COPA v Wright Main Judgment

Source

SUMMARY

THE STRUCTURE OF THIS JUDGMENT

References

AN UNCONTROVERSIAL CHRONOLOGY

A short history of Satoshi’s involvement in Bitcoin.

Uncontested aspects of Dr Wright’s background and activities in Australia.

Dr Wright’s activities following his move to the UK.

THIS ACTION

Case management of the docketed actions

Service of Madden1, and further applications.

Dr Wright’s Chain of Custody information

Further Disclosure and the Mock Trial

The October application to plead further forgeries.

Developments in the expert evidence

The Pre-Trial Review, the ‘Additional Documents’ & the application to adjourn

Disclosure

THE IDENTITY ISSUE

Applicable Legal Principles

Burden and Standard of Proof

Pleading and Proof of Fraud

Evidence – Recollections of Witnesses and Documentary Evidence

Points on Expert Evidence

The Preparation of Expert Evidence

Drawing of Inferences (including from absence of witnesses)

Evidence on Character and Credibility

Hearsay Evidence – Admissibility and Weight

Admissibility of Public Reports and of Judgments in Other Proceedings

The expert evidence on Autism Spectrum Disorder.

THE EVIDENCE OF FACT

Dr Wright’s witnesses of fact

Dr Wright

The Tyche emails

NAB Credit Card.

The nCrypt Emails

The use of Aspose

The Papa Neema emails

The Timecoin paper attached to one of the Papa Neema emails

My conclusion on Dr Wright’s general credibility

Mr Stefan Matthews

Mr Jenkins

Dr Wright’s remaining witnesses of fact

Dr Wright’s CEA Notice

Conclusions on Dr Wright’s remaining witnesses of fact

COPA’S EVIDENCE OF FACT

COPA’s witnesses of fact who were cross-examined

COPA’s witnesses who were not cross-examined

COPA’s CEA Notice

Evidence of Fact from the Developers

THE EXPERT EVIDENCE

The expert evidence on cryptocurrency matters

Mr ZeMing Gao

The expert evidence on forensic document analysis

The experts on LaTeX

TECHNICAL BACKGROUND

Hash Functions

Digital Signatures

The ‘control’ copies of the Bitcoin White Paper

Transacting in Bitcoin

Transaction Ordering

Blockchain Forks

Storage and Use of Bitcoin

Security of Digital Signatures

Public keys Associated with Satoshi

COPA’s ALLEGATIONS OF FORGERY

General points made by Dr Wright in response to the allegations of forgery

A. The forgery allegations concerned with Dr Wright’s original disclosure.

No time capsule documents in Dr Wright’s original disclosure

Alleged problems with Mr Madden’s reliability as an expert witness

Common features of Dr Wright’s explanations for the forged documents

B. The Forgery Allegations in relation to the Additional Documents.

Mr Christen Ager-Hanssen

Dr Wright’s various allegations that forged documents were planted

C. The Ontier Email Forgery Allegation

D. The LaTeX documents

An outline of Dr Wright’s position in closing

E. The development of the case based on the LaTeX files

The ‘before’

The ‘tease’

The ‘reveal’

i. Dr Wright’s Overleaf account

ii. The efforts made to resist providing metadata

iii Summary

F. The evidence of forgery of the LaTeX Bitcoin White Paper

a. The animations

b. Metadata command

c. Text formatting

d. The images

i. Image 4

ii. Dr Wright’s written evidence about the images

iii. Aspose

e. Impossibility

i. fontspec

ii. hidelinks

iii. unicode-math

iv. \AddToShipoutPictureBG*

v. The arrows.meta library

vi. luacode

f. Summary

G. The true position as regards the Bitcoin White Paper

THE SECOND CHRONOLOGICAL RUN

Coding experience in C++

Academic qualifications

COPA’s case as to Dr Wright’s skills, knowledge and experience

Project Blacknet

Lasseter’s and Vodafone

BDO

Dr Wright’s evidence on drafting the Bitcoin White Paper

Dr Wright’s evidence about writing the Bitcoin Source Code

The Developers cast doubt on Dr Wright’s C++ coding proficiency

Unsigned integer

CheckBlock

Proof-of-Work

Wei Dai

Dr Adam Back

Dr Wright’s evidence on launching the Bitcoin system

Dr Wright’s 69 computers

i. Problem 1: inconsistency with the known difficulty

ii. Problem 2: inconsistency with known electricity consumption

opcodes

i. Script size

ii. OP_2MUL

The anachronisms

i. CheckBlockHeader

ii. BTC Core

iii. UTXO

iv. Bootstrapping

v. Summary

Satoshi’s Bitcoin payments

The PGP key

i. The date of creation of the key: not 2011

ii. The nature of the key: not “person or persons unknown

Dr Wright’s first public reference to Bitcoin

Dr Wright’s evidence as to his leaving the Satoshi persona

The Investigations by the Australian Tax Office and the ATO Decisions

The Tulip Trust

Conclusion under this heading

Summary

The position on the pleadings

The facts

Conclusions on the private signing sessions

The Signing Sessions with Mr Matonis and the Journalists

The Signing Session with Mr Andresen

The facts

My findings in relation to the Sartre blog post.

Dr Wright’s excuse for not having the private keys now

The July 2016 Dinner with Mr Mike Hearn

Analysis

The other litigation involving Dr Wright as Satoshi

OVERALL CONCLUSIONS

DECLARATORY RELIEF

FURTHER RELIEF

FURTHER RELIEF

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