Wright or wrong: Satoshi's second coming?
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Wright or wrong: Satoshi’s second coming?
Craig Wright, the Australian computer scientist who is the most prominent and disputed claimant to be the Bitcoin inventor Satoshi Nakamoto, has registered a copyright for the famous white paper proposal for the world’s first cryptocurrency.
Then Wright proceeded to widely distribute a press release that said “the U.S. Copyright Office recognize Wright as the author — under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto — of both the white paper and code.”
The man was swiftly shot down by the agency, “The Copyright Office does not investigate the truth of any statement made” and “does not investigate whether there is a provable connection between the claimant and the pseudonymous author.”
That’s not surprising. All it takes to register a copyright is $55 and Internet. It’s the same as the purported proof to be Nakamoto that Wright gave publicly. It was flimsy to the point of being amateurish. Wright should know that either does not pass muster.
So why did Wright flaunt crap as gold?
There’s no answer to that. But let me direct you to this underrated long read in the London Review of Books by a famous author who spent six months with Wright. He’s a pretty weird guy to begin with.
Regardless, next week in Toronto, Wright is expected to give “more evidence” at a conference.
Canada: hark, the taxman cometh for you
In January, the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) began using Chainalysis and CipherTrace, two American blockchain compliance and investigation platforms, to help decide which cryptocurrency-related files to audit. The CRA hopes to step up this fledgling effort.
World: Bitfiniex catches breath in troubles
The embattled exchange Bitfinex wins a battle in its legal troubles with regulators. The matter involves its Tether cryptocurrency, allegedly used to unduly prop up Bitcoin prices.
Facebook will launch its cryptocurrency, referred to internally as GlobalCoin in about a dozen countries by the first quarter of 2020. It is unclear what those countries are, but Bank of England has been consulted.
The messaging app Telegram will launch its Telegram Open Network (TON) in the third quarter of 2019. The network, which uses its cryptocurrency, GRAM, is decentralized application platform not unlike Ethereum.
Price action: going up, but not by much
Bitcoin is expected to rise further, but not by much, analysis says. Bitcoin is at $8,014 (C$10,769) as of 10 a.m. Sunday, Mountain Time, up about 1 per cent for the week. Beginning just under $8,000, the world’s biggest cryptocurrency breached that level during the week and largely maintained it, before slipping Sunday.
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