I took part in this trial as a witness (Judge Mellor discusses my testimony in the penultimate section). There are many remarkable things about this case.
The judgement is very clearly written and keeps legalese to a minimum. Anyone could read this and understand the case perfectly well. The simplicity of the final judgement helps (Wright is a pathological liar), but still, it's well written and has some amusing sections.
The British IP courts clearly have access to some very technical judges. Mellor says he was docketed this case due to concern it'd have a lot of technical claims due to being about Bitcoin, but in the end all the technical knowledge required was about Wright's forgeries. Having read parts of the judgement, it's clear that Mellor is fluent in all the knowledge required and wasn't fooled for an instant, even though Wright was constantly babbling about symlinks, Citrix, XCOPY and many other obscure technical topics. Mellor also included a (largely superfluous in the end) explanation of how Bitcoin works that's accurate and clear. My confidence in the abilities of the courts to try such cases has definitely improving having seen this one, though how well this expertise is replicated in criminal cases is unclear.
The skill of the COPA lawyers and with Patrick Madden's ability to detect forgeries was also outstanding. Some of it was very Sherlock Holmes. At one point Wright presented hand-written notes he claimed were from the design phase of Bitcoin (i.e. pre-2009). Madden wrote to the company that manufactured the notepad and learned that specific type of pad post-dated Bitcoin's launch, thus proving the notes were a forgery. In other cases he wrote to the designers of fonts that Wright had used to prove documents had been backdated. There were hundreds of documents with problems like this and Madden/COPA managed to plough through them all.
Wright's side were very well funded. He hired top class lawyers, and even a former judge and a professional prosecutor to run a mock trial for him before the real one. He lost his own mock trial, with the pseudo-judge convinced he wasn't Satoshi, but this somehow didn't stop them proceeding. It's a good reminder that despite the common stereotype, the best funded side doesn't automatically win in legal proceedings.
Is there any possibility for counter-action against Wright? He should be forced to pay every penny of his victims' court costs, at the very least. And shouldn't he be tried for perjury after such a scathing loss?
The judge has previously issued an asset freeze against Wright specifically so he can't evade paying costs, which will be massive in this case. Not only did COPA hire very good lawyers (their office is right next to the court) but the sheer volume of forged evidence required them to do large amounts of work. I got lunch with them after my testimony at their offices and Wright introduced a new pile of forgeries during the lunch itself, so in the end I didn't get to ask many questions as they had to go right back to work whilst eating.
As for perjury, I asked around and nobody seemed to know if that would happen. How CPS allocates its resources is something of a black box. At least, it's not automatic, although theoretically there's the possibility in the UK of a privately mounted criminal prosecution (it's not only the government that can initiate criminal cases).
There are some extremely intelligent folks in the legal game. There are also a lot of idiots, but the best are as bright as you'll find in any field and can easily learn the details on just about any topic.
The only proof that anyone will ever accept is a message signed by a private key that is publicly known to be owned by satoshi. Even then, some will be skeptical since keys can be stolen.
> A few days later, Wright killed another lawsuit in which his company, Tulip Trading, accused Bitcoin developers of violating their fiduciary duties by refusing to help the firm recover a large amount of bitcoin allegedly lost in a hack.
Holy shit, he actually named a crypto company after tulips? Isn't that a little bit on-the-nose?
Kind of like a government contractor naming itself "Boondoggle Industries". Which would be funny, if someone's looking for company name suggestions. ;)
As far as I remember, it was the name of a matured shelf company he purchased as part of falsifying his history. The provider had a range of companies to choose from, so he picked one with the most bitcoin-related name, which turned out to be Tulip Trading.
Like Dan "D.B." Cooper or Navy SEALs, there are no net economic or personal safety advantages for the real Satoshi to please stand up but there are plenty of motives for imposters to make claims.
So glad to see this guy finally outed as a complete fraud. Can't believe he was able to get as far as he did with it all being bullshit. A true testament to the power of abject lying.
Edit: Though now that I say this, considering the extent of Wrights fraud, lies and likely debts to get this far there is a very high likelihood of suicide.
I think most people thought he was a fraud before the trial. This should stop him sueing people in bitcoin though. I doubt it'll stop him going on about being Satoshi.
>Craig Wright Vows to Appeal Damning “Not Satoshi” Verdict.
Undeterred by a written verdict exposing his forged evidence, Craig Wright doubles down on debunked Satoshi claims, vows to appeal.
He's been trying to claim he's Satoshi for like 10 years and trying to sue people using the open source code as copyright infringement? Also wants to get everyone on his shit coin. He thinks he's smarter than everyone else but clearly not.
FTA:
> A judge in the UK High Court has ruled that computer scientist Craig Wright lied “extensively and repeatedly,” and committed forgery “on a grand scale” in aid of a years-long quest to prove he is Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of Bitcoin.
Theres some other lawsuits surrounding him that are fascinating: people trying to seize some Bitcoin via injecting rules into the codebase, equity owed from early mining, etc. Start at the wikipedia page!
He conned a billionaire idiot to bankroll his lawsuits under the idea that should they succeed he'll be able to gain control of the Satoshi coins and presumably give the money back + more.
I guess after having spent so much money he's so deep in his lies that his only way was to keep going even as the lies started falling apart (his latest round of fabricated evidence was very sloppy, so I assume he couldn't do a better job because he was running out of time/money).
Doesn't make a lot of sense though, does it? Even if he could convince the judge he was Satoshi, indeed even if he in fact was Satoshi, if he didn't have the keys, he would not be able to spend the coins. Conversely, even if he had no clue who the reals Satoshi was, if he somehow acquired the keys, he would have the coins.
Once he manages to set a legal precedent that he is Satoshi, he could leverage that in his other lawsuits against Bitcoin Core devs to force them to release an update that effectively gives him control of the coins, similar to how the Ethereum community rolled back "The DAO" hack.
The theorety is that if he got enough legal ammo (and a judgement asserting that Wright is Satoshi would be part of that) he'd be able to force most/all Bitcoin Core devs to push for this change. My understanding is that his legal harassment of Bitcoin Core devs was part of this plan.
Of course in reality it would just lead to a hard fork and sow mayhem in the Bitcoin ecosystem.
It could have some highly amusing consequences if serious legal pressure was put on bitcoin. It could split bitcoin in half, with miners and users rejecting the pressure and picking one side of the fork, and core devs, mainstream exchanges, and hedge funds being vulnerable to the pressure ending up on the other half. The immediate consequence might be hundreds of billions in value evaporating, but if the legally approved fork won, it could lead to bitcoin going all the way to 0 in the long-run, and being replaced by another currency.
Wright’s rebrand of the Bitcoin codebase named Bitcoin Satoshi's Vision includes support for a central authority to receive a court order or “document of equivalent force” in order to freeze or seize any output. BSV is essentially worthless however ($66) and very thinly traded, so making any claim to coins you do or do not own is rather irrelevant in the scheme of things.
One of his lawsuits was to force Bitcoin developers to code a hard-fork of Bitcoin's consensus rules that would sign over a large amount of coins to him. This, too, is crazy and would never work in practice, but it paints a picture of what his plan could possibly have been.
Sure it does, the billionaire's money spends just as well regardless of the ultimate outcome. In fact, in a sense its better for Wright to lose: "Well shucks if it weren't for that pesky court I totally would have reimbursed the funds you advanced me!"
lol that greg maxwell himself got downvoted for this. people clearly aren't familiar with how craig operates, this reads like a shitpost but is probably exactly what he was thinking.
The judgement is very clearly written and keeps legalese to a minimum. Anyone could read this and understand the case perfectly well. The simplicity of the final judgement helps (Wright is a pathological liar), but still, it's well written and has some amusing sections.
The British IP courts clearly have access to some very technical judges. Mellor says he was docketed this case due to concern it'd have a lot of technical claims due to being about Bitcoin, but in the end all the technical knowledge required was about Wright's forgeries. Having read parts of the judgement, it's clear that Mellor is fluent in all the knowledge required and wasn't fooled for an instant, even though Wright was constantly babbling about symlinks, Citrix, XCOPY and many other obscure technical topics. Mellor also included a (largely superfluous in the end) explanation of how Bitcoin works that's accurate and clear. My confidence in the abilities of the courts to try such cases has definitely improving having seen this one, though how well this expertise is replicated in criminal cases is unclear.
The skill of the COPA lawyers and with Patrick Madden's ability to detect forgeries was also outstanding. Some of it was very Sherlock Holmes. At one point Wright presented hand-written notes he claimed were from the design phase of Bitcoin (i.e. pre-2009). Madden wrote to the company that manufactured the notepad and learned that specific type of pad post-dated Bitcoin's launch, thus proving the notes were a forgery. In other cases he wrote to the designers of fonts that Wright had used to prove documents had been backdated. There were hundreds of documents with problems like this and Madden/COPA managed to plough through them all.
Wright's side were very well funded. He hired top class lawyers, and even a former judge and a professional prosecutor to run a mock trial for him before the real one. He lost his own mock trial, with the pseudo-judge convinced he wasn't Satoshi, but this somehow didn't stop them proceeding. It's a good reminder that despite the common stereotype, the best funded side doesn't automatically win in legal proceedings.
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