Peter McCormack’s Legal Defense Turns Spicy in Ongoing Craig Wright Lawsuit

For everybody who is following blockchain-related spicy news, the argument between podcaster Peter McCormack and the self-proclaimed Bitcoin inventor Craig Wright is not something new, but recently the situation got even fuzzier. It all started when McCormack called Wright a “fraud” and Wright sued him for slander in March.

This week McCormack’s layers struck back, stating that Wright by that time was “wholly discredited”, long before McCormack’s allegations. In addition, Wright was accused of being “hugely wasteful” of the court’s time as he is still rejecting to offer cryptographic proof that he is indeed who he claims to be. Wright’s claims were also described as “cynical and abusive use of the court process,” followed by a request from the defense that if Wight doesn’t provide any evidence before the launch of the trial – the court should strike the case out.

If we turn the tape back to March, Wright filed a suit against McCormack, Ethereum Founder Vitalik Buterin and Bitcoin Cash backer Roger Ver and all of them because of accusations that he is just posing as Bitcoin inventor Satoshi Nakamoto. According to a UK judge, Wright failed to convince that Roger Ver hurt the “creator of Bitcoin in any concrete way. “

In the filed response to the England and Wales High Court on August 12, McCormack’s lawyers noted that their client’s accusations were only in the interest of the public. As a matter of fact Wright’s name was already suffering from a couple of instances when he kind of sabotaged himself. We all remember the big fail he had in 2016 trying to bring “cryptographic proof” to the public and his own confessions that only a few people would believe him.  

If Wright is really Satoshi, he has a couple of ways to show real cryptographic proof of his work. Sending a Bitcoin from Nakamoto’s wallet or signing a message with his public keys are publicly valid reasons to believe him however, none of that has happened since his self-proclamation in 2015.

Back in April, Calvin Ayre who is supporting Wright posted this interesting tweet:

If the suit falls apart, Wright’s reputation will suffer substantial damage and in addition, his “fork” of Bitcoin – Bitcoin SV – might see its price drop to a negative record. Even now there are claims that Wright is using this legal outplaying to increase the value of Bitcoin SV.

According to McCormack’s defense the UK is not the right place for the lawsuit, as Wright has very little influence in the country, as we remember Ver dismissed his lawsuit in a similar way. In the meantime, Wright is involved in a couple of other lawsuits, including one in Florida where the brother of his business partner Dave Kleiman is expecting to receive half of the 1 million Bitcoins that were mined in the early days of the cryptocurrency.

McCormack’s defense is publicly available here.