Dr Wright initially resisted looking at these changes on the footing that there were prior commands that needed to be considered with those changes, namely “\vspace{5.40mm}” and “\begin{adjustwidth}{13.48mm}{14.81mm}” {see Day15/136:3-14}. It is not clear why Dr Wright saw fit to mention those commands save for the purposes of distraction. Those commands did not change at all during the course of the changes to the spaceskip command shown above (as can be seen if one examines page 4 of each of the compilations at {L21/29.1/4} to {L21/90.1/4}). The former command had set the vertical space above the abstract. The second had set the width of the abstract.
Dr Wright then sought to suggest that the entire process of adjustment illustrated by the above was a demonstration:
“136:18 If we look at the spaceskip command here, we can see
19 you start off having it at 0.3em, right?
20 A. Like I said, I did a demonstration where I was going
21 through each of these settings to show how much it
22 changes.
23 Q. And you then increased it to 0.6em, right?
24 A. I did.
25 Q. And you then reduced it to 0.2em in a bit below that?
137: 1 A. Yes, the best way of demonstrating how it works is to
2 make a large change.
3 Q. Yes, but none of this is being done on one of your
4 demonstrations to Shoosmiths?
5 A. This was actually part of what I was documenting at the
6 time.
7 Q. How were you documenting it?
8 A. I had files.
9 Q. What files?
10 A. I had screenshots, etc, for some of the --
11 Q. Sorry, you were taking screenshots every time you made
12 a change to your Overleaf files?
13 A. Some of these, yes. Not every single time, but when
14 I was making differences. I also had other
15 conversations even before this. Shoosmiths were at my
16 house --
17 Q. I'm not interested in your discussions with Shoosmiths.
18 What I'm going to explore is how spaceskip changes and
19 we've seen how the first parameter changed, right?
20 A. Mm-hm.
21 Q. The second parameter was the max stretch that LaTeX
22 would permit to that base spacing, right?
23 A. Yes.
24 Q. And it started at 3.4?
25 A. Mm-hm.
138: 1 Q. And we can see you then reduced that in a number of
2 stages, right?
3 A. Yes, to demonstrate --
4 Q. A minor tweak upwards we can see at around 370 or 371?
5 A. It's a bit more than that. You'll notice that there are
6 three values. So it was demonstrating, like a three
7 body problem, just how difficult it is to actually find
8 something that matches. But you can't just, like you're
9 suggesting, go, "Oh, I'm going to guess a value" and
10 it's going to match --
11 Q. The third --
12 A. -- because if you do that it's going to be way, way out.
13 Q. The third parameter was the shrinkage parameter, right?
14 A. Mm-hm.
15 Q. And that's depicted in blue and it starts at 0.1, yes?
16 A. I'm not sure where it starts, but ...
17 Q. Well, it's -- take it from me, it's at 0.1.
18 A. Yeah.
19 Q. You then increased it to 0.3?
20 A. Mm-hm. Yeah.
21 Q. Before reducing it?
22 A. Yes.
23 Q. And then increasing it, before finalising it at 0.16?
24 A. Mm-hm.
25 Q. Now, so you had in fact at one point set the shrinkage
139: 1 to a level that was lower than the base spacing?
2 A. Yes.
3 Q. Which doesn't make any sense, does it?
4 A. That's the whole point. By doing this, I'm
5 demonstrating just how sort of many changes can occur
6 from a simple little tweak.
7 Q. You're not showing it to anybody, Dr Wright. We know
8 the times when you're showing it to Shoosmiths. This
9 can only be something that you're doing for yourself?
10 A. No, actually, it's not, because I also created documents
11 and I also documented the changes I was doing in what
12 they wanted.
13 Q. We're going to come to the documents that were produced,
14 but standing back from this, we don't see that you were
15 making adjustments to reintroduce known parameters from
16 the Bitcoin White Paper, do we? That's not what you're
17 doing?
18 A. No, I'm actually adjusting it to show how different it
19 can be.
20 Q. What you're doing is tweaking parameters to try to get
21 them to fit the layout of the Bitcoin White Paper,
22 aren't you?
23 A. No, actually, you wouldn't do that. And what
24 you're actually -- you're saying --
25 Q. It's not a question of what I would do --
140: 1 A. Well --
2 Q. -- that's what you did.
3 A. No, I demonstrated how these changes worked. Now, what
4 you're saying in the thing you said, it would be
5 ridiculous, and yes, I noted so how ridiculous some of
6 these things could end up and how different. You notice
7 some of them, the whole structure changes just by
8 a small change.”
Counsel suggested that three points emerge from this:
First, it is clear that the changes were being made at times when no demonstration was being carried out. The changes that he made resulted in the final spaceskip coding in the relevant part of his so-called White Paper LaTeX Files which reads “\spaceskip=0.30em plus 2.0em minus 0.16em”: {L21/9.1/7}. I agree that Dr Wright’s attempts to suggest this was all part of demonstrations was absurd.
Second, the changes were plainly indicative of a process of iterative adjustment seeking to achieve a particular result. The iterative nature of that process contradicts the further assertion (by Shoosmiths on instruction from Dr Wright) that this was merely a process of seeking “to undo the changes to the LaTeX code he had made since publication of the Bitcoin White Paper”. I agree.
Third, this was plainly not a steganographic process either. Dr Wright did not even contend that some message was encoded in the document. If Dr Wright’s White Paper LaTeX Files bear any watermark, as Counsel submitted, it is simply the smudge of Dr Wright seeking incompetently to reverse-engineer the Bitcoin White Paper.
