As I mentioned above, in their Closing Submissions, the Developers drew together a number of points which cast doubt on Dr Wright’s proficiency in C++, and I consider these points here. As the Developers pointed out, there was little support for Dr Wright’s supposed expertise in C++ in documents which can be reliably dated to 2008-2009. The section of his BDO CV which referred to ‘computing skills’ referred only to experience of ‘C programming and Code audit’ not C++. When he applied to Microsoft for a job in January 2008, he was asked ‘Can you code (and do you want to)? What programming languages are you most proficient with?’ ‘Please describe your experience writing code (incl. SQL queries) over the past 5 years’, and ‘Which programming languages can you read, but not write’ to which he answered:

‘Yes/Yes

As for 2, yes some. I have a large amount of experiance [sic] decompiling C, C++, Java, script of various types, fortran, .Net, perl, Ruby and others.

I have programmed in Java, though I prefer C (pure C, not even object). I used to be a C coder - way back - but I never was good at the graphics. I am not an artist and I never really liked high level languages for coding.

I use R and C and occasionally C++ a fair bit for algorithmic coding and statistics work.’

His decompiling experience is consistent with his role as an auditor and with malware research/analysis, looking at the decompiled code to see what the malware is trying to do, but decompiling is not coding. Bearing in mind Mr Andresen’s evidence (in his Kleiman deposition {E/17/211}) that in his view Satoshi was in the top 10% of all programmers he had encountered (in the context of questions about Satoshi’s actual source code written in C++), it is highly unlikely that Satoshi would have described himself as an occasional user of C++ in January 2008.

The Developers also point to Mr Hinnant’s evidence in response to Dr Wright’s claims about <chrono> (and the sleep_for function), <thread> and <random>, in that Mr Hinnant’s evidence suggested a lack of real expertise in C++ on Dr Wright’s part. They also point out that Satoshi did not use Dr Wright’s ‘sleep_for’ function in the Bitcoin code, instead using the basic Sleep function from the Windows API, via inclusion of the headers.h file, which in turn included windows.h.

The Developers went on to cite three points which they submitted showed that Dr Wright cannot have written the Bitcoin Source Code:

644.1.

First, his inability to describe the concept of an unsigned integer.

644.2.

Second, his misunderstanding of the basic CheckBlock function in the code.

644.3.

Third, his lack of knowledge regarding the proof-of-work function in the Bitcoin code which is said to have emerged in the approach taken in the cross-examination of Dr Back.

Counsel for Dr Wright objected to any reliance being placed on these points because (a) COPA had made it clear at an earlier hearing that they had not pleaded and were not advancing any case that Dr Wright misunderstood the technology of Bitcoin and (b) the Developers had not pleaded these points. They also submitted they should be given little, if any, weight. Notwithstanding that, they sought to downplay the challenge on the unsigned integer issue. The second and third points are somewhat related. I consider the second point in this section and what weight to give to it. The third point is closely bound up with the specific challenges made to Dr Back’s evidence in cross-examination and addressed in some detail in Dr Wright’s written closing.

I have considered Counsel’s objection carefully, but I concluded that I should consider and take account of these points for several reasons: (i) partly due to Dr Wright’s persistent boasting of his abilities; (ii) partly also because of Dr Wright’s very extensive reply statement in Wright11 in which he raised all sorts of new points; (iii) perhaps most importantly, because he says he is Satoshi. Satoshi would be able to deal with these points. Finally, these points sit at a different level to the disputes over the technology of Bitcoin, as exemplified in Mr Gao’s report.