The Aspose blob
Amongst the documents present on the Maths (OLD) folder on the date of its creation (17 November 2023) was a blob file entitled “88933455f3f2a39eed5f2f1d6de8ac9167a83778” (the “Aspose blob”) {See the chunks.json file from Maths (OLD) at {L21/16.1/48}}.
The Aspose blob was disclosed to the Developers on 16 February 2024. The file can be seen at {L21/18.1}. It is an Aspose output of the Bitcoin White Paper. It bears the tell-tale signs of such an output: for example, each letter of every word in the Bitcoin White Paper is placed individually on the page.
The Aspose blob had first been uploaded by Dr Wright to the ZZZ folder (over which privilege had been claimed): see {L21/16.1/48}. Dr Wright then deleted the file: see {L21/16.1/59}. Unfortunately for him, however, Overleaf had not removed the blob when the snapshot of Maths (OLD) was taken.
When cross-examined on Day 5, Dr Wright mentioned en passant that he had run Aspose and had a look at the output. When he returned to give evidence on Day 15, Dr Wright confirmed that the Aspose blob was “one of the test files I did”. He also confirmed that the output of Aspose was so crazily precise that it would be ridiculous to use it to reverse engineer the Bitcoin White Paper:
“204:22 Q. Now, the text output from Aspose would not create a very
23 good forgery of the Bitcoin White Paper, would it?
24 A. A horrible one.
25 Q. Because no sane person would individually place letters
205: 1 in a word in this way when composing a LaTeX file from
2 scratch, right?
3 A. More than that. It also -- the way that it draws lines,
4 and all sorts of things, are crazy.
5 Q. And indeed, if we look here, we can see that the letters
6 are placed at what seem to be nanometric levels of
7 accuracy, right?
8 A. Yes.
9 Q. Which -- four decimal places of accuracy, some of them?
10 A. Yes.
11 Q. Five decimal places. So that is --
12 A. That's correct.
13 Q. That is probably 0.0035 nanometres, and that is an
14 insane level of accuracy, so insane that it's obviously
15 ridiculous, right?
16 A. Completely ridiculous, yes.
17 Q. So it would scream out forgery?
18 A. Sorry?
19 Q. It would scream out as a forgery?
20 A. It would scream that someone's used some sort of wacky
21 tool to do something.”
In addition to setting out the text of the Bitcoin White Paper, the Aspose blob also included each of the images. Image 2 can be seen at {L21/18.1/63}. Image 2 appears as follows in the Bitcoin White Paper: