On Thursday, court papers showed that Magnus Granath, better known as the Twitter handle “Hodlonaut,” had prevailed in a case he had filed against Craig Wright in Norway. Wright has claimed his identity as Bitcoin’s fictitious inventor, Satoshi Nakamoto, for quite some time. Although his claims have been openly contested by Hodlonaut and others.
“I won. Welcome to law,” Hodlonaut tweeted, an apparent reference to Wright’s now-famous “welcome to law” threat. Which he made against Hodlonaut and numerous others in 2019 after launching a series of defamation cases.
Satoshi Nakamoto Remains Unknown
As a preemptive strike against a potential defamation action in the U.K. Hodlonaut launched the case in Norway in an attempt to demonstrate that the countless tweets he published about Wright and Wright’s Nakamoto allegations were, in fact, not defamatory. The Norwegian trial started on September 12, last month.
According to a translation of the Norwegian judgement. Hodlonaut sent satirical tweets about Wright in 2019 in which he branded him a “pathetic scammer,” “cringe,” “clearly mentally ill,” and “fraud.”
Wright testified that such remarks are “obviously very defamatory” throughout the trial. There seems to be a sizable Hodlonaut fanbase. When you click on the link for the contribution page on the website DefendingBTC. You’ll see that over 71 Bitcoin and $74,000 have been contributed to help cover the bitcoiner’s legal fees.
In 2019, Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao tweeted, “Craig Wright is not Satoshi,” in favour of Hodlonaut. A law professor and lawyer named Andrew Rossow, who is acquainted with the Holdonaut case, told Thursday’s verdict was “to be expected,” since Wright’s allegations “were of such a bold, controversial nature, that it almost inevitably welcomes pushback and disagreement.”