By Dr Tristan Jenkinson

Introduction

I’ve written about Craig Wright a few times on my blog, he is due to return to court in London this week in a matter that will have major repercussions for related cases, and for the wider cryptocurrency world. Why? Because a court is directly facing the question of whether Craig Wright is Satoshi Nakamoto.

I wrote about the start of the COPA (Crypto Open Patent Alliance) case back in April 2021 now this case is finally hitting the courts.

One of the reasons that the Craig Wright cases interest me is because they link up many of my personal interests… digital forensics (and in particular falsified document investigations), cryptocurrency and the law… this latest case throws another interest into the list – ChatGPT!

A Brief History of Craig

I wrote a series of articles with a focus on a case that was brought against Craig Wright by the estate of Dave Kleiman. The first article (which you can read here) gives an introduction to the claims of Craig Wright.

The short version is that Bitcoin is widely accepted to have been created in 2008 by Satoshi Nakamoto, who wrote a PDF file known as the Bitcoin Whitepaper, explaining how it was to work. However, Satoshi Nakamoto was a pseudonym.

In 2016, Craig Wright became one of a series of people who have claimed to be Satoshi Nakamoto.

There are many journalists and authors who have written about Craig Wright, if you are reading about him for the first time, there are many stories out there worth reading, some of which I have mentioned in my own articles, but when you start digging into the internet, there are many more discussions out there.

Wright has provided evidence to support his claim to be Satoshi a number of times. Unfortunately, I believe in in every example that I am aware of, Wright has been shown to have been deceptive – with either his attempts being demonstrated mathematically or logically incorrect or flawed, or, with increasing commonality, electronic documents provided by Wright have been provably manipulated. There are even some that suggest that his PhD was plagiarised (https://medium.com/@paintedfrog/craig-wright-plagiarized-significant-portions-of-his-phd-thesis-and-tried-to-hide-it-80cd8f01459).

The point with regard to falsified documents, a topic that is appearing with increasing frequency in Craig Wright’s cases, is worth discussing a little further. Wright has a background in digital forensics. His own website claims that he is “… one of the most highly qualified digital forensics practitioners in the world”. While this may be somewhat exaggerated, he does have some knowledge in the computer science and digital forensic field. One of the things that digital forensic investigators may focus on is the falsification of files. I have worked on a number of these cases. To investigate them effectively, and to explain how documents may have been falsified, you need to know and understand how such documents could have been manipulated.

The COPA v Wright case includes the discussion of a large number of falsified documents.

Towards the COPA case

To understand the background to the COPA case, it is helpful to understand some of the legal cases that built to this point.

Wright made attempts to prove that he was Satoshi, each of which faced serious scrutiny and were demonstrated as being seriously flawed. For example, he still owes former BBC News technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones (@ruskin147), bitcoin that was transferred as part of one of Wright’s proof attempts.

Wright faced a lot of criticism, with some outright calling him a fraud. As a result, Wright pushed into another phase of his Satoshi claim, utilising huge financial backing to take those who claimed he was a fraud to court.

Then Wright went further, having his lawyers sent out cease and desist to various organisations linked to bitcoin to demand that they stop hosting the Bitcoin Whitepaper, as he claimed he owned it. Wright also demanded, though his Tulip Trading company, that he be given access to 111,000 of bitcoin (with a current value of around £3.7 billion / $4.7 billion), for which he claims the private keys were stolen from his computer. Usually, if someone is claiming that sort of money, they would have some way of proving that they are who they claim to be.

More details on the start of the COPA case can be found in the article I wrote in 2021.

COPA Case to Directly Consider if Craig Wright is Satoshi

The COPA trial which is due to start today (5 February) will directly look at the issue of if Craig Wright is Satoshi. Whatever the result, it is likely to be hotly contested. Whereas in the past Wright has been viewed to have used the wealth of his backer Calvin Ayre to target those who may not have the funds to fight back, he may find that COPA are a rather different challenge, with the backing of Jack Dorsey, co-founder and former CEO of Twitter, in his capacity as CEO of Square Crypto.

As a side note, it has been raised that while Wright has benefitted from the backing of Ayre in the past, Ayre may have recently moved away from backing Wright. See for example this discussion on Twitter/X.

Multiple different trials involving Wright currently moving through the London courts, intertwine at the point of “the identity question” – i.e. if Craig Wright is indeed Satoshi. As a result, it was decided that this trial should move forward first, and this decision used in relation to the other trials, so that the point was not continually re-heard.

Typically in such cases, the claimant bears the burden of proof. As COPA are the claimant in this case, they would normally bear this burden. However, an interesting article by Zemin M. Gao states that because the identity question is required to be used in further lawsuits, including those where Wright is the claimant (where he would have the burden of proof that he IS Satoshi), that actually there would be consolidation of the identity issue. If the article is correct, this would mean that first the court would need to decide if COPA had done enough to prove that Wright is not Satoshi. If not, then the court would need to consider if Wright has done enough to prove that he is… Sadly, in theory this means that we could still end up with a deadlock where neither party can meet the level of proof required, and the identity matter would remain unsettled.

Offer of Settlement

In a move that surprised some commentators, Wright offered a settlement at the last minute. Wright claimed:

“I believe the settlement terms are broadly uncontroversial, beneficial to the industry as a whole, and intended to draw a fresh start in the history of Bitcoin to guarantee its success in whatever form it takes”

COPA disagreed, raising that loopholes in the settlement would simply allow for Wright to sue the same parties again and would force COPA to accept that he is Satoshi.

Despite being given 7 days to consider, COPA almost immediately responded “Hard pass on that “settlement””.

Since the settlement move surprised many, why might it have been made?

The answer may well be in relation to the new documents that Wright planned to rely upon to once again “prove” he is Satoshi.

More Falsified Documents

As part of this new case, Wright claimed to have found several USB drives which he apparently found “in a desk drawer at his house on 15 September 2023.”

The judgment of Justice Mellor which discusses these USB devices is as interesting as their content, which we shall return to shortly.

As above the USB devices were found on 15 September and there were various discussions about the data being made available for analysis. On 2 October, Travers Smith LLP, who were at that time, Wrights lawyers, “gave a very brief account of the discovery of the New Drives, saying that Dr Wright had found a Samsung USB drive and a MyDigital USB which he claimed contained relevant documents”.

COPA’s lawyers (Bird & Bird LLP) responded pointing out:

“…that no reliance could be placed on new documents without the Court’s permission; asking for an explanation of the discovery of the drives and technical details; and requesting access to full forensic images.”

Three days later Travers Smith came off the record, no longer representing Wright. On 11 October, Wrights new lawyers, Shoosmiths LLP provided “an account of the discovery of the New Drives albeit one which COPA say was convoluted but again incomplete”.

So, at the last minute, Wright has found some drives with some information on them that he believes prove he is Satoshi. It seems strange that they should not have been found or used in any other case previously. Regardless, analysis of the content (once finally allowed) identified that documents provided from those USB devices were falsified.

The findings are covered well in an article on COPA’s website.

The documents Wright has provided include a series of LaTeX files which are alleged to be the original files used to create the Bitcoin Whitepaper. LaTeX is an editing program, commonly used for typesetting, it is good at representing mathematical equations etc. and was the software that I used to write my PhD with. Ultimately, you write the content including code for the various settings etc. and then compile the code to create your document.

One of the problems… that the Bitcoin Whitepaper wasn’t written in LaTeX. It was created in OpenOffice, a point which both parties experts agree upon.

A further problem, a deleted file appears to suggest that Wright may have used ChatGPT to generate these “original” LaTeX files, apparentlu trying to reverse engineer them from the BitCoin Whitepaper. From the COPA report:

“A deleted file was recovered which suggests that the fabricated evidence presented by Wright was created with the help of Chat GPT. The deleted file contained part of the content of a document Wright provided and began with the words ““Certainly, here’s the LaTeX code for Section 7, which covers Recommendations.” Expert witnesses recreated this exact response from Chat GPT by asking it ““Are you able to output some template latex code for section 7 which relates to recommendations?”

COPA intend to use examples of Wright’s forged documents, both from this case and others, as key evidence in this case. After all, if you were Satoshi, surely you would not need to repeatedly falsify documents to suggest that you are.You can read a more detailed list of the apparently forged documents that COPA plan to rely on here.

In conclusion, the findings of the court could have a huge impact on the cryptocurrency world for years to come. The court will have to decide if Wright would have repeatedly falsified documents to support his claims if he really were Satoshi – especially when there are simple steps that he could take to prove that he is. Wright has has repeatedly failed to take those steps. If he truly is Satoshi, he could start by returning Rory Cellan-Jones’ bitcoin!