Who owns bitcoin.org?

Bitcoin.org is owned by a pseudonymous figure who goes by Cobra (often written Cøbra), whose real identity has never been made public. The site runs as an independent open source project, and it describes itself as unofficial. Its history explains why one anonymous person ended up holding such a well-known domain.

Who owns the bitcoin.org domain?

The Bitcoin Wiki records that bitcoin.org was registered on August 18, 2008, a few months before the bitcoin white paper was published. Bitcoin.org's About page says Satoshi Nakamoto and early contributor Martti Malmi originally registered and owned it.

When Satoshi stepped away from the project, the About page says, ownership was passed to additional people who were separate from the bitcoin developers. The stated aim was to spread responsibility so no single person or group could easily control the project. Today the page names Cobra as owner and says final publishing authority rests with the co-owners, without naming them. For background on the network's pseudonymous creator, see who created bitcoin.

Who runs bitcoin.org?

Day-to-day changes go through public pull requests on GitHub and are handled by co-maintainers, according to the About page. The site lists past sponsors, the Bitcoin Foundation in 2014 and 2015 and Paxful in 2018, and takes donations.

Control has been disputed. Decrypt reported that in June 2020 Cobra removed the long-time maintainer, Will Binns, after a disagreement over whether Binns held any ownership claim. Binns disputed the removal.

In 2021 the site was pulled into a legal fight. Cointelegraph reported that in June 2021 a UK court gave Craig Wright a default judgment ordering bitcoin.org to take down the white paper, after Cobra chose not to defend the case. In 2024 the UK High Court ruled in a separate case that Wright is not Satoshi Nakamoto. AIPPI's summary of that ruling notes that the court also set aside the default judgment against the anonymous host of the paper on bitcoin.org.

Is bitcoin.org official?

No. The About page says directly that bitcoin.org is not bitcoin's official website, and that nobody can speak with authority in bitcoin's name. Bitcoin has no company behind it, a point covered in who controls cryptocurrency.

The site is also separate from Bitcoin Core, the main node software. Bitcoin.org says Core was released through it between 2011 and 2013. Bitcoin Core now has its own site, and Bitcoin.com News reported that in July 2018 Core's maintainers removed links to bitcoin.org from it. One developer said Core should not depend on a website outside the project's control.

Because anyone can build a site that looks official, it is worth checking the exact web address before downloading wallet software from any bitcoin page.