Why Everyone From Square to Facebook Is Now Hosting the Bitcoin White Paper
The uploads come in response to legal threats by Craig Wright.
Jan 21, 2021 at 5:30 p.m. UTC
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Some of the Bitcoin community's most prominent voices (and also Facebook subsidiary Novi) are now hosting the Bitcoin white paper.
The move follows legal threats from nChain Chief Scientist Craig Wright levied against the nonprofit that has long hosted crypto's foundational document.
"Yesterday, both Bitcoin.org and Bitcoincore.org received allegations of copyright infringement of the Bitcoin white paper by lawyers representing Craig Steven Wright," the nonprofit wrote Thursday morning.
Bitcoin was created by the pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto, who has yet to be conclusively identified. Wright has repeatedly made claims that he is Satoshi.
Seemingly in response to the takedown notice, a wave of crypto firms have published the white paper on their websites. As of press time they include:
- The crypto arm of payments giant Square
- Bitcoin development funder Chaincode Labs
- Crypto venture fund Paradigm
- Policy think-tank Coin Center
- Facebook stablecoin subsidiary Novi
- Bitcoin financial services firm NYDIG
- Self-custody app Casa
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Bitcoincore.org appears to have taken down its copy of the Bitcoin white paper. The PDF is still live, however, on Bitcoin.org.
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