I will deal with COPA’s witnesses in the order in which they gave their evidence i.e. these are the witnesses who gave live evidence and were cross-examined. In their closing submissions, Counsel for Dr Wright challenged aspects of the evidence of fact given by Mr Michael Hearn, Mr Zooko Wilcox-O’Hearn, Dr Adam Back and Mr Martti Malmi. I address these challenges below.

It will be seen below that COPA called a number of witnesses to address certain claims made by Dr Wright, both in his written statements but also in the course of his cross-examination. Many of these witnesses are third parties and I am grateful to them for their evidence and (for those who were cross-examined), making themselves available. Although a number of these witnesses were not required for cross-examination by Dr Wright’s legal team, there remained several where there was an acute conflict between their evidence and that of Dr Wright. Where it is necessary to do so, I have resolved all these conflicts but it is important to point out that I did not resolve each conflict in its own little silo. I could not help but be influenced, to varying degrees, by all the evidence I have heard.

Mr Steven Lee is an independent board member of COPA, who gave evidence in person. In cross-examination, Lord Grabiner KC was keen to explore the concept of independence in this context and Mr Lee’s other mentions of independence in his witness statement. This went nowhere.

Mr Lee was a good witness. He answered all questions clearly and was plainly an entirely honest witness. He was asked questions about the Bitcoin Legal Defence Fund and whether it was funding the legal costs of the Developers in this litigation. Mr Lee said he did not know but said it was likely.

Mr Martti Malmi is a computer scientist who corresponded with Satoshi from shortly after the release of Bitcoin in January 2009 until early 2011, during which time he helped set up website content and worked on the Bitcoin Code, as well as the Linux port of the Bitcoin Software. In his first witness statement, Mr Malmi rejected various claims that Dr Wright had made about him and denied that he wrote a Satoshi post describing Bitcoin as a “cryptocurrency” (an allegation made by Dr Wright to explain away that post in circumstances where he disputes that label). He also exhibited emails he exchanged with Satoshi that previously were not public (correspondence never mentioned by Dr Wright). Mr Malmi also provided a short reply statement correcting statements made by Dr Wright about him.

Mr Malmi gave evidence by videolink from Finland. He gave his evidence carefully and precisely. I was entirely satisfied he was telling the truth. His evidence was consistent with the contemporaneous documents. Furthermore, I agree with COPA’s submission that the attempts in his cross-examination to suggest that Mr Malmi had had contact with Dr Wright beyond what Mr Malmi had already acknowledged failed miserably. I discuss this in greater detail below.

Dr Adam Back is a cryptographer and inventor of “Hashcash”, which was cited in the White Paper. He gave evidence of some email communications with Satoshi which had not previously been made public. They undermine Dr Wright’s accounts of his work on the White Paper before its release (as largely reiterated in Wright1). For instance, Dr Wright said that Wei Dai’s work profoundly influenced his development of Bitcoin for years, whereas Dr Back’s emails show that he told Satoshi about Wei Dai’s work on 21 August 2008 and that Satoshi had not previously known of it. Dr Back also provided a short second statement rebutting some of the claims Dr Wright makes about Dr Back’s attitude and interactions with Satoshi.

Dr Back gave evidence in person. He gave his evidence in a careful and considered manner. He is plainly highly knowledgeable. The attack on his independence failed, in my view, an issue which again I discuss in greater detail below. Again, I was entirely satisfied he was telling the truth. Accordingly, I feel able to have confidence in his evidence.

Mr Mike Hearn also gave his evidence in person. Mr Hearn is a software developer who worked on Bitcoin at the beginning and corresponded with Satoshi over email. He had dinner with Dr Wright and Mr Matthews in July 2016, when Mr Hearn asked Dr Wright questions about Bitcoin that he believed Satoshi would be able to answer. He said his impression was that Dr Wright could not answer his questions and that Mr Matthews shut down the conversation when Dr Wright got into difficulties. In cross-examination, he was the subject of robust challenge by Lord Grabiner KC on three points: first, whether he requested to meet Dr Wright in 2016, or whether the initiative came from Jon Matonis; second, whether he was aware that the business for which he worked in 2016, R3, was a competitor of nChain; and third, what occurred at the dinner. These challenges were developed in some detail in Dr Wright’s closing, and it is more appropriate to address them in chronological context below (see [897] and following, below).

Mr Howard Hinnant gave his evidence by videolink from the USA. He is a software developer. Between 2005-2010 he was Chairman of the Library Working Group for the C++ Standards Committee. In his first witness statement, he stated that he was the lead designer and author of various standard features of C++ including the <chrono> time utilities, among others. Bird & Bird asked him whether it would have been possible to use <chrono> or “sleep_for” in C++ code in October 2007. He gave various reasons why he said that would not have been possible including (a) that <chrono> or “sleep_for” were first standardised in C++11, i.e. in 2011; (b) the paper which first proposed both <chrono> or “sleep_for”, N2661, was published on 11^th June 2008; (c) prior to that date, implementations of <chrono> were limited to his own PC. He also considered various other possibilities, namely that, somehow <chrono> escaped into the wild and was picked up as early as October 2007. He was able to dismiss that possibility by reference to the previous iteration of N2661, namely N2498, on which he was also the lead author. N2498 is dated 19^th January 2008 but does not contain any mention of the word ‘chrono’, and ‘sleep_for’ is called ‘sleep’ in this iteration. Mr Hinnant also said that when N2498 was published, <chrono> and ‘sleep_for’ did not even exist on his computer.

After he had explained those matters to COPA’s solicitors, they provided him with three documents containing C++ source code disclosed by Dr Wright, each of which had the following metadata: Date Created 8^th October 2007, Date Last Modified: 31^st October 2007; Date Last Accessed: 15^th October 2007

In his cross-examination on Day 5, Dr Wright made a number of claims relevant to Mr Hinnant’s evidence, so COPA’s solicitors provided relevant extracts from the transcript to Mr Hinnant for any further comment. That resulted in Mr Hinnant’s second witness statement in which he addressed Dr Wright’s further claims and in particular, Dr Wright’s claim that he developed his own library using the header file <chrono>, based on an existing library called Project Chrono. Mr Hinnant explained:

‘Project Chrono is not a time library as std::chrono is. It is a physics simulation library. One would not modify a physics simulation library to come up with a time library. The similarities between Project Chrono and the C++ standard header <chrono> end with the name “chrono”.’

Mr Hinnant said that Dr Wright’s claims gave rise to no less than three remarkable coincidences:

261.1.

First, Mr Hinnant’s evidence was that it was universal practice for all developers of non-standard libraries to put a filename extension on their headers, typically .h. Yet Dr Wright was claiming to have created a file with a name identical to what would be adopted by the C++ standard in the future, and in a style that only the C++ standard uses (extension-less). That, he said, was a striking coincidence that any C++ programmer would find difficult to accept.

261.2.

Second, he pointed out that Dr Wright’s code uses the phrase “std::chrono::milliseconds”. However:

‘…Project Chrono does not even use class types to model time units like the standard library does. It typically uses the built-in type double instead. So, Dr Wright claims to have invented the namespace std::chrono and the class type milliseconds, identical in syntax to what would be proposed for the C++ standard in the future. That strikes me as another remarkable coincidence.’

261.3.

Third:

‘In conjunction with “std::chrono::milliseconds”, Dr Wright’s code uses the syntax “std::this_thread::sleep_for”. This too would not be proposed for the C++ Standard until after the last file modification dates for the code files referred to in my first statement. That strikes me as a third remarkable coincidence.’

Mr Hinnant was cross-examined with great care by Mr Orr KC. Mr Orr sought to establish that what Dr Wright had claimed was technically possible in theory. However, in any practical environment, Mr Hinnant explained why Dr Wright’s claims were, in his succinct summary, ‘absurd’. Mr Hinnant also said Dr Wright’s story was ‘technically so outrageous that it’s… literally unbelievable’. It presupposed Dr Wright having gone to great effort to create a time library out of a package with an entirely different function, with the practical results that the code might well not compile at all or might not work as intended, as Mr Hinnant explained. Although Counsel for Dr Wright objected to any reliance being placed on these answers because they represented Mr Hinnant giving expert evidence, both answers were given in response to questions which plainly elicited those responses. I consider I am entitled to rely upon them. Furthermore, I formed the view that those answers were plainly true.

In my judgment, Mr Hinnant gave clear and honest evidence. Dr Wright’s claims concerning <chrono> were a prime example where he had been caught out in his first account, but then sought to talk his way out by way of a technical explanation which turned out to be without basis. Mr Hinnant’s clear evidence showed that Dr Wright was lying.

Mr Zooko Wilcox-O’Hearn is a computer scientist in the field of cryptography and cryptocurrency. He wrote early blogposts about Bitcoin and stated that he never received any Bitcoin from Satoshi, as Dr Wright has claimed he did. He also gave his evidence by videolink from the USA.

He has been involved in cryptography for many years, including from well before the development of Bitcoin. He worked on DigiCash in the 1990s and described himself as being ‘good friends’ with some well-known participants in the field including Hal Finney, Nick Szabo, Adam Back and Greg Maxwell, via interactions on Internet Relay Chat (‘IRC’) channels. He said that later on, he met others involved in Bitcoin after Satoshi, including Gavin Andresen and Peter Todd and ‘was active with those folks for years’.

He first became aware of Bitcoin when it was announced by Satoshi in 2008. He does not recall any occasion when he had any private discussions with Satoshi. On 26 January 2009, he published a post on his blog entitled ‘Decentralized Money’ which mentioned Bitcoin and included a link to bitcoin.org. He said that blog has been called the first blog post about Bitcoin, but he makes it clear that he never actually ran and used Bitcoin then. He recalled he first started using Bitcoin when using a matchmaking service where people traded Bitcoin and that one of his first transactions was with druidian.

Having stated those recollections to COPA’s solicitors, they provided him with a link in the web archive to the relevant records of the matchmaking service, which show his transaction with druidian in July 2012 and his earliest transaction in May 2012. On that basis, he said he believed that May 2012 was around or shortly after the time when he first started using Bitcoin.

Mr Wilcox-O’Hearn was asked whether Satoshi Nakamoto transferred Bitcoins to him in 2009-2011 and responded (in his witness statement) as follows:

‘He did not transfer any bitcoin to me at any time. As I have explained above, he could not have done because I didn’t use Bitcoin until years later than it was launched.’

Mr Wilcox-O’Hearn was a very engaging and careful witness. In my judgment he was transparently honest, willing to correct himself on reflection. Although Mr Orr KC made a manful effort in his cross-examination to suggest that Mr Wilcox-O’Hearn was mistaken about when he first dealt in Bitcoin and therefore he did receive some Bitcoin from Satoshi Nakamoto, I am entirely satisfied that Mr Wilcox-O’Hearn did not start his dealing in Bitcoin until around May 2012 and that he was not in any position to receive any Bitcoin from Satoshi at any time in the period when Satoshi was actively involved in the running of Bitcoin. He also revealed how passionate he was about Satoshi Nakamoto, referring to him as his “hero” and saying with some force that if, as alleged by Dr Wright, he had received bitcoin from his hero, he would certainly have remembered it. When it was put to him that he must have become more actively involved earlier, he replied disarmingly: “You underestimate my laziness and procrastination.” {Day14/81:2}. It is thus clear that Dr Wright’s claims (made initially in an interview with GQ in June 2017, and then in the McCormack and Granath cases) to have sent Bitcoin to Mr Wilcox-O’Hearn were failed guesswork, based on the public information that he was the first person to have blogged about bitcoin, shortly after its release. On this issue, I unhesitatingly prefer the evidence of Mr Wilcox-O’Hearn.