilisation of all or substantial parts of the databases in which he claims to own database rights.
The outcome of this case could have significant implications for the copyright status of the Bitcoin File Format and other similar digital assets. Legal and cryptocurrency experts are closely monitoring the case. The identity of Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin, remains a mystery. Dr. Wright’s claims have stirred controversy in the crypto world, and the case’s resolution may provide some clarity on these contentious issues.
The Web3 project team of Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party has released a white paper containing suggestions for expanding the country’s cryptocurrency industry. The white paper has been incorporated into the national strategy by Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s administration.
The Web3 project team aims to bypass the usual bureaucratic processes to formulate regulatory proposals for everything from nonfungible tokens to decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs). In contrast to other governments seeking to implement consumer protection regulations, Japan is striving to establish a more welcoming atmosphere for cryptocurrency, as many companies have relocated to other countries due to high tax obligations.
The white paper recommends that Japan exhibit leadership during this year’s G7 summit, which will address cryptocurrency issues. The document recommends that the nation focus on the potential benefits of Web3 and establish a prominent stance on technology-agnostic and ethical innovation.
The white paper also recommends additional modifications to tax regulations, acknowledging that a notable exception for token issuers has already been granted. These include tax exemptions for companies that possess tokens issued by other firms that are not meant to be traded in the short term. It suggests enabling self-assessments and allowing investors to carry forward their losses for up to three years and proposes that cryptocurrency should only be taxed when it is converted into fiat currency.
Furthermore, the white paper identifies a pressing concern regarding the absence of accounting standards, which has made it challenging for Web3 enterprises to locate auditors. The document recommends that ministries and agencies assist the Japanese Institute of Certified Public Accountants in creating guidelines. Additionally, it suggests that a DAO law be established, modeled after Japan’s godo kaisha, which is comparable to a limited liability company. It also suggests modifications to the Companies Act and the Financial Instruments and Exchange Act.
The white paper highlights that while the screening process for tokens already in circulation is becoming shorter, the assessment of new tokens issued by foreign entities is still sluggish. It suggests that procedures should be made more transparent, enabling issuers to provide essential information for evaluation.
In 2022, Japan adopted a framework for regulating stablecoins. The new white paper emphasizes the significance of preparing the environment for stablecoin registration and creating a self-regulatory organization. It also suggests developing proposals for yen-backed stablecoins.
Japan’s Web3 project team’s white paper aims to address the challenges faced by the country’s cryptocurrency industry. While Japan has been comparatively more welcoming to cryptocurrencies than other countries, it still faces issues such as high tax obligations and the absence of accounting standards. The white paper recommends several modifications to tax regulations to ease the burden on companies, including tax exemptions for non-traded tokens and carrying forward losses.
The paper also suggests establishing guidelines for accounting standards and creating a DAO law modeled after Japan’s godo kaisha. Furthermore, it highlights the need for more transparent procedures for assessing new tokens issued by foreign entities.
The white paper also emphasizes the significance of preparing the environment for stablecoin registration and developing proposals for yen-backed stablecoins.
Japan’s cryptocurrency industry has the potential to grow further, and the Web3 project team’s white paper is a step towards achieving that goal. The government’s efforts to establish a welcoming atmosphere for cryptocurrencies could encourage more companies to operate in Japan, boosting the country’s economy in the long run.
The 13th birthday of the Bitcoin (BTC) white paper has crept up just as the world continues to deal with a global pandemic, inflation fears, an astounding memecoin mania trend and growing institutional adoption of the cryptocurrency space.
On October 31, 2008, Satoshi Nakamoto released the Bitcoin white paper to a cryptography mailing list hosted by Metzdow. The Metzdow mailing list was run by a group of cypherpunks and was filled with ideas meant to create a form of digital currency: some of these have even been cited in the Bitcoin white paper.
Satoshi’s white paper came in a message titled “Bitcoin P2P e-cash paper,” in which Nakamoto explained that his digital currency is fully peer-to-peer (P2P) and requires no trusted third party for a transaction to occur. Through a peer-to-peer network, Bitcoin solved the double-spending problem. Bitcoin also allowed network participants to remain anonymous and was secured through a proof-of-work (PoW) consensus algorithm.
At the time, the white paper wasn’t received the way people would expect it to be, knowing what they know today. Only a handful of people saw Nakamoto’s email and replied with their thoughts and concerns surrounding Bitcoin.
Speaking to Cointelegraph, Leo Matchett, co-founder and CEO of Decentralized Pictures, a non-profit organization supporting independent filmmakers, said that the Bitcoin white paper “is the genesis of a new era in monetary sovereignty,” adding, “Satoshi stood on the shoulders of giants and solved problems that those who came before could not.”
Matchett opined further that the white paper “was truly the beginning of a new era for monetary systems of the world” because it “brought forth the idea that decentralization has more value than centralization.” Indeed, the idea of Bitcoin attempted to solve numerous problems including counterfeiting, steep on-ramps and counterparty risk.
Running Bitcoin
After the white paper was shared on the cryptography mailing list, slowly but surely, discussion surrounding the document started growing, with the Bitcoin network being launched in early 2009. At that time, Hal Finney, a cypherpunk that worked with the PGP Corporation developing leading encryption products, was already involved.
Hal Finney is well-known in the cryptocurrency space for being involved in the first Bitcoin transaction and being the first person after Nakamoto to run a copy of the network through a node. After setting it up, Finney tweeted he was “running bitcoin.”
Running bitcoin
— halfin (@halfin) January 11, 2009
The cypherpunk, who tragically passed away in 2014 as a result of ALS complications and had his body cryopreserved by the Alcor Life Extension Foundation, described his work with Satoshi in a forum post where he revealed he started mining BTC on “block 70-something,” and that after some correspondence, Satoshi sent him 10 BTC to test whether the network worked.
At the time, there was no demand for space on the blockchain, so the transaction was successfully processed with a 0 BTC fee attached to it. The 10 BTC were worthless at the time, but the transaction helped fix some bugs in BTC’s early days.
That first Bitcoin transaction made it clear that the network worked, and while there was still a lot of work to be done to get where it is today, it was a first step in the right direction. A year later, in 2010, the first commercial Bitcoin transaction would occur.
$600 million+ for two pizzas
On May 18, 2010 developer Laszlo Hanyecz created a post on the Bitcointalk forum offering 10,000 Bitcoin “for a couple of pizzas.” Hanyecz offered to pay another forum member the coins if they got him two large pizzas, which could even be homemade.
The post was met with skepticism, as 10,000 BTC at the time weren’t worth the cost of two pizzas, or were anywhere near it. Only on May 22, after a follow-up, did Hanyecz report that he “successfully traded 10,000 bitcoins for pizza.”
At the time and despite Bitcoin’s low value and the community’s small size, one user noted that a “great milestone was reached.” That day is now known in the cryptocurrency community as the “Bitcoin Pizza Day.”
The first commercial Bitcoin transaction led to the creation of an ecosystem now worth over $2 trillion and proved that Bitcoin has a number of use cases that need to be considered. For the first time ever, Bitcoin was used as a true medium of exchange.
A multi-trillion dollar industry
The cryptocurrency’s price would rise over time, partly because of adoption and partly because of speculators looking to profit off of its incredible volatility. In the midst of all that, new businesses were created in what ended up becoming a large asset class.
Speaking to Cointelegraph, Miha Grčar, head of global business development at cryptocurrency exchange Kraken, said: “no one could have predicted the tidal wave of change unleashed by the publication of a 9-page PDF.”
The Bitcoin white paper, Grčar said, laid out a vision for a digital currency that can be used as a store of value and medium of exchange independent of centralized control. Per his words, the potential it has hasn’t been fully unleashed:
“It turned out to be a breakthrough of such historical importance and magnitude that even thirteen years on, we’re barely scratching the surface.”
Bitcoin, he said, instigated a “paradigm shift that now underpins a multi-trillion dollar industry” and showed the world there was a better way where “sovereignty, finance and individual freedoms all co-exist outside the clutches of corrupt outdated socio-economic systems ridden with insiders, cronies and backroom deals.”
As understood from the first commercial Bitcoin transaction, BTC’s value hasn’t always been clear. The cryptocurrency has gone through substantial crashes in its history and has been declared “dead” over 400 times by popular media outlets and analysts.
Bitcoin’s market cap is now above $1.16 trillion, according to Cointelegraph Markets Pro. While most wish they could have heard about the cryptocurrency in 2010 or 2011 to invest in it and build up wealth through that investment, most would have likely failed to see how big BTC would get.
Early Bitcoin investor Greg Schoen published, in May 2011, a now-famous tweet where he showed regret for selling 1,700 BTC for $0.30, after getting them when the cryptocurrency was trading at $0.06, as he could have sold his coins at $8 apiece. As one BTC is now trading above $61,000, his 1,700 BTC would now be worth over $104 million. A pity indeed.
I wish I had kept my 1,700 BTC @ $0.06 instead of selling them at $0.30, now that they’re $8.00! #bitcoin
— Greg Schoen (@GregSchoen) May 16, 2011
Bitcoin’s rise has been supported by a thriving industry filled with innovation that has already seen cryptocurrency exchanges start trading on the Nasdaq exchange and by institutional investors who recognize that BTC can be used to diversify their portfolios and hedge against inflation.
Earlier this year, El Salvador became the first country in the world to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender with the country’s Bitcoin Law officially coming into effect on Sept. 7. El Salvadorans can use the cryptocurrency through a wallet called Chivo launched by the government that uses the Lightning Network, a layer-two scaling solution.
Speaking to Cointelegraph, Javier Moro, chief product officer at Latin American cryptocurrency exchange Bitso, noted that El Salvador’s move was “rooted in hope for a better future for El Salvadorans,” and its success will depend on the spread of cryptocurrency-related knowledge in the country.
More is yet to come
Earlier in October, the first Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) was launched in the United States. The ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF began trading under the ticker BITO on the New York Stock Exchange. It became the second-most heavily traded fund on record in its debut.
In a statement sent to Cointelegraph, Ron Levy, CEO and co-founder of blockchain consulting firm The Crypto Company, stated that the Bitcoin white paper “laid the groundwork for what would become a decentralized industry beyond what anyone thought was possible.”
The next leap in this space, he said, are “clear laws and regulations around what can and can’t be done with crypto currency.” But, it’s obviously not clear how that may turn out, as all new technological breakthroughs face resistance from established mechanisms.
Brittany Laughlin, executive director at the Stacks Foundation, which bridges decentralized finance (DeFi) and the Bitcoin network, told Cointelegraph that Bitcoin has come a long way from just being a store of value, as it’s “now possible to build smart contracts on Bitcoin, welcoming the millions of BTC holders to the world of DeFi, NFTs and true ownership.”
Notably, Satoshi Nakamoto seemingly predicted that additional blockchains could use tokens, which they called “domain objects” at the time, to represent ownership of assets. Satoshi’s example was for a token representing the right to own a domain for a year.
Finney: “Satoshi, are you endorsing the idea that additional block chains would each create their own flavor of coins, which would trade with bitcoins on exchanges?”
Satoshi: “Right…domain objects (domaincoins?) could represent the right to own a domain for a year.” pic.twitter.com/ZZBUwV65pS
— Balaji Srinivasan (@balajis) July 2, 2021
As Grčar said, humankind has only begun scratching the surface of what Bitcoin and blockchain technology are capable of. So much so, that the developments we have today were seemingly thought of by Bitcoin’s creator, Satoshi Nakamoto.
The Bitcoin white paper has made the idea of a decentralized network viable and proved that even a short nine-page document was able to change the world in ways so radical they may be hard to comprehend even at this point in time.
While it isn’t clear whether more countries will adopt BTC as legal tender in the future, or whether interest for Bitcoin ETFs will wane, it appears clear that Bitcoin is here to stay and serve as both a store of value and medium of exchange, and that’s only 13 years after the idea was first introduced. Imagine what will happen in the next 13 years.
The iconic Bitcoin (BTC) white paper celebrates thirteen years of financial disruption after being first published on Oct. 31, 2008, by an anonymous person or entity named Satoshi Nakamoto.
The white paper, titled Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System, foresaw the need for a peer-to-peer online payment system that is self-governing, secure and limited in quantity. The Bitcoin network was launched on Jan. 03, 2009, having each Bitcoin priced at $0.0008.
While Bitcoin was initially perceived as a threat by traditional financial institutions, thirteen years of community support and a growing user base have made Bitcoin one of the most profitable investments for the Internet age. Today, Bitcoin maintains a stable trading value well above $60k after experiencing a gradual appreciation of 7,749,999,900% ever since its launch.
The Bitcoin white paper proposes a solution to prevent double-spending without the risk of trusting a third party. To do this, it mentions the use of ‘honest’ nodes that confirm transactions by overpowering the bad actors in terms of raw central processing unit (CPU) power of computers.
Interestingly enough, the Bitcoin white paper has 15 ‘honest’ and one ‘dishonest’ mentions, explaining the need for honest nodes to ensure the credibility of each transaction. In the words of Satoshi Nakamoto:
“We have proposed a system for electronic transactions without relying on trust. They [honest nodes] vote with their CPU power, expressing their acceptance of valid blocks by working on extending them and rejecting invalid blocks by refusing to work on them.”
The Bitcoin blockchain has mined block number 707542, which offered a mining reward of 6.25000000 BTC.
As the Bitcoin ecosystem slowly approaches its hard cap or maximum supply of 21 million BTC, the developer community will need to modify the existing rules to incentivize the miners that confirm Bitcoin transactions on the blockchain. The white paper suggests:
“Any needed rules and incentives can be enforced with this consensus mechanism.”
Prominent entrepreneurs from Crypto Twitter such as Anthony Pompliano join in on the celebrations.
Tomorrow is the 13 year anniversary of the Bitcoin Whitepaper.
We are officially launching Bitcoin Pizza in 20 cities with almost 100 locations.
Every dollar of my profits goes to bitcoin developers pic.twitter.com/oh5gHnJ7iP
— Pomp (@APompliano) October 30, 2021
Despite the ongoing resistance from numerous governments and authorities such as China, this year marks the beginning of Bitcoin’s legacy as a legal tender in El Salvador. The long-term effect of Bitcoin on El Salvador’s inflated economy will determine the asset’s mainstream adoption among other jurisdictions.
Related:Crypto is impossible to destroy, says Tesla CEO Elon Musk
The success of Bitcoin and the crypto ecosystems as viable investments continue to attract investors from all walks of life. The world’s richest man, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, recently showed support for cryptocurrencies at the Code Conference in California:
“It is not possible to, I think, destroy crypto, but it is possible for governments to slow down its advancement.”
Musk also believes that “cryptocurrency is fundamentally aimed at reducing the power of a centralized government,” which can be one of the main reasons for Bitcoin’s slow mainstream adoption rate.
Bitcoin is my safe word
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 20, 2020
Musk has also been highly influential in affecting the market price of other cryptocurrencies such Dogecoin (DOGE).
Investors who study Bitcoin (BTC) carefully are eventually convinced to own a stake in the cryptocurrency, according to SkyBridge Capital CEO and founder Anthony Scaramucci.
In a Monday interview with CNBC’s Capital Connection, Scaramucci — who also served a 10-day stint as President Donald Trump’s communications director — urged investors to “do the homework on Bitcoin” and “understand what it is.” He also suggested that investors read the white paper written by anonymous Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto.
Understanding Bitcoin inevitably leads to growing adoption as many prominent investors around the world realize the potential of the cryptocurrency, Scaramucci said:
“Anybody that does the homework ends up investing into it. Look at Ray Dalio, a Bitcoin skeptic, now a Bitcoin investor.”
The executive added that other world-renown investors like Paul Tudor Jones and American billionaire Stanley Druckenmiller have also bought Bitcoin. “These are brilliant guys who did the homework and drew a conclusion that they needed to own a piece of Bitcoin,” he said.
Scaramucci noted that Bitcoin has grown over 100,000% since its inception in January 2009. “If you had one cent in Bitcoin and 99 cents in cash over the last decade, you outperformed everything. Just think about that,” Scaramucci noted.
Related:PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel says he ‘underinvested’ in Bitcoin
Scaramucci’s remarks come as Bitcoin sits near its new all-time highs recorded last week, with BTC trading at $63,277 at the time of writing, according to data from CoinGecko. On Wednesday, Bitcoin hit above $67,000 for the first time in its history. The cryptocurrency was trading around $13,000 just one year ago.
A number of big-name investors around the world claim that Bitcoin is not particularly easy to use. According to major crypto industry investor Tim Draper, Bitcoin’s lack of ease of use is the main impediment to the mass adoption of cryptocurrency. American billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban argued last year that
The unfolding drama surrounding the ownership of the Bitcoin (BTC) whitepaper could very well make its way to the courts, after both sides embroiled in the dispute told Cointelegraph they’re ready to “go all the way.”
On Jan. 21, the owners of two Bitcoin websites were threatened with legal action by lawyers representing Craig Wright, the man who claims to be Bitcoin inventor Satoshi Nakamoto. Wright claims to be the original copyright holder of the Bitcoin whitepaper, and demanded that both sites remove their locally hosted copies of the document on threat of legal action.
One website, Bitcoincore.org, has since removed the whitepaper, reasoning that becoming entangled in a costly legal battle with the litigation-happy Wright would achieve little, and isn’t a hill worth dying on.
However, the owner of Bitcoin.org, which was also targeted by Wright, has so far refused to remove the whitepaper, and said he has no intention of doing so.
Speaking exclusively to Cointelegraph, the pseudonymous developer known as Cobra said he’d be willing to defend himself in court should legal proceedings be brought against him.
“No legal proceedings have actually started, but we’re prepared to go all the way and defend ourselves if it comes down to it.”
Ed Pownall of CoinGeek, who has spoken on behalf of Craig Wright in the past, told Cointelegraph that Cobra and others who refused to comply had 4 options ahead of them:
“Do not respond and do nothing: this will result in Craig issuing court proceedings against them for copyright infringement”
“Respond to our letters and tell us where to go: as above”
“Respond to our letters telling us they are taking down the WP / the publications of the WP from their websites, and they actually do so: no action to take against them”
“Do not respond to our letters but still take down the WP / the publications of the WP from their websites: as per 3”
When presented with this 4-point ultimatum from Wright’s team, Cobra’s response was blunt, appearing to signal a preference for option number 1. He said:
“Seems like what I thought, and we’ll just not respond, f*** them.”
Pownall said that should Cobra fail to respond to legal proceedings, Wright’s counsel would be willing to apply to the courts for a default judgement, where a defendant who fails to respond or offer a defence is judged without trial.
In 2019, Wright attempted to sue Ethereum (ETH) creator Vitalik Buterin for defamation after Buterin ridiculed Wright’s claim of being Satoshi Nakamoto, calling him a fraud. In this instance, Buterin simply didn’t respond to the letter and the deadline eventually ran out.
Wright has previously launched lawsuits against numerous figures in the cryptocurrency space, including Bitcoin podcaster, Peter McCormack, Bitcoin developer, Adam Back, and founder of Bitcoin.com, Roger Ver — all with varying degrees of success.
Craig Wright, the Australian computer scientist who claims to be Bitcoin inventor Satoshi Nakamoto, has threatened legal action against the owners of two Bitcoin (BTC) websites whom he accused of stealing his whitepaper and other intellectual property.
As announced on Jan. 21, Bitcoin.org along with another website, Bitcoincore.org, had received allegations of copyright infringement from Craig Wright’s lawyers. The counsel reportedly claimed that Wright, as Bitcoin inventor Satoshi Nakamoto, was the legal copyright holder of the Bitcoin whitepaper, that he owned the Bitcoin name and trademark, as well as the two websites listed above. The announcement stated:
“Yesterday both Bitcoin.org and Bitcoincore.org received allegations of copyright infringement of the Bitcoin whitepaper by lawyers representing Craig Steven Wright. In this letter, they claim Craig owns the copyright to the paper, the Bitcoin name, and ownership of bitcoin.org.
The announcement continues, “They also claim he is Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin, and the original owner of bitcoin.org. Bitcoin.org and Bitcoincore.org were both asked to take down the whitepaper. We believe these claims are without merit, and refuse to do so.”
But while the owner of Bitcoin.org (a pseudonymous developer known as Cobra) has stated his refusal to be intimidated by the threat of what they’ve called “false allegations”, the owner of Bitcoincore.org has already thrown in the towel.
According to Cobra, their co-accused over at Bitcoincore.org acquiesced to the requests of Craig Wright’s lawyers almost immediately. Cobra’s announcement stated:
“Unfortunately, without consulting us, Bitcoin Core developers scrambled to remove the Bitcoin whitepaper from bitcoincore.org, in response to these allegations of copyright infringement, lending credence to these false claims.
Cobra said the local copy of the whitepaper hosted on Bitcoincore.org was removed within less than two hours, adding a link to the Github modification which shows the change was made:
“The Bitcoin Core website was modified to remove references to the whitepaper, their local copy of the whitepaper PDF was deleted, and with less than 2 hours of public review,
this change was merged.”
All references to the Bitcoin whitepaper have apparently been removed from the Bitcoincore.org website. Cobra declared that this act of self-censorship would only lend credence to the notion that Craig Wright’s claims were legitimate:
“By surrendering in this way, the Bitcoin Core project has lent ammunition to Bitcoin’s enemies, engaged in self-censorship, and compromised its integrity. This surrender will no doubt be weaponized to make new false claims, like that the Bitcoin Core developers ‘know’ CSW to be Satoshi Nakamoto and this is why they acted in this way.”
However, the owner of Bitcoincore.org, and current maintainer of the Bitcoin code, Wladimir J. van der Laan (@orionwl on Twitter), responded quickly, telling his Twitter audience that this issue was not a hill worth dying on:
“So let this be clear: I’m happy to maintain the bitcoin core code, but I will not personally be a martyr for bitcoin, it’s up to you as bitcoiners to protect it.”
Craig Wright has brought several lawsuits against various figures in the cryptocurrency space for in some way refuting the notion that he is Satoshi Nakamoto, and the true proprietor of Bitcoin. None of the cases have been settled in his favor thus far.
Van der Laan appeared to suggest that the easiest course of action was to play ball with Wright’s lawyers, adding that his focus remained on the Bitcoin system itself. He tweeted:
“This thing is about decentralization and distributed systems, not personal macho posturing, i have no interest in that and definitely don’t get paid enough to do so.”
Cobra ended his announcement on Bitcoin.org by reiterating the open-source status of the MIT license under which Bitcoin and its whitepaper were published, stating:
“The Bitcoin whitepaper was included in the original
Bitcoin project files with the project clearly published under the MIT license by Satoshi Nakamoto. We believe there is no doubt we have the legal right to host the Bitcoin whitepaper.”
Cobra said the Bitcoin whitepaper will continue to be hosted on Bitcoin.org, and that they hoped other websites would follow suit in resisting Craig Wright’s attempts at intimidation.
