Wei Liu claims authorship of bitcoin white paper just to show anyone can register a copyright

Following the copyright registrations for the bitcoin white paper and code filed by Craig Wright in April, another copyright registration for the white paper has been made by Wei Liu, CoinDesk reported.

Details on the United States Copyright Office website show a second copyright registration (number TX0008726120) dated May 24, 2019, which indicates Liu, a Chinese citizen, is claiming to have authored the white paper under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto.

Speaking to CoinDesk, Liu, CEO of crypto market research firm Coinsummer, said that his motive behind filing the registration was to show that “copyright is technically meaningless in this context.”

“I filed it just to let people know anyone can register a copyright. Everyone can be Satoshi Nakamoto,” Liu said.

While the U.S. Copyright Office granted copyrights for the original Bitcoin white paper and bitcoin source code to Wright, it had issued a clarification stating that it only receives applications for registration, and it is not its job to investigate the truth of the statement made.

Responding to the latest filing from Liu, Wright told Decrypt:

“Now we can both show our credentials and see who ends up wearing an orange suit!”

One could expect the matter to reach court now. The Copyright Office had also said that if more than one person claims the exact same work, it does not have an opposition procedure to handle the issue. In cases of such disputes, the matter is heard before federal courts.