On 25 September 2023, Dr Wright’s solicitors wrote to say he had further disclosure to give. It subsequently emerged that Dr Wright claimed to have discovered in mid-September 2023 two hard drives which were not previously imaged and which supposedly contained more reliable versions of documents supporting his claim.

At this point I introduce nChain, a UK company with which Dr Wright had been closely associated (latterly as a consultant) since 2015. The financial muscle behind nChain is said to be Mr Calvin Ayre (“Mr Ayre”), a Canadian billionaire, who has supported Dr Wright’s claim to be Satoshi. Until late September 2023, the CEO of nChain was Mr Christen Ager-Hanssen (“Mr Ager-Hanssen”).

Although the details only emerged subsequently, it turned out that, following service of Madden1, nChain had arranged for Dr Wright to undergo a mock trial exercise on 22 September 2023 in which he was cross-examined by a criminal barrister, Zafar Ali KC, on a number of his primary reliance documents. A mock judgment, apparently given by a judge who had been drafted in to help, was delivered on 24 September 2023, finding Dr Wright’s Satoshi claim to be false. The day after the mock trial, Mr Ayre sent Dr Wright an email (which Mr Ager-Hanssen posted on X) making clear that Mr Ayre now believed that Dr Wright had forged documents and should confess to having done so {see the email of 23 September 2023 at {L19/212/6}. Mr Ayre later acknowledged that the email was his. Mr Ayre proposed a narrative covered by his website CoinGeek as follows: “We will say that we believe you did forge some documents to replace ones you destroyed earlier to try to pretend you were not Satoshi. We will say this is because your Asperger’s makes you not think and act like an adult…” {L19/212/7}}. The mock trial exercise was revealed by Mr Ager-Hanssen, and it has since been admitted by Dr Wright, Mr Matthews and Mr Ali, albeit in differing terms {see Wright3 {E/3/1} and Matthews2 {E/27/1}. For Mr Ali’s account, see Clyde & Co letter at {M1/1/707}}.

On 29 September 2023, Mr Ager-Hanssen began a series of postings on X in which he claimed to have “found compelling evidence that Dr Craig Wright has manipulated documents with the aim to deceive the Court he is Satoshi” {P2/111/44}. Mr Ager-Hanssen added that he was “convinced that Dr Craig Wright is NOT Satoshi”. He said that he had submitted a whistleblowing report making these points, and also to have raised concerns about illegitimate control of the nChain group by Mr Ayre.

Among Mr Ager-Hanssen’s revelations was one that Dr Wright had come up with a new hard drive supposedly containing reliable documents. Mr Ager-Hanssen alleged that the browsing history showed that Dr Wright had researched topics of manipulating files and backdating metadata, and also that he had made searches to discover whether Satoshi had compiled any part of his original Bitcoin paper in LaTeX format {L20/195/1}.

Following those revelations, I understand that Mr Ager-Hanssen was dismissed and left the UK. I was told that interim injunctive relief was obtained to prevent further disclosure of allegedly confidential information. He has not played any role in this Trial. Thus, he has not had any opportunity to respond to various serious allegations made against him by Dr Wright. Furthermore, COPA were anxious to stress that they have had nothing to do with Mr Ager-Hanssen, contrary to various conspiracy theories espoused by Dr Wright during his cross-examination.