Problem 2: inconsistency with known electricity consumption
The second problem with Dr Wright’s evidence that he was spending AU$11,000 per month on electricity is that it is contradicted by the electricity bills that he submitted as part of his 2008-2009 personal tax return. Thus:
Lisarow: the electricity bills were as follows:
for the period from 8 December 2008 to 18 January 2009: AU$373.19 plus GST {L4/485/23};
for the period from 18 January 2009 to 9 March 2009: AU$523.10 plus GST {L5/70/8};
for the period from 9 March 2009 to 9 June 2009 was about AU$798.48: {L5/70/79}.
Bagnoo: the electricity bill for the period from 11 February 2009 to 8 May 2009 was less than AU$500: {L5/70/50}.
Dr Wright’s answer to this evident contradiction was to contend that Lisarow was “three-phase that was on a separate switch” and billed separately to Information Defense Pty Ltd {Day8/174:19-20}. Although there was no documentary evidence either to support or contradict this, the Developers submitted it was ‘vanishingly’ unlikely to be true, for the following reasons:
There is no documentary evidence that his home in Lisarow was serviced by a three-phase electrical power distribution system. Although that it is not impossible, it was on a residential (not commercial or industrial) price plan {L5/70/81}.
As Dr Wright’s sister confirmed, but Dr Wright denied, at the relevant time the computers in his Lisarow house were set-up in a spare bedroom or living area at the house {DeMorgan1 [11] {E/8/4}}. That being so, it seems highly implausible that it was “on a separate switch”. Mr Bridges referred to the set-up being in Dr Wright’s garage in early 2011: Bridges1 [19] {E/9/6}.
Information Defense Pty Ltd was only registered on 29 January 2009 {L4/446/80}, so cannot have been incurring the electricity consumption costs for the period prior to that date. Yet, the bills for the period prior to the registration of Information Defense are not consistent with AU$11,000 per month being spent on electricity.
In her deposition, Lynn Wright did not refer to any substantial set-up in Lisarow, suggesting that the main computer set-up (comprising just 4-5 laptops) was at Bagnoo {{C/27/35} ll. 4-20}.
When taken in combination with the first point (which is compelling) I find that Dr Wright was not incurring substantial expense as a result of his electricity consumption, and this was a further invention by Dr Wright to try to justify his initial boast of running 69 computers. The more pertinent point is that if he were Satoshi Nakamoto he would know that such an extensive computer set up with its enormous electricity consumption would not have been required anyway: a desktop or two would have mined a lot of bitcoin. Indeed, Mr Bohm’s evidence was that he mined 100,000 bitcoins {Bohm1 [16] {C/10/5}, but I note that he said at [24] that he had spent all his bitcoin} on what was a normal HP Compaq computer {L4/493/1}.