According to a January 24, 2024 statement, Dr. Craig Steven Wright recently proposed a non-negotiable settlement offer that relinquishes many of the rights he would have enjoyed as Satoshi Nakamoto in exchange for implicit recognition as the creator of Bitcoin in a bid to bring an end to the long-winding legal challenge to his intellectual property rights claims as Bitcoin creator.
The Australian computer scientist published the settlement offer on his official website, calling on all opposing parties to drop their respective cases in exchange for an ‘irrevocable license in perpetuity’ to all opposing parties on the BTC, BCH, and ABC databases.
Dr. Craig Wright is a controversial Australian computer scientist claiming to be the anonymous creator of Bitcoin. The claim is widely disputed and regarded as false by most media outlets and top crypto community members.
All Bitcoin databases are free, open, and decentralized; no individual or organization owns or controls them, making any proposed licenses by Dr. Craig Wright automatically null and void.
Wright vs COPA
Dr. Craig Wright, in three different lawsuits, sued the Bitcoin Core Developers, Coinbase, and Payward (the company behind Kraken). Alleging intellectual property theft, among other claims, the Australian scientist sought damages totaling several hundred billion pounds.
Shortly after the lawsuits, the defendants came together as the Crypto Open Patent Alliance (COPA) and countersued Craig Wright, seeking to disprove the claims that he is Satoshi Nakamoto.
With no conclusive agreement between Dr. Craig Wright and members of COPA, the case will (expectedly) go to trial on February 5, 2024.
Despite claiming to be the anonymous Satoshi Nakamoto, Dr. Craig Wright has failed to provide conclusive evidence and has instead found himself in the middle of conspiracies of forgery and falsehood.
About the Craig Wright Proposal
Dr. Craig Wright published the settlement offer on his official website, offering to drop all the existing legal battles to spend more time with his family and focus on developing his BSV project. The settlement offer applies to all three lawsuits relating to the intellectual property rights of the Bitcoin database, with opponents including the Crypto Open Patent Alliance (COPA), Coinbase Global, and Payward.
The offer demanded all claimants, including Dr. Craig Wright, to stop pursuing database rights or copyright claims regarding the BTC, BCH, and ABC databases. In exchange, he (Craig Wright) grants a perpetual and irrevocable license to parties in the suit to use, exploit, assign, or license the databases involved.
As part of the settlement offer, Dr. Craig Wright required the opposition (COPA and co.) to agree that Satoshi Nakamoto’s original Bitcoin vision is to facilitate ‘small casual transactions’ only.
The settlement also prevents all associated parties and their affiliates from creating new copies or forks of the Bitcoin database while requiring them to (actively) ensure no third parties do the same. Also, neither the opposing nor third parties should circumnavigate the restriction by creating a new Bitcoin database.
Dr. Craig Wright also demanded that all parties involved in lawsuits against him must immediately cease all media campaigns against him and publicly acknowledge the intended purpose of Bitcoin as providing micropayments.
The Australian computer scientist gave all interested parties until January 31, 2024, to respond to his settlement offer.
What Will Come Next?
On January 25, 2024, the Crypto Open Patent Alliance released a statement in response to the Dr. Craig Wright settlement offer, rejecting it (in its entirety) for being mischievously designed to allow the Australian computer scientist to continue suing people over the Bitcoin database.
“Hard pass on that “settlement.” Just like Craig Wright forges documents and doesn’t quite tell the truth, his description of the settlement offer isn’t quite accurate either – it comes with loopholes that would allow him to sue people all over again.” COPA said in its short response to the offer in a cryptic January 24 post on X (formerly known as Twitter).
With the non-negotiable settlement offer (essentially) asking all opposing parties to (implicitly) endorse him as the creator of Bitcoin, it is unlikely that COPA will agree to anything in his proposal.
The irrevocable and perpetual licenses also have no ground in reality, as he is not the owner of Bitcoin, to begin with—they are not his to give!
