OVERALL CONCLUSIONS
Dr Wright’s case that he is Satoshi clearly centred on the numerous documents he disclosed which purported to evidence precursor work to the Bitcoin White Paper and source code, along with his own testimony. This is why the status of those documents was so important in this Trial.
It is important to recognise the scale and scope of the documents in question. There are three aspects to this. First, the scope and importance of the documents is indicated by those dealt with in the Appendix, particularly those purporting to be precursor work or drafts of the Bitcoin White Paper.
The second aspect is the number of documents:
The reason why Madden1 is so long and detailed is because he was asked to analyse a very considerable number of documents from Dr Wright’s original disclosure. At the hearing in October 2023 when I had to rule on COPA’s application to introduce allegations of forgery in addition to the 6 pleaded in the Particulars of Claim, Dr Wright’s legal team estimated there was material in Madden1 to support allegations that up to 400 documents had been forged. COPA filed a schedule which indicated they wanted to pursue 180. COPA were permitted, by my Order, to plead an additional 50 and did so.
After that, the Additional Documents were introduced into the case at the PTR in December 2023 comprising (a) the 97 documents from the BDO Drive and (b) the LaTeX files. This necessitated the existing 56 allegations of forgery being cut back to 26, with COPA selecting an additional 20 from the Additional Documents.
During Trial, one further allegation of forgery (the MYOB Ontier Email) was added.
I have dealt with numerous points of detail in relation to those 47 forgery allegations, both in the body of this Judgment and in the Appendix. I have found all of them proved.
However, for the case management reasons I explained above, there remained:
A number of documents which COPA pleaded as forgeries in October 2023 (including some of Dr Wright’s Reliance Documents), but those allegations were not focussed on at Trial. Notwithstanding that, most if not all of these documents were necessarily the subject of cross-examination of Dr Wright because they were an essential part of the story.
A larger number of documents which were analysed in Madden1 and which Mr Madden found to be inauthentic. These documents could not be accommodated within the limits I set for COPA’s pleading of forgeries.
Due to the confidence I have in Mr Madden’s evidence and analysis, I accept all of his findings of inauthenticity. In this regard, I note that many of the explanations (persistence, XCOPY, virtual machines etc) which Dr Wright put forward in response to the allegations of forgery were attempts to explain certain anomalous data identified by Mr Madden in Madden1 when finding documents to be inauthentic. Dr Wright’s explanations did not begin to meet the clear indicia of forgery and it is reasonable to infer that they do not explain Mr Madden’s findings of inauthenticity, not least because (acting in accordance with his duty to provide independent objective expert evidence) he specifically considered whether there could be alternative explanations and concluded not.
The third aspect is the startling period of time over which Dr Wright forged documents:
As I noted above, the ATO investigations involved him producing two versions of the same supposed email from Mr Kleiman attaching a Tulip Trust deed from 2011 and 2014. Mr Madden found a number of Tulip Trust and Tulip Trading Ltd documents to bear signs of having been forged in 2014/15{See Appendix PM14 {H/73/1}}.
COPA’s October Schedule of Forgeries included some of those documents, namely: (a) the email from Mr Kleiman attaching the Tulip Trust deed {ID_001386}; (b) an Abacus Seychelles invoice which appeared to show ongoing accounting services for Tulip Trading Ltd in 2014 but was actually a doctored version of the invoice for purchase of that company in late 2014 {ID_001421}; (c) a Declaration of Trust of 21 July 2011 for Tulip Trust {ID_001925}; and (d) a company incorporation form for Tulip Trading Ltd which was doctored to change the date from 2014 to 2011 and make other changes consistent with the date change {ID_001930}. None of those documents made the cut i.e. they were not among the 20 forgeries of original documents which COPA pursued at trial.
It is clear there is full documentary evidence showing that Dr Wright purchased Tulip Trading Ltd as an “aged shelf company” in October 2014 from Abacus Seychelles {see for example: the email chains at {L9/188/1} and {L9/287/1}; the incorporation form at {L9/183/1}; the purchase invoice at {L9/189/1}; and the Commonwealth Bank payment transfer receipt at {L9/191/1}}. Meanwhile, a series of documents were produced, each bearing signs of alteration, to suggest that the company had been in Dr Wright’s hands since 2011.
It is also in 2014 that Dr Wright appears to have produced his first forged documents supporting his claim to be Satoshi. For instance, the Kleiman Email was apparently forwarded by Dr Wright to Ira Kleiman (David Kleiman’s brother) in March 2014.
Through the documents addressed at trial, there are signs of forgery going on over the following years, notably in 2019-20 (when evidence was being collected for the Kleiman litigation). For instance, it was in August 2019 that Dr Wright produced various documents and posted them on Slack, as discussed in Appendix PM43 {H/219/2}.
The evidence showed that Dr Wright continued producing forged documents in advance of his original disclosure in this action and then throughout the remainder of this case, with the experts’ analysis showing that he produced the BDO Drive image by adding manipulated files around 17 September 2023 and with metadata indicating work on the Overleaf LaTeX files in November / December 2023.
He then produced the forged MYOB Ontier Email in the middle of trial.
I have reflected on the classes into which these documents fall – ‘forged’ and ‘inauthentic’. Although there is an important difference between those classes in terms of identifying allegations being made in a pleading, in the unusual circumstances of this case and after all the evidence has been heard, the distinction between the two classes seems to me to be artificial, particularly when all the evidence points inexorably to the fact that all the documents which Mr Madden found to be ‘inauthentic’ were forged by Dr Wright.
Overall, in my judgment, (and whether that distinction is maintained or not), Dr Wright’s attempts to prove he was/is Satoshi Nakamoto represent a most serious abuse of this Court’s process. The same point applies to other jurisdictions as well: Norway in particular. Although whether Dr Wright was Satoshi was not actually in issue in Kleiman, that litigation would not have occurred but for his claim to be Satoshi. In all three jurisdictions, it is clear that Dr Wright engaged in the deliberate production of false documents to support false claims and use the Courts as a vehicle for fraud. Despite acknowledging in this Trial that a few documents were inauthentic (generally blamed on others), he steadfastly refused to acknowledge any of the forged documents. Instead, he lied repeatedly and extensively in his attempts to deflect the allegations of forgery.
Notwithstanding all that, as I was reminded (see [343] above) and had well in mind throughout, the issue for decision at this Trial is the Identity Issue.
Having (a) reached conclusions on COPA’s allegations of forgery, (b) accepted the remaining allegations of inauthenticity which, as far as I am aware, cover Dr Wright’s Reliance Documents, (c) not had my attention drawn to any other documents which appear to support Dr Wright’s claim and which can be considered reliable, (d) considered the largely circumstantial evidence from the witnesses of fact called to support Dr Wright’s case, (e) considered the evidence given in Dr Wright’s own witness statements and (f) considered all the evidence adduced by COPA and the Developers, the case that Dr Wright is not Satoshi Nakamoto is overwhelming.
Although, at the conclusion of closing submissions at the Trial, I did not and could not have all the detail set out in this Judgment and Appendix in my head, I had been taken through it either in pre-reading or during the Trial. I tried to identify whether there was any reliable evidence to support Dr Wright’s claim and concluded there was none. That was why I concluded the evidence was overwhelming. The preparation of this Judgment and Appendix has only confirmed that conclusion.