Craig Wright Again Claims Authorship of Bitcoin White Paper

Craig Wright, the Australian entrepreneur who controversially says he's bitcoin's anonymous inventor Satoshi Nakamoto, has made another attempt to cement that claim in the public domain.

On Thursday, Wright posted the bitcoin white paper on the scientific journal hosting site, SSRN, citing himself as the author on Aug. 21, 2008.

The SSRN (formerly the Social Science Research Network), is a repository and international journal for the sharing of scholarly research. The service is owned by major publishing house Elsevier, and allows paper authors (or those claiming to be) to upload pdfs of their work.

The hosting site does not peer-review papers that are uploaded, according to its website. Uploads are reviewed by SSRN staff "to ensure that the paper is a part of the scholarly discourse in its subject area." It also asks authors to self-certify that the information submitted is correct.

Wright's posting of the bitcoin white paper, the authorship of which has yet to be conclusively proven, comes after he filed registrations with the U.S. Copyright Office to support his claim of authorship over the original bitcoin code and white paper in May.

Soon after the news caused uproar in the bitcoin community, the Copyright Office released a statement to dispel the notion that it had officially “recognized” anyone as the inventor of bitcoin.

“As a general rule, when the Copyright Office receives an application for registration, the claimant certifies as to the truth of the statements made in the submitted materials. The Copyright Office does not investigate the truth of any statement made,” the office said at the time.

Similarly, Wright's posting of Satoshi's white paper on the SSRN is unlikely to give his claim to have invented bitcoin any more validity, but seems to be an attempt to populate the web with authoritative-looking instances of his claim.

Some commentators have further claimed that the metadata of the paper posted by Wright has been altered to display a different date of creation.

Craig Wright image via CoinDesk archives