New UK Court Case Could Decide if Craig Wright is Satoshi Nakamoto, Creator of Bitcoin (cnbc.com) 68
CNBC writes:
A copyright lawsuit brought by Craig Wright — the man who has claimed to be Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonym used by the creator of bitcoin — could finally put to bed the years-long mystery over who actually invented the multibillion-dollar cryptocurrency. That's because the success of the lawsuit would likely depend on Wright proving that he did, in fact, author the white paper that originally laid out the technology behind bitcoin. And the case could force the U.K. court to weigh in on whether or not Wright is the actual inventor of bitcoin, according to Reuters.
And in fact, Wright says he has evidence that can prove he is the author of the white paper.
London's High Court ruled on Thursday that Wright, the Australian computer scientist who first said in 2016 that he created bitcoin eight years earlier, could serve his copyright lawsuit against the anonymous operator and publisher of the website bitcoin.org, according to Reuters. Wright's lawsuit accuses bitcoin.org of copyright infringement for displaying a copy of the infamous bitcoin white paper, which he claims he wrote in 2008 outlining what bitcoin is and how it works. He's asking the court to force bitcoin.org to remove the white paper from the website.
Bitcoin.org has refused to remove the white paper from the website, and posted a statement in January saying Wright's "claims are without merit."
And in fact, Wright says he has evidence that can prove he is the author of the white paper.
London's High Court ruled on Thursday that Wright, the Australian computer scientist who first said in 2016 that he created bitcoin eight years earlier, could serve his copyright lawsuit against the anonymous operator and publisher of the website bitcoin.org, according to Reuters. Wright's lawsuit accuses bitcoin.org of copyright infringement for displaying a copy of the infamous bitcoin white paper, which he claims he wrote in 2008 outlining what bitcoin is and how it works. He's asking the court to force bitcoin.org to remove the white paper from the website.
Bitcoin.org has refused to remove the white paper from the website, and posted a statement in January saying Wright's "claims are without merit."
Case could decide if irrelevant UK court thinks (Score:3)
Fixed that for you.
Re:Case could decide if irrelevant UK court thinks (Score:5, Insightful)
The real creator should have the key to the original pile of bitcoin from creation.
If I had that kind of money it wouldn't matter what other people believed.
Re: Case could decide if irrelevant UK court think (Score:4, Interesting)
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To prove he is Satoshi, he needs to sign some data with one of Satoshi's private keys which can be verified with the associated public key.
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Re:Case could decide if irrelevant UK court thinks (Score:5, Interesting)
The real creator should have the key to the original pile of bitcoin from creation.
He claims he lost it.
This guy shouldn't be taken seriously, he's a talker. Like our previous president, he will continue to hold on to his lies, even in the face of overwhelming evidence.
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Craig Wright is an accomplished infosec professional, not a random con artist.
However, his attempts to prove his (potentially partial) identity as Satoshi have fallen flat. Whether this is because of real, potential, or imagined threats (the original wallet would be worth around $50 billion right now, never mind whatever weird NFT valuations could be assigned, making the owner among the most high-valued people in the world), his legal efforts have yet to bear fruit. He has a very steep hill to climb.
Re:Case could decide if irrelevant UK court thinks (Score:5, Interesting)
Craig Wright is an accomplished infosec professional
He's an entrepreneur who was convicted of shady business practices before Bitcoin existed.
Re:Case could decide if irrelevant UK court thinks (Score:5, Interesting)
Whatever else he may be, he's also a con artist.
Let's look at a few of the ways he's been caught red-handed:
* He claimed, in an Australian court, to control a number of early bitcoin addresses whose balance has never moved. 145 of these addreses, with a total of 7250 BTC, came together (or most likely they all belonged to the same person) and signed a message saying that Wright is a fraud and don't control these addresses. Unless you want to believe Wright plays 5 dimensional chess and wrote that message accusing himself of lying in court, that means what the message says is true.
* He signed a message with a "Satoshi PGP key" ... only that this key was uploaded to keyservers with a fake creation date, trying to make it look older than it was. The key used the defaults of a later PGP version than the one which existed at the time it supposedly was made. So the key's age was faked, and the key's apparent age was the ONLY argument for it being authentic - it had never been used to sign anything else connected to Satoshi.
So it's quite a bit worse than "hasn't provided evidence". He HAS provided evidence - only the evidence shows he's a con man trying to fake that he is Satoshi.
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Like our previous president...
He really is living rent free in you head. Point to where the Orange Man hurt you, there's no need to be afraid anymore...
This might come as a surprise to Americans... (Score:2, Interesting)
...but for normal people, money is never a goal in itself, but always merely a means to achieve the actual goal.
You could have all the money in the world, but if your life's goal is to be recognized as Sathoshi, or get that girl, or cure cancer, and you have failed that, you still have failed your life.
In fact most people would gladly spend all that money and be poor, if that would mean they could achieve their life's goal.
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Well, the business of America is business, and without our global history leading acumen, the world itself would cease to turn.
Or so say some of our more banal constituents, at least. Now about those old Dutch banks . . .
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Exactly. All he would need to do is post somewhere prominent "I'm the creator of bitcoin and I'm about to prove it. Satoshi Nakamoto is going to liquidate exactly 3.2 bitcoin from the well known wallet address at noon UTC today." And then do exactly that.
It would prove at the very least that he knows the creator and can convince them to go along with his claim.
Re: Case could decide if irrelevant UK court think (Score:3)
Exactly. Law courts don't decide on reality, they only give their opinion.
But if Craig Wright is legally compelled to offer proof and he offers something that isn't convincing that will tell us something.
Easy Peasy (Score:4, Informative)
Satoshi supposedly has a bucket load of early mined bitcoins that have not been touched. All Mr Wright has to do is make a small transaction with one to verify his claims.
Re: Easy Peasy (Score:2)
Re: Easy Peasy (Score:2)
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Defenses don't pass the burden of proof for plaintiffs....
Re:Easy Peasy (Score:4, Insightful)
Satoshi supposedly has a bucket load of early mined bitcoins that have not been touched. All Mr Wright has to do is make a small transaction with one to verify his claims.
If Mr Wright had the private key to the genesis blocks, there would be no reason to file a copyright lawsuit.
To compare this to you or I fighting over a penny laying in the street would need to imply the copyright lawsuit would bring in multiple billions of dollars, just to keep everything in scale.
Someone with access to hundreds of billions of dollars wouldn't need to squabble over the relative pathetic "damages" a copyright lawsuit could ever hope to bring in.
Of course someone with the private key wouldn't need a court to say he is or is not Satoshi.
Satoshi has complete control over proving their identity if they chose to do so.
Not to mention there are many governments on earth both desiring to, and not at all above, kidnapping and torturing Satoshi to get their hands on that wealth.
For Wrights sake, I hope no one is stupid enough to believe his lies.
Re: Easy Peasy (Score:4, Insightful)
No amount of cryptocurrency can accomplish that without a court order.
Re: Easy Peasy (Score:5, Insightful)
But he's not asking for damages, he asking to have the paper removed.
If he is Nakamoto, then that is his right.
But logically, why would he care?
The paper is already "out there" on hundreds of sites. This lawsuit will make no difference even if he wins.
If he is really Nakamoto, he would be out in international waters on his super-yacht with a dozen sugar babies, not squabbling over some PDF.
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Plus I think he'd want it distributed.
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We know that the real Nakamoto hasn't accessed most of his Bitcoin wealth, so probably isn't out there on a super-yacht living it up. Whoever he is, he must be either quite comfortable or very afraid of having his identity discovered because he hasn't touched his fortune.
Re: Easy Peasy (Score:4, Insightful)
or very afraid of having his identity discovered because he hasn't touched his fortune.
Indeed. So it is ridiculous that he would be exposing his identity just to get a PDF removed from a random website.
Re: Easy Peasy (Score:5, Interesting)
> But logically, why would he care?
I forget that even slashdot regulars are not ip to date on exactly how dramatic crypto stuff is.
So, pretend that Craig Wright is Satoshi. In that case, he would want people who have perverted his vision to stop benefitting from it. He wants to host the whitepaper on a website promoting the One True Bitcoin (remember, we are pretending Satoshi and Craig are the same guy).
This being Bitcoin SV, where SV stands for Satoshi Vision. BSC is a fork of BCH (Bitcoin Cash) which is in turn a fork of actual bitcoin, BTC.
So in theory Craig Wright, as Satoshi, wants to stop others from claiming that they have faithfully inherited his work.
Now here in the real world, what we have is Craig Wright shilling his cryptocurrency by trying to claim that his cryptocurrency is the REAL bitcoin. If this were to be proved, BTC would go down massively and BSV would rise. So by claiming he is gonna do this, he pumps the price of BSV im the short term and gets to dump bags on his followers.
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Feelings have nothing to do with claims of a pathological liar who has offered not one shred of proof of either being bitcoin's creator nor the author of a paper. Wright has provably lied about academic credentials he doesn't hold and partnerships he never had to develop a claimed computer that never existed. He made debunked demonstrations with PGP keys. A liar and a poseur doesn't get to exercise copyright claims about something they didn't write.
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No amount of cryptocurrency can accomplish that without a court order.
For well under a hundred thousand dollars he could probably hire a few goons to pay an in-person visit to the owners of bitcoin.org.
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If Mr Wright had the private key to the genesis blocks, there would be no reason to file a copyright lawsuit.
To compare this to you or I fighting over a penny laying in the street would need to imply the copyright lawsuit would bring in multiple billions of dollars, just to keep everything in scale.
That's assuming that the contents of the Genesis Wallet can actually be sold en masse at current exchange rates, which... is not how Bitcoin or commodities or stocks or collectibles work.
Re: Easy Peasy (Score:2)
He would not need to sell that stuff. Simply proving he can move it from one wallet to another would make everyone believe him, and not crash the price unless he was a giant moron about it.
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All Mr Wright has to do is make a small transaction with one to verify his claims.
Even if Wright is Satoshi and didn't lose the key, he might not want to make such a trade.
Proving that he CAN make the trade, even a tiny one, or even using the private key of the genesis block (or other early Satoshi blocks) to post a message, could raise the spectre of him spending his estimated horde of over one million bitcoins, and crash the currency.
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Even if Wright is Satoshi and didn't lose the key, he might not want to make such a trade.
Yes; doing so has (1) Security issues in it would reveal what the Public Key is for certain addresses, And, (2) It could cause a loss of Satoshi's anonymity -- Any method of anonymously posting a message can potentially be traced by an entity with sufficient resources, There are possible highly-resourced actors who may have hundred-million$+ budgets for attempting to find Satoshi. Many government authorities,
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It could cause a loss of Satoshi's anonymity
...but the entire point is that Wright doing this would prove that he is Satoshi, which is something he wants to prove. He's literally in court trying to prove it. A key component of "How Not to Lose Your Anonymity" is "Do not declare in open court that you are this anonymous figure", and the line item immediately following it is "if you DO accidentally declare in open court that you are this anonymous figure, do NOT claim in the news media that you have evidence that can prove you are this anonymous figure
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My understanding is Wright's trying to claim he's the creator of the paper. That's not necessarily the same Satoshi Nakamoto as the
Satoshi Nakamoto who wrote the software -- Or at least it is Not automatically. Since the name is a pseudonym: it is not unlikely that multiple different unrelated people could have been using the pseudonym at different times for different act
Re: Easy Peasy (Score:2)
Grumpy Cat: Good.
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Well, he does say he has proof, maybe that's the proof he's talking about.
Re: Easy Peasy (Score:2)
He only has to sign a text message with an early key to prove he has that key. He does not have to move coins.
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Let's hope he's (W)right then (Score:2)
Let's hope he wins, maybe by proving his identity using a key from the genesis block.
Here's Charles Stross take on Bitcoin - I didn't agree back then, I agree now.
https://www.antipope.org/charl... [antipope.org]
What if he's not Satoshi Nakamoto, but a double? (Score:4, Funny)
Nope (Score:3)
Court decisions create a legal fiction. Whether that fiction is aligned with actual reality is a matter of luck. Depending on the court and the case, the decision can have a worse than even change of being wrong.
Current example for UK courts:
https://news.slashdot.org/stor... [slashdot.org]
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Why would he need to if he's got billions of Dollars worth of Bitcoins?
Re:NFT White Paper (Score:5, Interesting)
Why would he need to if he's got billions of Dollars worth of Bitcoins?
Because those particular bitcoins have been untraded since their creation (or, in some cases, donation to Satoshi) and are closely watched. If anyone actually starts trading them - even a few - it will raise the spectre of a sudden effective inflation of over a million additional circulating bitcoins. This could crash the currency.
Out of character (Score:5, Insightful)
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Don’t know about Satoshi, but (Score:2)
I am Spartacus.
If he wants to prove he's Satoshi (Score:2)
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When Bitcoin was at its max, apparently he was in the world's top 20 richest people.
Seems more and more likely Satoshi lost his wallet (Score:1)
As unbelievable as it may be, it seems increasingly likely that the real Satoshi Nakamoto has misplaced his original wallet or its passphrase. While it's possible that he has been waiting patiently for 12 years, watching Bitcoin's value rise, and biding his time, that seems increasingly unlikely. By now, he could have cashed out at least a small fraction of the estimated $50 billion USD worth of his original coins. Or he could have signed a message using his private key, proving to the world that he still e
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You missed an option: he died a few years ago. IIRC at least one person who is more plausibly believed to be Satoshi has passed away.
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Yes, that's certainly possible. But to me, it seems unlikely. When Satoshi announced in 2011 that he was stepping away "to pursue other interests," Bitcoin was already big enough that his coins were worth between $1M USD and $30M USD, depending on the time of day. It was easy to envision it gaining even more value over time. I have to assume that someone holding that much wealth would take steps to pass it on to his heirs in the event of his (or her) untimely death.
Then again, the theory of my novel is that
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Hal did make arrangements so it's not /unlikely/ that Satoshi did too.
IIRC the CIA interviewed Gavin right before Satoshi decided he had other interests.
By contrast, CSW doesn't seem to have other interests.
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Could be a guy like Ian Murdock, the guy that created Debian. He died at the age of just 42 in 2015. So young.
Craig Wright may be ... (Score:2)
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Barbra Streisand? Huh?
Oh, wait, you mean the lady who lived here [wikimedia.org], in the residence shown in Image 3850.jpg of the California Coastal Erosion Project website, located at 6838 Zumirez Drive in Malibu California?
Three Letter Agencies (Score:2)
It does not help to settle public disputes but I have a high degree of confidence that the three letter agencies in more than one country (which is two letters and a number in Britain) know who Satoshi Nakamoto is.
It's great that No One has any doubt on ID verific (Score:2)
Looking at all the comments my it's great that No One has any doubt on ID verification with BTC blockchain !
Without any central trust authority at all.
So no government, criminal organization or Big Business etc could stop /revoke /spoof this ID auth.
That's not a trivial thing, right ??
Would the real Satoshi Sakamoto reveal himself (Score:2)
Even worse ... (Score:2)
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... he's a white guy who claimed to be Japanese! (if you believe him). The horror!!!!
Seinfeld did a show on that. People will accept advice and such from oriental people because they think they're smarter than anyone else. The real white supremacists. So much so they are even discriminated upon by colleges and recently all the democrats in Congress. Democrats - the real racists.
Would you invest in Bitcoin if it was made by William John Smith? No, of course not. It's crap, easily broken.. and so on. A guy that could be my next door neighbor couldn't do that. Except that they can. Luminaries
Hal Finney's Coins (Score:3)
He's been using this rouse to try to get ownership of a chunk of Hal Finney's coins (from his estate in Florida). That judge was absolutely furious at him for the lies, fraud, and deceit in that case.
Satoshi doesn't need to plagiarize papers or cheat in CS classes, both of which Wright had been proven to have done. Greg Maxwell had quite a dossier of his antics on Github at one point.
The Satoshi-model chain of Bitcoin (Cash/BCH) saw him try to attempt a hostile takeover and nearly the entire community rebuked him and effectively left him out in the cold trying to convince the gullible that he's Satoshi. I wrote down the details a couple years ago so I wouldn't have to remember:
https://medium.com/the-capital... [medium.com]