Dr Wright’s evidence on launching the Bitcoin system
In Wright1, Dr Wright said that he manually crafted the Genesis Block rather than mining it and that to ensure that it was timestamped he used the headline of an article published in the written UK edition of The Times that day. He says that he chose this headline, which referred to the bank bailouts after the 2008 crash, because he strongly disagreed with the policy. Dr Wright was not in the UK at this time, but claims to have had access to The Times through a university portal. Dr Wright says he uploaded the v0.1 Alpha of Bitcoin on 9 January 2009 onto SourceForge and at the same time he sent a link to this to the Bitcoin Project’s relevant section on the mailing list.
As COPA pointed out, Dr Wright strove to provide meaning and rationale to all aspects of how Satoshi chose to do certain things but he cited only publicly known matters.
Dr Wright’s account of the Genesis Block in Wright1, [107] {E/1/21} and Wright4, [102] {E/4/34} now involves assertions that there is neither a public nor a private key linked to it. These assertions were rejected by both Professor Meiklejohn and Mr Gao. Professor Meiklejohn was clear that there is a public key for the Genesis Block and pointed out that that public key has never spent its content and cannot do so because the software does not treat this transaction output as UTXO. On that basis, she said it is not clear if anyone knows or has ever known the associate private key {{G/2/46}, [108-109] (paragraphs agreed by Mr Gao in the Joint Statement)}. The public key for the Genesis Block is shown at {G/2/22}. I also note that Dr Wright’s present account differs from what he told GQ in April 2016, when he claimed that he would not sign “every fucking key I own in the world” before adding: “I’ve got the first fucking nine keys, I’ve got the fucking genesis bloody block…” {O4/23/4}.
When confronted with Professor Meiklejohn’s evidence in cross-examination {Day7/54:13} - {Day7/57:4}, Dr Wright could only refer to an unspecified blog by himself and say that the public key to the Genesis Block (as identified by Prof Meiklejohn) is only something that “looks like a public key”. He then claimed that neither of the experts in cryptocurrency technology was qualified to opine on the point because they were not cryptographers.
Dr Wright asserted that in the “early days” the only individuals involved in mining were himself, and his family (including Don and Max Lynam). He said Don and Max Lynam began operating a node from Don’s farm. Concurrently, Dr Wright claimed to have been using his own mining set up in ‘69 racks’ at his Australian residence, with 3 other laptops and 4 desktop systems in another location at Tumbi Umbi {Wright 1, [116] {E/1/22}}. He claimed that the considerable electricity associated with mining amounted to thousands of dollars, but that he was willing to go to this expense to set the Bitcoin Blockchain in motion. As Professor Meiklejohn explained, mining at that time would not have entailed such a cost. Dr Wright went on to say that his motivations in those days (2009-10) were primarily driven by a desire to implement the technology and not the pursuit of financial gain {Wright1, [121] {E/1/23}}. That conflicts with the position he now takes, having issued claims which seek in effect total control of Bitcoin under a range of different IP rights.
I am satisfied that Dr Wright’s evidence about launching the Bitcoin system was pure fantasy. Furthermore, his account of mining Bitcoin in the early days does not ring true.
Further circumstantial evidence post-dating the White Paper
‘9. There is a significant body of other circumstantial evidence post-dating the White Paper that is consistent with Dr Wright’s authorship, including:
(i) Dr Wright helping Qudos Bank to implement an immutable event logger system with similarities to blockchain technology in around November or December 2008;
(ii) Dr Wright pitching an alternative payment system to Qudos Bank that was based on a “decentralised ledger” and involved a “peer-to-peer payments network where transactions would be a fraction of the cost of the existing SWIFT payment system” in around late 2008 or 2009;
(iii) Dr Wright pitching to Centrebet a honeypot detection system with close parallels to Bitcoin/blockchain technology at some point in 2009;
(iv) Dr Pang’s recollection of Dr Wright asking him and a number of other BDO colleagues whether they had heard of Satoshi Nakamoto “or something that sounds like that name” in late October or shortly thereafter;
(v) Dr Wright mentioning “blockchain” to Mr Jenkins in 2008 (probably around December 2008); and
(vi) Dr Wright showing Mr Jenkins a “Timecoin” paper in around 2009/2010; and
(vii) the fact that Satoshi used idioms and colloquialisms typical of Australia in his communications, which is consistent with Dr Wright’s nationality. {See, for example, “wet blanket” {L19/11/2}; “bogged everything down” {L6/19/1}; “references galore” {L5/500/1}; and “bash the sockets” {L6/28/1}}.
Point (vii) is ridiculous, not least because there was no expert or any other evidence to support it. On point (vi), I have rejected Mr Jenkins’ evidence that he was shown a ‘Timecoin’ paper in 2009/2010. On point (iv), I have explained above why that incident suggests that Dr Wright is not Satoshi. The remaining points, even if I assume they are true, are similar to those I dealt with above, in that it is relatively easy, with the benefit of 20:20 hindsight, to reach back to pluck out some feature which might have some relation to Bitcoin. They are all generalised assertions.
However, there are a number of more concrete points going the other way which I must discuss.
The following five were submitted by the Developers:
Dr Wright’s evidence as to the 69 computers he claimed to have been operating on the launch of the Bitcoin system and their electricity consumption.
Satoshi Nakamoto’s disabling of opcodes in Bitcoin script.
Dr Wright’s failure to spot that in his pre-2009 reliance documents he had referred to concepts which were only introduced in 2011 and later.
Dr Wright’s claim to have transferred Bitcoin to Mr Zooko Wilcox-O’Hearn.
What happened on Dr Wright’s first public intervention on the subject of Bitcoin.
By way of background, I refer to the following sections in the Appendix which contain my findings that the following documents, relevant to these matters, were forged by Dr Wright:
Section 32: ‘BitCoin: SEIR-C Propagation models of block and transaction dissemination’, purported precursor work to the Bitcoin White Paper, dated 12 December 2008.
Section 36: the MYOB accounting screenshots, a series of disclosed screenshots purporting to show transfers of mined bitcoin and transfer to WIIL.
Section 38: Spoofed email from Dr Wright, using satoshi@vistomail.com, in the name of Satoshi Nakamoto.