Judge rules Craig Wright is not Satoshi Nakamoto

https://cointelegraph.com/news/craig-wright-not-satoshi-nakamoto

by jc_811 • 2 years ago

65 30 2 years ago

cointelegraph.com

yieldcrv• 2 years ago

I don’t understand why courts even entertain this guy

Shouldn’t he have been locked up for contempt and perjury like 100 times for this stunt?

Shouldn’t his pathological lying gotten cases dismissed, or himself committed into an institution involuntarily?

seanhunter3• 2 years ago

He was the respondant in this lawsuit. The plaintiff (copa) was seeking injunctive relief to get him to stop saying he was Satoshi because he basically goes around the world doing it.

nullc3• 2 years ago

That isn't quite accurate.

This was a joint trial for a preliminary issue in two cases.

In one case Wright brought a claim seeking "hundreds of billions of pounds" in damages against volunteer open source contributors to Bitcoin on the basis that their use and distribution of Bitcoin violate his database rights in the Bitcoin blockchain, Copyright in the Bitcoin whitepaper, and copyright in the bitcoin file format.

In the other case The Crypto Open Patent alliance (COPA) sought a declaratory judgement on behalf of its members who had been threatened with litigation by Wright for distributing the Bitcoin whitepaper.

COPA's request for declaratory judgement was subsequent to Wright bringing a similar claim against the operator of Bitcoin.org (the original Bitcoin website) and securing a default judgement against them because by policy the UK will not allow an anonymous party to present a defense, resulting in an order against Bitcoin.org to prohibit it from distributing the bitcoin whitepaper in the UK. Wright had also previously brought defamation claims against a number of private individuals for simply saying Wright isn't Satoshi, so the legal threats that motivated and justified COPA's declaratory relief weren't fanciful, but both serious and chilling.

nullc3• 2 years ago

I don’t understand why courts even entertain this guy

There are a number of protections against spurious litigation, -- though it seems like there are more in the US than the UK. Unfortunately, some are defeated by simply being willing to lie arbitrarily others are defeated by the claimant not being poor. E.g. summary judgements are sought on the basis that the non-movants facts are true. So you can escape your case being discarded on a summary basis by being sure to allege whatever lies are required to keep your case alive.

Courts often dispel kook cases often on the basis that they haven't complied with technical formalities. If you're able to pay for high powered representation these hurdles can be cleared.

Shouldn’t he have been locked up for contempt and perjury like 100 times for this stunt?

Perjury is very rarely punished directly. Generally the punishment for perjury is that you lose your case.

committed into an institution involuntarily

I've seen no evidence that Wright is unable to tell the truth. He tells lies that boost his ego and benefit him financially. His conduct is criminal. Perhaps, as is often the case for criminals, there is some underlying personality disorder or psychological malfunction that pushes them in this direction, but who knows.

Wright's fraud appears to have begun in a fairly boring way: Since at least 2003 he had engaged in fairly pedestrian tax fraud-- claiming fraudulent R&D tax credits and GST (sales tax) refunds. It appears that over time he became more and more bold with his claims until they finally caught the attention of authorities. Everything since has just been one lie after another to cover up the current.

I find it pretty offensive, -- right now GST fraud is a big deal in AU with now billions estimated being stolen per year. The ATO is putting up videos on their site of raiding the homes of people obviously living in public housing who stole a few thousand dollars. Wright stole millions and attempted to steal tens of millions and has since been living the high life in London, issuing violent threats and vexatious litigation and basically being a huge ass. But perhaps I'm biased, given that I'm one of his litigation targets.

In any case, it's often the case for conmen that their scheme only ends when its finally grown too big for them to grow any larger. When that happens people ask why wasn't it stopped before and the answer is just that at the prior scale the con was able to evade the consequences... but eventually their luck or their pool of ready victims ran out.

To make an example in this case-- you'd think this could have been dispelled with quickly by the court simply ordering him to produce signatures with Satoshi's keys since he's claimed to have done that before (but the one public example was a fake, just a signature copied off the blockchain). But Wright claimed that for inconsistently described reasons he destroyed the keys... buying himself a few more years.

Mistletoe• 2 years ago

Of course he isn’t. When will he go to jail for wasting everyone’s time with this crap and committing perjury?

ablation• 2 years ago

"Dr. Wright has been shown to have lied on an extraordinary scale. […] He has invented an entire biographical history, producing one tranche after another of forged documents to support it."

Ouch. He has been shown to be a high-output fabulist, as everyone suspected.

Tomte• 2 years ago

The court did not say that. The other party said that about Wright.

seanhunter3• 2 years ago

The court hasn't issued a written judgement yet but here's what the judge actually did say:

   “... having considered all the evidence and submissions presented to me in this trial, I’ve reached the conclusion that the evidence is overwhelming,” Mellor said.

   “First, that Dr Wright is not the author of the bitcoin white paper. Second, Dr Wright is not the person who adopted or operated under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto in the period 2008 to 2011.

   “Third, Dr Wright is not the person who created the bitcoin system. And, fourth, he is not the author of the initial versions of the bitcoin software.”

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/mar/14/australia...

rideontime2• 2 years ago

Having watched most of the trial, I expect him to use similar language in his written ruling.

jdoliner• 2 years ago

The galaxy brain take is that Craig Wright actually is Satoshi Nakamoto and his inept attempts to prove his identity is merely another layer of op-sec. After this ruling anyone who even attempts to reveal his true identity will be dismissed and ridiculed.

kstrauser2• 2 years ago

I’m blissfully ignorant of most of this debacle, but wouldn’t it be easy for the real Satoshi to prove his(?) identity, say with crypto keys only they would have?

Natfan• 2 years ago

Interesting that you used he/him initially (with a question mark), then switch to they/them in the next clause.

prawn2• 2 years ago

It's unlikely that they would want to out themselves and put a massive target on their back.

seanhunter3• 2 years ago

Yeah the "galaxy brain" move is tell everyone you're Satoshi, take out a bunch of lawsuits in the US to try to enforce copyright of the name, lose them, sue people in the UK who say you aren't Satoshi, lose a few of those lawsuits (and drop the rest), lose $100m in damages in the US to the estate of some other dude, lose this copa lawsuit as well. Along the way every judge says stuff about how you aren't at all credible[1]. Now noone will suspect you're the real Satoshi.

Much better than say just keeping quiet. It's like how stealth jets make a bunch of noise so noone will suspect they want to stay hidden.

[1] Read this - to someone who had no interest in this before it's hillarious https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craig_Steven_Wright#Legal_issu...

mightyham2• 2 years ago

The evidence for Adam Back being Satoshi Nakamoto is pretty damning. Notably, he developed Hashcash which was the predecessor technology, has a mysterious gap in published papers during the period of bitcoins development, was heavily involved in the cypherpunk scene, and founded/runs the company Blockstream which does a large amount of development work on Bitcoin core.

RustyRussell• 2 years ago

Please don't do this.

He's repeatedly denied it, and your ignorant claim can only bring him and his family trouble.

(Also, I've known Adam for a number of years and I can personally vouch that it's not him!)

mightyham2• 2 years ago

I can and will continue to say that he is probably Satoshi because there is a large amount of evidence for that being the case. In the past, Adam elaborated reasons why he thinks it's good for bitcoin that Satoshi be anonymous and he has a large vested interest in the success of bitcoin (his business), so his public (and according to you private) denial is really not good evidence one way or the other.

mr_sturd• 2 years ago

One simple way of proving that he is - by signing a message using the private key of one of the addresses to recieve Bitcoin close to the blockchain's genesis.

icepat• 2 years ago

Of course, that's the obvious way to prove it. But it _would_ require you to be Satoshi, which he is not. Frankly, the fact he has not done that should be damning enough.

sliken• 2 years ago

What's worse is he claimed he "owned" early mined bitcoin but lost the keys. One of said coins was then moved with a message saying "Not owned by Craig Wright". Of course he just made up more lies.

Brian_K_White• 2 years ago

And even in the theoretical case that he somehow lost those keys (just to explore the argument), it doesn't matter.

The whole system is based on the premis that the math and the keys are the ultimate definition of truth right?

Lost your keys? Oh well. So what? You get the same take-backs as if you had a pile of paper money and burned it.

If he were the one who created the system in the first place, he would know better and be the last person on the planet to even try to say anything like "It's me but I just can't prove it."

It's just nonsensical before even looking at any supposed evidense. Sign something or why are you even bothering to waste even 5 minutes of anyone's time? (and why is anyone else even giving him so much as 5 minutes?)

nullc3• 2 years ago

He has a separate lawsuit suing over that... :-/

He's suing a dozen current and former Bitcoin developers (including myself) alleging that we had a fiduciary duty to introduce a backdoor into bitcoin (which he claims we could do unilaterally) to help him recover coins he claims lost (but which were pretty obviously never his at all).

He carefully constructed that case to operate against coins that no one associated with Satoshi and which Wright says he purchased separately after Bitcoin's launch. Because of this he expects this case to not be struck out by virtue of his loss on the identity case. :(

We knocked out this claim on a summary basis only to have it reinstated by the court of appeals.

(and why is anyone else even giving him so much as 5 minutes?)

Because the courts don't have enough mechanisms to cheaply and quickly knock out well funded bullshit claims.

Most people were doing pretty well at ignoring Wright until he started filing lawsuits -- which can't so easily be ignored. The downside of all that ignoring is that in darkness he was able to amass more victims, significant resources, and support. Casting a wide net, but not one wide enough to include his legal representatives, there are well over 300 people employed in support of Wright's activities.

rideontime2• 2 years ago

I doubt this will end his cult following, as the dead comments in this very thread will demonstrate.

maremmano• 2 years ago

"Please cease your search for me." - S. Nakamoto, 2010

tj24hours• 2 years ago

"I'm not surprised" -Satoshi Nakamoto

Judge rules Craig Wright is not Satoshi Nakamoto

Related Stories