By Dr Tristan Jenkinson

Introduction

It has unfortunately taken me far too long to write this post, and it is not quite the post I was hoping to put together. I have pages and pages of notes that I wanted to include, but much will have to wait for another article. With Judge Mellor’s judgment potentially arriving in the not too distant future, hopefully I’ll be writing on this topic again soon. Regardless, there are some important things to cover, an explosive end to the trial, and what is happening in the aftermath.

For those who don’t know,  I’ve covered the COPA v Wright case in a few articles, and have commented on Craig Wright in the past, both in my blog articles, and in presentations. For those not familiar with the case, you might want to grab a quick recap here or further back in time here.

Most recently I write about some of the evidence heard in the case, including an animation showing the changes that Wright made to a file in LaTeX (https://ediscoverychannel.com/2024/02/27/copa-v-wright-an-animated-end-to-craig-wrights-satoshi-claims/), apparently in attempts to make it match the Bitcoin Whitepaper, and a late-in-the-day bombshell from Wright’s lawyers, in which they had to report to the court that emails provided to them were apparently false!

The Trial – An Explosive End

The trial has now finished after 6 weeks. Many had expected that with all the excitement throughout, that the trial would finish not with a bang, but a whimper. It certainly seemed to be heading that way until the very end.

After closing arguments were completed on 14 March 2024, Justice Mellor said that he would be preparing a fairly long judgment, and that “… having considered all the evidence and submissions presented to me in this trial, I’ve reached the conclusion that the evidence is overwhelming”. That overwhelming evidence led Justice Mellor to make a series of declarations about which he stated “I am satisfied are useful and are necessary to do justice between the parties”.

“First, that Dr Wright is not the author of the Bitcoin White Paper. Second, Dr Wright is not the person who adopted or operated under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto in the period 2008 to 2011. Third, Dr Wright is not the person who created the bitcoin system. And, fourth, he is not the author of the initial versions of the bitcoin software.

(Quotes taken from the Guardian and the Law Society Gazette) The declaration has since been put out in writing, which can be accessed here.

For a judge to make such declarations at the end of a trial is extraordinary, though this has been something of an extraordinary case. While the declarations are not everything sought by COPA (as covered in my earlier article), they originally also sought injunctions, which may well be addressed in the written judgment to come), the declarations are a stark rebuke for Craig Wright, and a clear headline win for COPA.

Arthur van Pelt, who has long been writing (and exposing) Craig Wright wrote a great article covering the origins of the case, and many of the others that Wright has instigated. If you have found my articles interesting, I would highly recommend it.

So, now that the trial is over… what next?

Staunch Supporters Continue

Craig’s supporters have acted in a manner of different ways.

Calvin Ayre, who has effectively acted as Wright’s financial backer, together with Wright set up Bitcoin Satoshi’s Vision (BSV). BSV has claimed to be Satoshi’s original plan, and has traded on the claim that Wright is Satoshi. With Wright being confirmed not to be Satoshi, it is unclear what the future is for BSV.

On the day of the announcement, Calvin Ayre stated on Twitter that “I know he is Satoshi… but that is moot.”, as well as “cool. Now Craig is not Satoshi in law. He is still the worlds formost [sic.] expert in Enterprise Blockchain.”

The day after Judge Mellor’s statement in court, Ayre suddenly announced that he was leaving his Twitter account, claiming that this had been planned for over a year:

This didn’t stop Ayre later appearing to attempt to deflect from the issue that Wright is not Satoshi, and the clear impact this has BSV. Ayre wrote a strange article on CoinGeek, apparently trying to claim that BSV was written by Satoshi, which seems entirely contradictory to Judge Mellor’s statement:

Other Wright supporters, such as Ryuushi have continued to support Wright and BSV (apparently somewhat unscrupulously). Ryuushi made claims that NOWATCH was powered by the BSV blockchain, though Selina Homing from NOWATCH, stated that it was clearly not based on BSV (see for example the posts from “btcsteve” – https://twitter.com/btcsteve/status/1773756238481748217).

As covered by Arthur van Pelt, Mark Eglington, who a book about Craig Wright entitled “Hero/Villain – Satoshi the man who built bitcoin” which has not yet been released… deleted his twitter account. Christen Ager-Hanssen shares some additional details suggesting that Edlington’s book may have been commissioned by Ayre. The book is still scheduled for release at the end of May.

Some Wright supporters, such as Twitter user @cregtarded have expressed remorse. Ryan X Charles apparently planned to start a class action lawsuit against Wright, Ayre and Stefan Matthews for scamming BSV investors, see https://www.reddit.com/r/bsv/comments/1birxv8/ryan_x_charles_is_preparing_a_class_action/ and https://twitter.com/FaketoshiSUX/status/1770074753757253739. However, as some commentators predicted, he swiftly backed down from this approach.

What Next?

While we await the written judgment, there have been plenty of knock on effects… as a result of an apparent attempt to move funds out of the jurisdiction, Wright has been hit with a series of worldwide freezing orders.

Other cases have collapsed as a result of the statement made by Judge Mellor. Including the libel case against Magnus Granath (known as hodlonaut).

There are also many further potential risks for Wright. Not least is the potential for criminal investigation. As Wright himself wrote on his blog in May 2019 at https://craigwright.net/blog/bitcoin-blockchain-tech/satoshi-and-science/:

“In court, I get to put up evidence. If any of it was falsified, people could point it out and I would go to prison.”

It is worth noting that Wright’s blog site has apparently been taken down. Sadly this means that the above link to Wright’s admission that he would go to prison if he falsified evidence in court, no longer works. Though it is available on WayBack Machine.

It is also interesting to note that this is not the first time that Wright has deleted entire blog accounts that he has used. As I commented on one of my early articles on Wright, he had previously deleted blog sites at “gse-compliance.blogspot.com”, which contained information leaked to Wired) and “drcraigwright.net” which contained the famous Satre post.

The judgment is expected soon. I’m hoping to write more when we finally see it.