Craig Steven Wright

Early life and education

Wright graduated from high school in 1987 from Padua College in Brisbane. Wright was an adjunct lecturer in computer science and researcher at Charles Sturt University, where he was working on his second PhD entitled "The quantification of Information systems risk". He completed 18 SANS Institute courses and was the world's first person to receive GIAC certification in Compliance and Audits, and was a SANS Institute Mentor. He holds GSEMalware and GSECompliance certifications, among others, from GIAC.

Wright says his PhD is in theology: comparative religious and classical studies, achieved in 2003 with a dissertation titled “Gnarled roots of a creation theory”. Wright had also listed a PhD in computer science from Charles Sturt University on his LinkedIn profile. But the university told Forbes that it only awarded him two master's degrees and not a doctorate.

Wright has written or co-written several books, including The IT Regulatory and Standards Compliance Handbook: How to Survive Information Systems Audit and Assessments. Wright has been a trustee of the Uniting Church in New South Wales.

Career and businesses

Wright worked in information technology for various companies, including OzEmail, K-Mart and the Australian Securities Exchange, as well as working as a security consultant for Mahindra & Mahindra. He designed the architecture for possibly the world's first online casino, Lasseter's Online (based in Alice Springs, Northern Territory), which went online in 1999. He was the information systems manager for the accounting firm BDO Kendalls.

In 2004, Wright was convicted of contempt of court by the Supreme Court of New South Wales. He was sentenced to 28 days in jail for breaching an injunction that prevented him from approaching customers of DeMorgan Information Security Systems, which he resigned from in 2003. The sentence was suspended on condition of performing 250 hours of community service. After appealing the decision, the ruling was upheld in 2005 and also in a subsequent appeal to the High Court of Australia in 2006.

Wright was the CEO of the technology firm Hotwire Preemptive Intelligence Group (Hotwire PE), which planned to launch Denariuz Bank, the world's first bitcoin-based bank, though it encountered regulatory difficulties with the Australian Tax Office and failed in 2014. Wright is the founder of cryptocurrency company DeMorgan Ltd., which received $54 million AUD in tax incentives via AusIndustry. He is also the founder of the cybersecurity and computer forensics company Panopticrypt Pty Ltd.

Bitcoin

In December 2015, two parallel investigations by Wired and Gizmodo alleged that Wright may have been the inventor of bitcoin. Subsequent reporting, however, raised serious concerns that Wright was engaged in an elaborate hoax.

Hours after Wired published their allegations, Wright's home in Gordon, New South Wales and an associated business premise in Ryde, Sydney were raided by the Australian Federal Police. According to the AFP, the raid was part of an Australian Tax Office investigation.

On 2 May 2016, Wright publicly claimed to be the creator of bitcoin. This claim was corroborated by Bitcoin Foundation founding director Jon Matonis in a blog post, stating "For cryptographic proof in my presence, Craig signed and verified a message using the private key from block #1 newly-generated coins and from block #9 newly-generated coins (the first transaction to Hal Finney)." The Bitcoin Core project released a statement on Twitter saying "There is currently no publicly available cryptographic proof that anyone in particular is bitcoin's creator." Bitcoin developer Jeff Garzik agreed that evidence provided by Wright does not prove anything, and security researcher Dan Kaminsky in his blog concluded Wright's claim was a scam. Jordan Pearson and Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai said that "Wright simply reused an old signature from a bitcoin transaction performed in 2009 by Satoshi."

Afterwards, Wright said that he decided not to present any further evidence to prove that he is the creator of bitcoin. In a message posted on his website, Wright wrote:

I believed that I could do this. I believed that I could put the years of anonymity and hiding behind me. But, as the events of this week unfolded and I prepared to publish the proof of access to the earliest keys, I broke. I do not have the courage. I cannot. When the rumours began, my qualifications and character were attacked. When those allegations were proven false, new allegations have already begun. I know now that I am not strong enough for this. I know that this weakness will cause great damage to those that have supported me, and particularly to Jon Matonis and Gavin Andresen. I can only hope that their honour and credibility is not irreparably tainted by my actions. They were not deceived, but I know that the world will never believe that now. I can only say I’m sorry. And goodbye.

Earlier in an exclusive interview with BBC, Wright had promised to give "extraordinary proof to an extraordinary claim."