Australian who falsely claimed to have invented bitcoin is found in contempt of UK court

LONDON — An Australian computer scientist who falsely claimed to be the founder of the bitcoin cryptocurrency was found Thursday to be in contempt of an order of London’s High Court and was sentenced to 12 months in prison, suspended for two years. In a judgment on Thursday, Justice James Mellor said Craig Wright had committed “a clear breach” of the order in March that barred him from launching or threatening further legal action related to bitcoin, which has seen a meteoric rise in value since its launch around the time of the global financial crisis in 2008. Lawyers for the Crypto Open Patent Alliance, or COPA, a group of technology and cryptocurrency firms, told the court on Wednesday that Wright had issued claims worth more than 900 billion pounds in October from companies and individuals related to intellectual property rights connected to bitcoin. The organization argued that Wright’s actions constituted contempt of court as he had been ordered to refrain from making any claims related to bitcoin in March, when Mellor ruled that he was not, as he claimed, the mysterious creator of the digital currency, nor the author of the initial versions of the bitcoin software.