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Peter McCormack was ordered to pay Craig S. Wright £1 in damages.
“A deliberately false case”
Craig S. Wright will receive £1 in damages for his defamation case against Peter McCormack, a High Court judge has ruled.
The press summary as the case was published online today, revealing Judge Chamberlain’s finding that McCormack ’caused serious harm’ to Wright’s reputation by posting and redistributing content questioning his ties to Satoshi Nakamoto.
Wright is the creator of Bitcoin SV, a relatively unknown Bitcoin Cash fork that bills itself as “the original Bitcoin”. For several years, Wright claimed he was the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin, although his claims have met with widespread skepticism within the cryptocurrency community as he never produced the private key for a known wallet. to belong to Satoshi Nakamoto. One of Wright’s most vocal questioners has been McCormack, a self-proclaimed Bitcoiner with one of the largest online followings in the space.
As the press digest noted, McCormack has repeatedly used his social media channels to refute Wright’s claims that he is Satoshi Nakamoto over the past few years. The case centered on McCormack’s various pushbacks against Wright, including a 2019 video chat in which he said, “Craig Wright is a fucking liar, and he’s an impostor; and he’s a moron; he is not Satoshi.
Although Chamberlain admitted that McCormack had reasonable grounds to question Wright’s claims, he said he also caused significant damage to Wright’s reputation. However, he also noted that he rejected several pieces of evidence that Wright presented. Summarizing the case, the judge said Wright had pushed “a deliberately false case” with “deliberately false evidence” and would therefore only receive a nominal sum of £1.
McCormack commented on the matter shortly after the notes surfaced online. “I would like to thank my attorneys for their diligent work on the case. I would also like to thank Judge Chamberlain for this result. We are very satisfied with his discoveries. Please note that the process is not complete and therefore I will not comment further on this,” he said. tweeted.
Wright has been embroiled in several court cases over the years after publicly stating that he created Bitcoin. Prior to the case against McCormack, he was ordered to pay $143 million to W&K Information Defense Research LLC after being accused of stealing Bitcoin-related assets from the company.