6 Facts You Didn’t Know About Craig Wright – The Man Who Claimed to be Satoshi Nakamoto

Many in the crypto space have undoubtedly already heard of the name Craig Steven Wright, who currently acts as the chief scientist at nChain. While Wright has been quite a controversial figure in the world of digital currencies, he had had quite a colorful life even before he took the spotlight in the crypto world.

Many are quick to call him a scammer, while others believe that he is the real creator of Bitcoin (BTC). Far from trying to silence such rumors, Wright even confirmed them himself. Due to his life leading from one controversy to another, he remains quite a fascinating figure, regardless of whether his claims are true or not. With that in mind, here are seven facts about Craig Wright, the self-proclaimed creator of Bitcoin, and the alleged man behind the name Satoshi Nakamoto.

1) He was in jail

Back in 2004, Wright was convicted of contempt of court by the Supreme Court of New South Wales. After he breached an injunction that prevented him from approaching customers of DeMorgan Information Security Systems, Wright was sentenced to 28 days in jail. Later on, his sentence was suspended in exchange for performing 250 hours of community service.

2) His education itself was wrapped in controversy

Wright originally graduated from high school back in 1987. He then went on to study computer science at Charles Sturt University in Australia, where he claimed to have received a Ph.D. Wright also claimed to have a doctorate in theology, comparative religious and classical studies, which he supposedly achieved with a dissertation called “Gnarled roots of a creation theory” in 2003. However, he never revealed where he got the doctorate, and later on, the CSU stated that he received two master’s degrees, but not a doctorate.

The issue remained unresolved until he was finally awarded a doctorate from the CSU in February 2017.

3) He is an IT expert

Wright became quite experienced in the IT sector, as he moved from company to company. He worked for OzEmail, Mahindra & Mahindra, K-Mart, as well as Australian Securities Exchange. He also designed the architecture for Lasseter’s Online, which is considered to be the first online casino in the world. He also founded the company called DeMorgan Ltd., and he became a head of Panopticrypt Pty Ltd. He was also a systems manager for the accounting company called BDO Kendalls, as well as a CEO at Hotwire Preemptive Intelligence Group.

4) He was rumored to be Satoshi Nakamoto in 2015

In the years following Bitcoin’s launch, more and more people started developing an interest in digital currencies, and more importantly, Bitcoin’s mysterious creator — Satoshi Nakamoto. A lot of people were suspected of being Nakamoto, even though all of them either denied such claims or the lack of evidence soon made it clear that Nakamoto’s identity will remain a mystery. Wright was among them as well, with the rumors of him being behind the name of Satoshi emerging on December 8th, 2015, after Wired Magazine and Gizmodo published such claims almost instantaneously.

Gizmodo’s article which claimed that Wright is Satoshi depicted him as only one half of Nakamoto, with the other half supposedly being Wright’s friend, computer forensics analyst and cyber-security expert David Kleiman, who died in 2013. Gizmodo’s alleged proof of this included documents which were supposedly obtained by a hacker who broke into Wright’s email accounts. Following the publications, Wright took down his accounts and disappeared for several months.

5) Wright admitted being Satoshi Nakamoto

After being inactive for several months, Wright finally returned to the online world on May 2nd, 2016. However, his return was not a modest one, and instead of denying the claims of him being Satoshi, he decided to accept the role and publicly declare that the rumors are true. However, he was unable to prove his claims, even though he did attempt to release crypto keys that were allegedly created at the same time as Bitcoin itself. However, Dan Kaminsky, an American security research managed to prove that the keys were fake and that his whole claim was a fraud.

6) He started the famous Bitcoin Cash Hash War

Even though his claims were found to be false, and his proof a scam, Wright never indeed admitted that he was lying about being Satoshi. Instead, he continued to claim that he is the individual behind the pseudonym. He even started the famous Hash War between Bitcoin Cash ABC to Bitcoin Cash SV that happened after Bitcoin Cash hard-fork in mid-November 2018. However, with SV being short for “Satoshi’s Vision.” During the Hash War, Craig, as the front leader of Bitcoin Cash SV threatened that the miners would make a 51% attack against Bitcoin Cash ABC. Eventually, it didn’t happen and both of the Coins continued to exist.