SUMMARY
MR JUSTICE MELLOR:
Dr Craig Steven Wright (‘Dr Wright’) claims to be Satoshi Nakamoto i.e. he claims to be the person who adopted that pseudonym, who wrote and published the first version of the Bitcoin White Paper on 31 October 2008, who wrote and released the first version of the Bitcoin Source Code and who created the Bitcoin system. Dr Wright also claims to be a person with a unique intellect, with numerous degrees and PhDs in a wide range of subjects, the unique combination of which led him (so it is said) to devise the Bitcoin system.
Thus, Dr Wright presents himself as an extremely clever person. However, in my judgment, he is not nearly as clever as he thinks he is. In both his written evidence and in days of oral evidence under cross-examination, I am entirely satisfied that Dr Wright lied to the Court extensively and repeatedly. Most of his lies related to the documents he had forged which purported to support his claim. All his lies and forged documents were in support of his biggest lie: his claim to be Satoshi Nakamoto.
Many of Dr Wright’s lies contained a grain of truth (which is sometimes said to be the mark of an accomplished liar), but there were many which did not and were outright lies. As soon as one lie was exposed, Dr Wright resorted to further lies and evasions. The final destination frequently turned out to be either Dr Wright blaming some other (often unidentified) person for his predicament or what can only be described as technobabble delivered by him in the witness box. Although as a person with expertise in IT security, Dr Wright must have thought his forgeries would provide convincing evidence to support his claim to be Satoshi or some other point of detail and would go undetected, the evidence shows, as I explain below and in the Appendix, that most of his forgeries turned out to be clumsy. Indeed, certain of Dr Wright’s responses in cross-examination effectively acknowledged that point: from my recollection at least twice he indicated if he had wanted to forge a document, he would have done a much better job.
If Dr Wright’s evidence was true, he would be a uniquely unfortunate individual, the victim of a very large number of unfortunate coincidences, all of which went against him, and/or the victim of a number of conspiracies against him.
The true position is far simpler. It is, however, far from simple because Dr Wright has lied so much over so many years that, on certain points, it can be difficult to pinpoint what actually happened. Those difficulties do not detract from the fact that there is a very considerable body of evidence against Dr Wright being Satoshi. To the extent that it is said there is evidence supporting his claim, it is at best questionable or of very dubious relevance or entirely circumstantial and at worst, it is fabricated and/or based on documents I am satisfied have been forged on a grand scale by Dr Wright. These fabrications and forgeries were exposed in the evidence which I received during the Trial. For that reason, this Judgment contains considerable technical and other detail which is required to expose the true scale of his mendacious campaign to prove he was/is Satoshi Nakamoto. This detail was set out in the extensive Written Closing Submissions prepared by COPA and the Developers and further points drawn out in their oral closing arguments.
At the same time, it is right to record that Counsel for Dr Wright put forward the best case which could possibly be presented for Dr Wright in their written and oral closing submissions, constrained as they were by the evidence I heard in this Trial.
However, at the conclusion of closing submissions I felt able to and did announce the result of the Identity Issue, namely whether Dr Wright is the pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto i.e. the person who created Bitcoin in 2009. Having considered all the evidence and submissions presented to me during the Trial, I reached the conclusion the evidence was overwhelming. At that point, I made certain declarations (because I was satisfied they are useful and are necessary to do justice between the parties), as follows:
First, that Dr Wright is not the author of the Bitcoin White Paper.
Second, Dr Wright is not the person who adopted or operated under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto in the period between 2008 and 2011.
Third, Dr Wright is not the person who created the Bitcoin system.
Fourth, Dr Wright is not the author of the initial versions of the Bitcoin Software.
I also indicated that any further relief would be dealt with in my written Judgment (to the extent possible). I extended time for filing any appellant’s notice until 21 days after the form of order hearing to be appointed following the hand down of this Judgment. I made an Order to give effect to what I stated at the conclusion of the closing argument, which contains the above declarations and directions. Finally, I stated I would give my detailed reasons in a written Judgment which would be handed down at a later date. This is that Judgment containing my detailed reasoning.
I should point out that the conclusion I reached and explain in this Judgment is the product of a highly iterative process. I have had regard to a very large number of pieces of evidence. Each piece had and has to be evaluated on its merits but also in the context of what other pieces of evidence appear to show. The period between the conclusion of the evidence and receipt of the lengthy Written Closing Submissions, along with my detailed consideration of the written and oral closing arguments, allowed me to reflect on the totality of the evidence. It is true that most of the evidence has concerned COPA’s allegations of forgery. Ultimately, those allegations are just one factor which I took into account in reaching my overall conclusion. It was essential to step back from all the detail, to identify the various factors which supported Dr Wright’s claim to be Satoshi and those which went against it.
Satoshi Nakamoto was and remains a pseudonym. Although this is not of any significant weight in my overall conclusion, my personal view, having heard all the evidence in this Trial, is that it is likely that a number of people contributed to the creation of Bitcoin, albeit that there may well have been one central individual. It would therefore be accurate to refer to Satoshi as he/she/they to reflect the possibilities, but unwieldy. I will therefore refer to Satoshi simply as ‘he’, but it is a shorthand for he/she/they.
Here I summarise the competing factors, starting with the factors which are alleged to support Dr Wright’s claim to be Satoshi:
His unique combination of skills, knowledge, qualifications and interests in various concepts which combined to result in the creation of Bitcoin.
The evidence from his business associates and family which is consistent with his claim (albeit largely circumstantial).
The evidence from the ‘proof’ sessions in 2016.
The very substantial body of evidence comprised in Dr Wright’s own witness statements.
The content of his Reliance Documents which he emphasised was more significant than their metadata.
It is relevant to point out that all of these factors are significantly affected not only by COPA’s allegations of forgery but also the evidence of a large number of witnesses called by COPA who I judge to have given entirely independent and unbiased evidence.
As for the factors against Dr Wright being Satoshi, I divided these into two categories:
First, the attributes and behaviour which one would expect Satoshi to exhibit and prove (on the assumption that he would set out to prove he was Satoshi – on which see below), and those he would not. Under this head, the principal points are:
First, Satoshi would be most unlikely to have any real difficulty in proving he was Satoshi. For example, he would be able to present some insight or knowledge from the very early materials which no-one but the creator of Bitcoin would know – perhaps something hidden in the Genesis block. Or he would have been able to transfer Bitcoin out of some of the very early blocks which are generally accepted to have been mined by Satoshi, to prove that he owned those Bitcoin. He would not have lost every private key to those early blocks.
Second, I do not believe that Satoshi would ever have resorted to forgery in his attempt to prove he was Satoshi. He would not have backdated documents or altered the clock on his computer(s), for the simple reason that there was and is no need for him to do so. (For completeness I add that, in the very unlikely event that he did engage in some forgery, upon that being discovered, he would own up and explain why it was he had been driven to forgery. He would not have engaged in yet more forgery or engaged in technobabble in his attempts to justify it).
Third, the contemporaneous materials written by Satoshi, including the White Paper, the posts and his email exchanges with individuals, convey an impression of a calm, knowledgeable, collaborative, precise person with little or no arrogance, willing to acknowledge and implement ideas and suggestions from others who had shown an interest in Bitcoin.
Fourth, due to his collaborative and non-confrontational nature, I consider it is most unlikely that Satoshi would ever have resorted to litigation against the Developers. Satoshi would have recognised that differences in views led to the hard forks in the Bitcoin Blockchain and moved on.
Second and by contrast, the attributes and behaviours which Dr Wright has exhibited and which were proved to my satisfaction in this Trial:
Dr Wright is an individual with some strong views about Bitcoin and details of its implementation. However, I was struck by the fact that all of his knowledge and supposed insights could well have been obtained by careful study of the publicly available materials relating to the early years of Bitcoin. In my judgment, in none of his evidence did he reveal any insight or knowledge unique to Satoshi.
Furthermore, in his evidence, Dr Wright made significant errors which Satoshi would never have made, even after this length of time. Some of these relate to Satoshi’s interactions with individuals not previously made public. Others relate to technical matters which Dr Wright simply got wrong but which Satoshi would not have got wrong.
Dr Wright has had many years to prepare to prove that he was/is Satoshi. I have concluded (in the detailed findings I make below and in the Appendix) that, as he faced greater and more significant challenges to his claim, he took his lies and forgery to ever greater levels. I explain this in much greater detail below.
The picture painted by Dr Wright in his evidence was, in essence, that he was solely responsible for creating Bitcoin, that he was much cleverer than anyone else, that anyone who questioned his claim or his evidence was not qualified to do so or just didn’t understand what he was saying. In my judgment, the arrogance he displayed was at odds with what comes through from Satoshi’s writing. In short, in his writing and attitude Dr Wright just doesn’t sound or act like Satoshi.
Ultimately, I consider it is likely that the real Satoshi would never have set out to prove in litigation that he actually was Satoshi and certainly not in the way that Dr Wright attempted to do so.
I recognise that Dr Wright will disagree with my findings and this Judgment and, true to the form he displayed on numerous occasions during his oral evidence as regards the expert evidence, he may well allege that I didn’t understand his technical explanations or other aspects of the technology. There are perhaps four main points to note in response:
First, to the extent that I have made errors, the Court of Appeal is well qualified (a) to detect them and (b) to correct them.
Second, the technology involved in his case is not particularly complex or difficult to understand (compared with some of the Patent cases I have dealt with). Indeed, the more complex areas of technology in this case did not concern Bitcoin or cryptography but the evidence which exposed his forgeries.
Third, if he does make such accusations, I will remain reassured that I am in good company, along with the experts who gave evidence in this case, both those instructed by COPA and those instructed by Dr Wright’s team.
Fourth, this Trial was Dr Wright’s opportunity to explain everything, to make his technical explanations clear to me. He had the benefit of numerous procedural indulgences regarding disclosure and additional evidence. Furthermore, on more than one occasion during his cross-examination, I made it clear that it was important he ensured I understood the point he was trying to make. I was left with the clear impression that he simply engaged in technobabble precisely because he was not able to put forward any coherent explanation for the forgeries which had been exposed, and yet he could not bring himself to accept that he was responsible for them.