A UK court has made a significant decision to freeze £6 million of Craig Wright's assets to prevent him from evading legal expenses related to a lawsuit where he asserted that he was Satoshi Nakamoto, the founder of Bitcoin.

This ruling was prompted by reports that Wright had moved assets out of the UK following a previous court dismissal of his claim to be Nakamoto. Specifically, he transferred shares from his company in London to a firm in Singapore on March 18, raising concerns about his intentions.

Judge James Mellor remarked on these actions, expressing serious apprehensions that Wright was trying to avoid the costs and consequences of losing at trial. In response to a request from the Crypto Open Patent Alliance (COPA) to cover their legal costs, which amounted to $8,471,225, the judge imposed a 'worldwide freezing order'.

COPA, founded in 2020, aims to promote the adoption of cryptocurrency technology and eliminate patents as obstacles to growth. Members of COPA include prominent entities like Coinbase, Block, Meta, and MicroStrategy.

Wright, an Australian computer scientist, has been involved in copyright disputes related to the Bitcoin network by leveraging his claimed identity as Nakamoto. He went as far as demanding the removal of the Bitcoin white paper from two websites in January 2021.

COPA challenged Wright's claims by filing a lawsuit in April 2021, disputing his assertions of owning the Bitcoin copyright. The case involved input from early Bitcoin developers, leading to a verdict on March 14 of this year that strongly suggested Wright was not the real Nakamoto.

In 2023, Wright escalated his conflict with Bitcoin by suing 13 Bitcoin Core developers and various companies over alleged copyright infringements. The Bitcoin Legal Defense Fund opposed these lawsuits, citing the strain and financial burden they impose on Bitcoin's development.

Despite facing backlash for registering the Bitcoin white paper and code for copyright in the US in 2019, the white paper remains protected under an MIT open-source license, allowing for free modification and reuse, thus safeguarding it against further copyright claims by Wright.

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