The essential facts are as follows, and most of this is as related in Wright1. I deal later with the contentious aspects.

Around early March 2016, Dr Wright performed two private demonstrations for Andrew O’Hagan during which he said that he had used the private key from one of the original blocks on the Bitcoin blockchain which were associated with Satoshi. This is said to have been a dry run for demonstrations to be carried out for Jon Matonis and Gavin Andresen (both subject to NDAs). Dr Wright says that the first demonstration took place in an apartment near Soho where he was staying and the second took place at his then home in Wimbledon.

Jon Matonis met Dr Wright in mid-March 2016 in a hotel in Covent Garden, as arranged by Mr MacGregor and Mr Matthews. Dr Wright then met Mr Andresen in London on or about 7 April 2016, having briefly corresponded by email. Again, they met in a hotel, and Mr MacGregor and Mr Matthews were present. For this session, Dr Wright claims a new IBM ThinkPad laptop was purchased from a retail store by an assistant for the demonstration. Dr Wright claims to have signed messages using the keys associated with blocks 1 and 9. As noted below in relation to the signing sessions, there are some differences between Dr Wright’s recollection and that of Mr Andresen in his Kleiman deposition (the latter given with reference to some notes). Based on the agreed expert evidence, these are important to whether the session was genuine.

Towards the end of April 2016, Dr Wright met Rory Cellan-Jones of the BBC. At this meeting, Dr Wright claims to have demonstrated possession of keys from among the first blocks, including block 9. Dr Wright also met with Ludwig Siegele from the Economist and, similarly, claims to have demonstrated using private keys, including for blocks 1 and 9, to sign messages. Dr Wright was then interviewed by Stuart McGurk from GQ, with the reporter being accompanied by a cryptologist, Dr Nicolas Courtois. Dr Wright said he cannot “recall the demonstrations exactly” that were made to the journalists. However, he did say that he did at least demonstrate possession of the private key associated with block 9 in all his signing sessions {Wright2 [24], [32] & [40]}.

These signing sessions with the journalists were arranged by Mr MacGregor and Mr Matthews together. In his first witness statement, Mr Matthews had denied his involvement in public proof sessions, but then had to qualify his position after being shown the series of emails where he was shown to be making arrangements. He admitted that he had performed a series of tasks of setting up the public sessions and making them go smoothly but denied that these involved “arranging” the sessions.

By mid-to-late April 2016, there was a plan in place for Dr Wright to sign a message with one of the keys linked to early Bitcoin blocks associated with Satoshi, and for him to post that signed message on his blog as part of the Big Reveal. Mr Matthews accepted, grudgingly, that there was such a plan in place. After some pressing, he accepted that, as he understood it at the time, the draft blog post was supposed to be providing a cryptographic proof.

Mr Matthews tried in cross-examination to say that he was just going along with Mr MacGregor and that there was a conceptual divide between Mr MacGregor and Dr Wright. However, as set out above, the emails from that time tell a different story and show nothing of the supposed aggression which Dr Wright and Mr Matthews attempt to attribute to Mr MacGregor. Mr Matthews accepted this but said that the large number of emails did not represent the true picture of the relationships.