Craig Wright Claims He's Bitcoin Creator Satoshi Nakamoto. Can He Prove It in Court? (wired.com) 92
Satoshi Nakamoto is the founding father of cryptocurrency -- and a mystery. In October 2008, Nakamoto gave Bitcoin to the world. Then they disappeared. To this day, nobody knows who Nakamoto is. Amongst the speculation, one man stepped forward: Craig Wright, an Australian computer scientist who has, since 2016, maintained that he is Nakamoto. Now he'll have to prove it in court. Wired: On February 5, a trial will begin in the UK High Court, the purpose of which is to challenge Wright's claim to Satoshi-hood. The case is being brought by the Crypto Open Patent Alliance (COPA), a nonprofit consortium of crypto and tech firms, in response to a slew of lawsuits filed by Wright against Bitcoin developers and other parties, in which he is trying to assert intellectual property rights over Bitcoin as its ostensible creator.
In its complaint, COPA claims that Wright's behavior has had a "chilling effect," obstructing the progress of Bitcoin by scaring away developers. It is seeking a declaration that Wright does not own the copyright to the white paper that first proposed Bitcoin and did not author the original code, and an injunction preventing him from saying otherwise. In effect, COPA is asking the court to rule that Wright is not Nakamoto. The verdict will have direct implications for a tangle of interlocking cases, which will determine whether Wright can prevent developers from working on Bitcoin without his permission and dictate the terms under which the Bitcoin system can be used.
Wright was first nominated as a potential candidate by both WIRED and Gizmodo on the same day in December 2015. The original story, based on a trove of leaked documents, proposed that Wright had "either invented Bitcoin or is a brilliant hoaxer who very badly wants us to believe he did." A few days later, WIRED published a second story, pointing to discrepancies in the evidence that supported the latter interpretation. Wright did not respond initially to reports that he was Nakamoto, although he did largely scrub his online accounts. By the following year, though, he had begun to present himself publicly as Bitcoin's creator. He has tried on multiple occasions -- through various means -- to categorically prove the claim, earning himself a band of supporters who swear by his credibility. In 2016, Wright was able to convince Gavin Andresen, an early contributor to Bitcoin's underlying software, and Jon Matonis, former director of the Bitcoin Foundation, an advocacy group.
In its complaint, COPA claims that Wright's behavior has had a "chilling effect," obstructing the progress of Bitcoin by scaring away developers. It is seeking a declaration that Wright does not own the copyright to the white paper that first proposed Bitcoin and did not author the original code, and an injunction preventing him from saying otherwise. In effect, COPA is asking the court to rule that Wright is not Nakamoto. The verdict will have direct implications for a tangle of interlocking cases, which will determine whether Wright can prevent developers from working on Bitcoin without his permission and dictate the terms under which the Bitcoin system can be used.
Wright was first nominated as a potential candidate by both WIRED and Gizmodo on the same day in December 2015. The original story, based on a trove of leaked documents, proposed that Wright had "either invented Bitcoin or is a brilliant hoaxer who very badly wants us to believe he did." A few days later, WIRED published a second story, pointing to discrepancies in the evidence that supported the latter interpretation. Wright did not respond initially to reports that he was Nakamoto, although he did largely scrub his online accounts. By the following year, though, he had begun to present himself publicly as Bitcoin's creator. He has tried on multiple occasions -- through various means -- to categorically prove the claim, earning himself a band of supporters who swear by his credibility. In 2016, Wright was able to convince Gavin Andresen, an early contributor to Bitcoin's underlying software, and Jon Matonis, former director of the Bitcoin Foundation, an advocacy group.
chance for doj to be funny (Score:4, Funny)
"guy goes to court to prove he is the inventor of bitcoin"
"guy wins and gets millions of dollars"
"doj arrests and sues man for securities fraud and several banking crimes"
"you proved in court you were the guy"
Re:chance for doj to be funny (Score:4, Insightful)
"guy goes to court to prove he is the inventor of bitcoin"
He can do that easily. According to the blockchain, Satoshi has over a million bitcoins that have never been transacted. If he can provide the keys to a few of them, that will be proof that is hard to refute.
"guy wins and gets millions of dollars"
If he is really SN, he already has a net worth of over $30 billion.
"doj arrests and sues man for securities fraud and several banking crimes"
What crimes?
Blockchains are not illegal.
Re:chance for doj to be funny (Score:5, Funny)
"guy goes to court to prove he is the inventor of bitcoin"
He can do that easily. According to the blockchain, Satoshi has over a million bitcoins that have never been transacted. If he can provide the keys to a few of them, that will be proof that is hard to refute.
Unless... he abducted the real Satoshi, wrenched [xkcd.com] the keys/password from him, then disposed of him.
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Blockchains are not illegal.
Knives are not illegal. But what you do with a knife may be illegal. Similarly, what you do with securities may be illegal, such as distributing them without regulatory approval. Banking crimes are most commonly various forms of fraud, such as (topically) obtaining loans by exaggerating the value of property offered as security. It is easy enough to imagine banking fraud involving cryptocurrency in this, or other ways.
Re:chance for doj to be funny (Score:4, Funny)
Finally, that explains why nobody in England cuts vegetables with a knife! I always wondered about that.
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Finally, that explains why nobody in England cuts vegetables with a knife! I always wondered about that.
Nobody can cut vegetables with a knife in England (the whole of the UK really) because they've forgotten how - vegetables in the UK are boiled until they offer no resistance. As John Steinbeck put it, a brussels sprout "is picked from its stem and the daylights boiled out of it. At the end of a few hours, the little wild lump of green has disintegrated into a curious, greyish paste. It is then considered fit for consumption."
Admittedly that was written during WW2, but I don't believe they've got much be
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Knives are not illegal. But what you do with a knife may be illegal. Similarly, what you do with securities may be illegal, such as distributing them without regulatory approval. Banking crimes are most commonly various forms of fraud, such as (topically) obtaining loans by exaggerating the value of property offered as security. It is easy enough to imagine banking fraud involving cryptocurrency in this, or other ways.
*snaps fingers* woohoo, back here in this story for a sec.
The Nakamoto coins were mined back in the beginning when it was trivial to do on a desktop computer.
They were not purchased.
They have never been transferred.
They have never been exchanged for anything, including involving banks.
They have never been offered to anyone.
None of the posts digitally signed with the Nakamoto key have claimed those coins have value.
Literally every last thing in your list does not apply to these coins.
It would almost be belie
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What list? I didn't make any list. Are you sure you replied to the right comment?
Re: chance for doj to be funny (Score:4, Interesting)
What recent post has been made and signed by Satoshi? The last confirmed communication is from April 2011.
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That's just someone sending to a wallet. What was the last confirmed communication or transaction from Satoshi?
Re: chance for doj to be funny (Score:2)
"It would almost be believable that the keys to them have been lost, if it wasn't for the fact those same keys have been used to digitally sign posts Satoshi has made in the very recent past."
Not really. There's only 1 key known to belong to Satoshi Nakamoto and it's not been used to sign anything recently. https://www.vice.com/en/articl... [vice.com] "There is only one PGP key that is truly known to be associated with Satoshi Nakamoto. (...) It's currently hosted on bitcoin.org, and it was there even in 2009"
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Similarly, what you do with securities may be illegal, such as distributing them without regulatory approval.
Indeed. So it's worth noting then that the inventor of Bitcoin hasn't distributed anything. He created an algorithm and on account of running it on his computer before anyone else, came up with a large share of bitcoin. He hasn't bought, sold, or traded them. While many people have used his product to commit crimes, you said it yourself, knives aren't illegal.
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What crimes?
Trading unregistered securities.
Circumventing US capital controls [wikipedia.org].
Lots of other stuff that the green eyeshade gang can dredge up [ifunny.co].
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Malum prohibitum or malum in se?
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If he is really SN, he already has a net worth of over $30 billion.
Not really. If that amount of bitcoin were put on the market it would cause the price to crash. A big part of the high price is due to the amount of time and processing required to mine, which increases the scarcity.
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Why create Bitcoin under a fake name?
Why use a fake name that implies being Japanese?
Why wait nearly a decade before coming forward to claim that you are Satoshi Nakamoto?
As other people have pointed out, if he really is who he claims to be there are many ways he can prove it. But so far he has not. Instead all he has produced is forged signatures and a lot of other bullshit that indicates he should not be trusted.
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I like the theory the name came from a stack of old VCR's. Sanyo, Toshiba, Nakamichi? Motorola
Re: chance for doj to be funny (Score:3)
He is so invested in this... (Score:2)
There comes a point in any lie where the liar believes
- with all his heart - the lie to be true. It's called...
self-delusion.
I'm Satoshi Nakamoto (Score:1)
The Inventor of Bitcoin Should Be Worth Billions (Score:5, Insightful)
If you or I had created Bitcoin we would have kept a very large number of Bitcoin for ourselves... Now worth billions of dollars.
So why do nickel and dime lawsuits?
Re:The Inventor of Bitcoin Should Be Worth Billion (Score:5, Insightful)
If you or I had created Bitcoin we would have kept a very large number of Bitcoin for ourselves... Now worth billions of dollars.
So why do nickel and dime lawsuits?
My thoughts exactly. Per Wikipedia, Nakamoto owns between 750,000 and 1,100,000 bitcoin. 750K of coins would be worth around 32 Billion dollars. You want to prove you are he? Sell say a few billion worth, crash the value, and prove to the world you are who you say you are. Or, show faniancial statements and sales of bitcoins traced to the original coins. After all, you should have the wallet.
Re: The Inventor of Bitcoin Should Be Worth Billio (Score:3, Interesting)
Brilliant enough to invent bitcoin (Score:2)
It is just beyond reasonable belief.
Case closed.
Go away.
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How careful would you have been with the early outputs of the what was essentially a public demo of your code?
After all at the time, he probably did not assume the coins in that chain - would become "the chain"
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My thoughts exactly. Per Wikipedia, Nakamoto owns between 750,000 and 1,100,000 bitcoin. 750K of coins would be worth around 32 Billion dollars. You want to prove you are he? Sell say a few billion worth, crash the value, and prove to the world you are who you say you are. Or, show faniancial statements and sales of bitcoins traced to the original coins. After all, you should have the wallet.
Isn't there something called the "genesis block" that would categorically prove Wright is Satoshi? Not a bitcoin person by any stretch, but this genesis block comes up every time this charlatan pops his head above the parapet.,..
Re:The Inventor of Bitcoin Should Be Worth Billion (Score:5, Insightful)
He wouldn't even have to dump a ton on the market. He could sell like 5 coins known to be in the Satoshi Nakamoto wallet.
That's literally all it would take, and yet it hasn't happened. Insert thinking-face emoji here.
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He wouldn't even have to dump a ton on the market. He could sell like 5 coins known to be in the Satoshi Nakamoto wallet.
That's literally all it would take, and yet it hasn't happened. Insert thinking-face emoji here.
Yea, but crashing the vaue and saying "You should have believed me..." would be more fun. That he never even sold 1 from the wallet makes me go "hhmmm..."
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He wouldn't even have to dump a ton on the market. He could sell like 5 coins known to be in the Satoshi Nakamoto wallet.
He wouldn't have to sell anything, just sign a challenge using one of Satoshi's keys.
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Re: The Inventor of Bitcoin Should Be Worth Billio (Score:2)
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Yeah... if he kept just 1% of it (Which is possible, "pre-mining" wasn't unusual back when they launched crypto back then), his stake would be worth over 8 Billion dollars now.
I certainly wouldn't be taking credit for that, knowing that the IRS is going to audit the hell out of you to find capital gains that you didn't pay taxes on.
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Maybe, maybe not. If I'd invented magic internet money, there's a high likelihood I would've been all like "Holy shit, some dude actually wants to trade me some pizzas for coins my computer can literally churn out almost for free? Deal!" Once Bitcoin caught on on a larger scale, it's not as if being the creator grants any advantages over people with warehouses full of mining rigs.
To have profited, you'd still have needed the foresight to have held on to your coins and not lost the key needed to spend the
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Maybe he forgot the password.
Or maybe he accidentally threw away the hard drive that had the keys on it. That seems to be a story that comes back from time to time!
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The real inventor of BitCoin wrote a paper describing the architecture two years earlier under his own name, Hal Finney. He got a terminal diagnosis of ALS a few months before he launched the BitCoin service, the pseudonym being necessary at the time because of the Haber-Stornetta patent on the BlockChain.
No, Hal, did not keep the coins. He invented BitCoin because he was a crank with weird ideas about inflation, not to get rich. Mining the coins and keeping them would have been a betrayal of his principles
Nope (Score:4, Interesting)
This is the guy that faked “proof” to the BBC almost a decade ago, and then cried off when called on it saying the pressure of publicity was getting to him.
This is the guy who claimed that he couldnt access a wallet with “proof” because someone else was holding part or all of a key and it was going to be mailed to him “any day now”. Did it ever turn up? No.
This is the guy that should be able to prove this in a moment any one of a dozen was, but has yet to do anything other than hand wave or fake shit.
So no, he cant prove it in court.
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This is the guy who claimed that he couldnt access a wallet with “proof” because someone else was holding part or all of a key and it was going to be mailed to him “any day now”. Did it ever turn up? No.
Oh it turned up—it turned up to be fictitious.
Even if true, how can he control Bitcoin? (Score:3)
The verdict ...will determine whether Wright can prevent developers from working on Bitcoin without his permission
How? You can't copyright the algorithm and, last I knew, in the UK you cannot patent software. So what legal method does he have to control who works on Bitcoin? Surely at most, he has copyright on some of the code which could easily be rewritten to get around that...or am I missing something?
Re: Even if true, how can he control Bitcoin? (Score:1)
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How? You can't copyright the algorithm and, last I knew, in the UK you cannot patent software. So what legal method does he have to control who works on Bitcoin?
From the article:
It is seeking a declaration that Wright does not own the copyright to the white paper that first proposed Bitcoin and did not author the original code, and an injunction preventing him from saying otherwise.
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It was patented by Ralph Merkle in 1979 [US4309569A], and the patent expired in 1999.
He's not Satoshi (Score:2)
I'm Satoshi Nakamoto, and so is my wife!
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I'm Satoshi Nakamoto, and so is my wife!
No, I'm Satoshi!
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May I have the keys to park your car?
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We are all Satoshi...
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I'm Satoshi Nakamoto, and so is my wife!
Please! [instantrimshot.com]
crazy or bad at this (Score:2)
Shatoshi should have access to lots of bitcoin. If Wright is the guy, he should have the keys. How does one create bitcoin and not have the foresight to keep track of the keys?
Clearly Wright is in this for the money. He must have lost the keys or never had them, because he could cash out and disappear if that was an option.
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Nature needed proof-of-stake Ethereum (or perhaps Solana, at 658 joules per transaction), not Bitcoin.
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Your right, what? Right hand? Right foot? Right leg? Right eye? Right kidney?
The world wants to know.
Science vs the law (Score:2)
Re: Science vs the law (Score:2)
Good thing this isnâ(TM)t being litigated in the US then
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Well, no. You're assuming a few things. He may have lost the coins that haven't been spent, as in he left them in the apartment he lived in a couple of moves ago. Others have said that he, or someone, still has the signing key.
Everybody can make a stupid mistake once in awhile.
(OTOH, I doubt that he really is. It's just that not being able to prove is isn't, in-and-of-itself, proof either way.)
Peak Journalism (Score:1)
Why? (Score:2)
Why prove it? Does Wright expect to collect royalties on his IP? Worth more than even a small slice of his (Satoshi's) presumed Bitcoin holdings are worth?
You can bet that the courtroom gallery will be stuffed with SEC and IRS auditors. All taking notes and hoping to find an infraction of arcane tax/securities law that would allow them to seize all his holdings.
Satoshi was a passenger on MH370. Good luck all you TLAs.
Satoshi is Jeffry Epstein. Next time you assassinate someone, make sure you get an up to
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If he proved it, and a quantum tech emerges that lets him recover it, that is a lot of cheese. I think its a pretty extraordinary claim, which could be obfuscating evidence in a murder if he is lying. I would not agree to it lightly.
To be fair ... (Score:2)
Satoshi Nakamoto sounds like a much cooler name for the inventor of crypto than Craig Wright. :-)
New theory (Score:2)
Craig Wright knew Satoshi Nakamoto and *murdered* him so he could impersonate him and have untold wealth.
But his attempted extortion first, of the secret keys to the castle, was foiled by deception on the part of Satoshi, who gave him non-foundation keys instead.
All of which criminal mastermind frustration fuels his continuing madness.
And in case you want to sue me for this Craig, f**k off. ChatGPT wrote it for
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That's an interesting claim. Is it now a defense against copyright lawsuits to claim the stuff was written by ChatGPT? (which can't hold copyrights)
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(...) And in case you want to sue me for this Craig, f**k off. ChatGPT wrote it for me, in response to an innocuous and innocent prompt. Prove it didn't.
LOL? But you posted it, that makes you liable. Not that anyone is going to bother with some random slashdot shitposting, but if you go through life thinking you can do libel at will and claim "but but it's written by ChatGPT" as your get out of jail free card, sooner or later you're going to have a Bad Day.
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That, and the tone in which its' written, clearly establish that the whole post is intended as parody, and should not be taken seriously or literally, therefore it is not libel.
Who is responsible, mind you, if someone does post ChatGPT generated content that IS libelous? The prompter? The first publisher? All publishers i.e. re-posters? OpenAI? Or perhaps we have to trace back to the
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There is no Satashi, per se (Score:2)
Bitcoin was created by the NSA at the behest of the CIA to provide a slush fund for off book black ops projects.
Years from now when you hear the truth from more reliable sources than some random anonymous idiot on slashdot, you'll remember you heard it here first.
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Must have backfired considering how North Korea and others use crypto.
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I’m amazed you left out George Soros.
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Why would I mention George Soros? Anyway....
My theory makes more sense than "some anonymous japanese guy came up with this thing, released it, saw his value in thing rise to $30 billion and never touched it, then completely disappeared" because that's how real people behave when they become billionaires.
Not even Howard Hughes was that crazy.
What's your theory?
His case has a huge hole. (Score:5, Interesting)
The original posted Bitcoin code is a non-trivial project, far less than (say) a browser or Excel, but months of work and contains several different bits of maths and tech. No individual part is beyond a good grad in Maths/CS (yeah, that's what I did), but it required mastering that range.
That means at the absolute minimum there were 50 versions before it was exposed to the world.
Bugs, performance issues, typos and simply cleaning up the code.
So where are they ?
It would be hard work to churn out these 50, maybe 100, possibly 200 incremental versions without having been the author.
Possible of course, but really quite hard and at least a tough months work for someone very smart, to mak them look right, some would try and give up in despair.
If it were me, claiming authorship, I'd turn up on day one with them and demand any other claimant produce theirs, *now*.
I'd also be able to stand someone like me (having coded in C++ since the late 1980s and C before that) ask hard questions on the code. Also having read the code I am 90% certain it was not written by one person, that's just short of of something I would swear to, but if I knew for a fact that it was one person, I'd assume it was done years apart as his coding style evolved.
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Maybe he threw away that hard drive and wants to buy the dump so he can look for it.
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Excellent points all. My theory is that it was not the work of one person and that "Satoshi" is a fictional entity. Not to have any evidence of the work that went into developing it? Never spoke to anyone about the project during its gestation? Even if he destroyed every thing he touched while developing it, he would be able to provide from a memory a detailed credible account of how he developed the ideas, how the project proceeded, show code written before the Satoshi drop that looks like it was done by t
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You're making the very large - and completely unsupported - assumption that the code was subject to version control. The vast majority of one-man projects developed off to the side don't employ any form of VCS.
Some do - but many, many don't.
Any competent lawyer would destroy you as an "expert witness" on the stand if this is all you were bringing to the table.
The Real One Should Have Many Ways of Proving It (Score:3)
Although people are naturally focusing on cryptographic proofs - the Genesis Block and the early mined coins that have never surfaced, having Satoshi's private signing key - all of which are different proofs that would be all but incontrovertible there should be more ways the real entity ("Satoshi" may not be a single person) could demonstrate it -- for example records of the development of the algorithms, records of activities that can be synced up with Natoshi's postings. etc.
Put yourself in "Satoshi's" shoes and suppose you had done what he did. Initially you chose to be completely anonymous and so released what you had developed completely anonymously. Unless you physically destroyed all of your storage for all of your computing systems you should be able to produce credible records of your activities that could be validated by forensic analysis. Even if you had destroyed it all, Mr. Robot style, you should be able to provide from memory a detailed account of how you developed it, and a believable story of why you destroyed the digital evidence, but now want to be recognized. People who wish to confess to acts they actually did can usually provide credible accounts, including secret knowledge that can be verified that established they really did it.
If a guy looks like a hoaxer, and has been caught trying to fabricate evidence that he tries to pass off as proof, then can be assumed to be what he appears to be - a hoaxer.
My theory is that "Satoshi" is not one person but either a spook of some kind (agencies really can keep secrets very well), or possibly something like a small group of Wall Street quants deliberately trying to create the sort of bubble that they intended to exploit.
Re: The Real One Should Have Many Ways of Proving (Score:1)
Bitcoin is still a thing? (Score:2)
Proof beyond an unreasonable doubt (Score:2)
Can he prove it?
"Here is my estimated 14 figure net worth."