‘Everyone Can Be Satoshi’: Liu Breaks Silence on Contest of Craig Wright’s Bitcoin Copyright

The latest person to claim authorship of the bitcoin code created under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto isn’t really about claiming to be its original creator, rather he’s just out to satirize that such a thing could even be attempted at all.

Wei Liu, CEO of Coinsummer, a crypto market research firm, and former CEO of crypto fund MarvelousPeach Capital, registered a copyright for “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System” last week, it was revealed today, making him the second individual to copyright the famous document. We tracked him down in Beijing to get clarity on his attempt to wrest to control or, most likely, comment on Craig S. Wright’s white paper registration.

Liu is a crypto entrepreneur from China and said his goal in registering the document was to point out that copyright is technically meaningless in this context. To be clear, Liu chose not to answer whether or not he is Satoshi Nakamoto when asked by CoinDesk.

He said:

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

“Now we can both show our credentials and see who ends up wearing an orange suit!” Craig Wright told Decrypt in response to our initial story.

Liu was the former COO of F2Pool and started bitcoin mining in 2011.

Liu’s filing is dated May 24, a few days after Wright registered his copyright. Liu retweeted a Weibo post on Thursday to clarify it was him who filed the second copyright registration after some Craig Wright supporters indicated online that “only CSW can register a copyright, no one else can.”

Clearly, as we see, someone else can.

Wolfie Zhao contributed reporting.

Image via Shutterstock

Editor’s note: This article has been updated to clarify Wei Liu’s did not comment on CSW on his Weibo posts. He retweeted a different user’s Weibo post which called out CSW to be “cult.”