He Says He Invented Bitcoin and Is Suing Those Who Doubt Him

At a convention on digital currency, rarely does an audience Q&A session include a question as incendiary as, 'Why is this fraud allowed to speak at this conference?' But that's how a discussion about Bitcoin ended up last year in Seoul. From a report: The supposed fraud is Craig Wright, an Australian-born technologist who gained notoriety three years ago when he declared himself the inventor of Bitcoin. The provocateur is Vitalik Buterin, a baby-faced Russian-Canadian programmer who helped create another popular digital currency called Ether. No one disputes Buterin's role in Ether; many reject Wright's claim to be Satoshi Nakamoto, the mysterious genius behind Bitcoin.

Wright is a comic-book supervillain for some in the world of cryptocurrency. Buterin's rant was applauded by a handful of people at the conference, including one of the panelists and a man on the sidelines wearing a vest and metallic fiber shirt. It had the feel of an impromptu live performance of a Twitter flame war. The whole thing lasted 90 seconds. Footage recorded from the crowd provided an amusing YouTube video and sparked a fresh round of tweets mocking Wright. That appeared to be that, until a year later when Buterin received a letter from Wright's attorney. The legal notice, dated April 12, said Wright intends to sue Buterin in the U.K. for defamation. Less than a week later, Wright filed suit with similar claims against a podcaster named Peter McCormack, seeking 100,000 pounds ($129,000) in damages. And on May 2, Wright's lawyers served Roger Ver, an early Bitcoin investor, at a cryptocurrency meet-up in London.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.