Craig Wright relents aka Satoshi (air quotes) in Public Apology!

[GenTarkin]

http://drcraigwright.net/  



I'm Sorry.

I believed I could do this.  I believed that I could put years of anonymity and hiding behind me. But, as the events of this week unfolded and I prepared to publish the proof of access to the earliest keys, I broke. I do not have the courage. I cannot.

When the rumors began, my qualifications and character were attacked. When those allegations were proven false, new allegations have already begun. I know now that I am not strong enough for this.

I know that his weakness will cause great damage to those that have supported me, and particularly to Jon Matonis and Gavin Anderson.  I can only hope that their honour and credibility is not irreparably tainted by my actions.  They were not deceived, but I know that the world will never believe that now.  I can only say I'm sorry.

And goodbye.

This fucking noob ass fucking wannabe piece of shit!
Why did gavin and friends go along w/ this bullshit?!
This guy was never prepared to sign proof of early blocks... fucking scam!
I knew it, its hilarious shit!

[1714754580]

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[1714754580]

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[1714754580]

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[panju1]

This fucking noob ass fucking wannabe piece of shit!
Why did gavin and friends go along w/ this bullshit?!
This guy was never prepared to sign proof of early blocks... fucking scam!
I knew it, its hilarious shit!

What is more hilarious is that he managed to con BBC and the economist.
Publications will be more careful about what they publish from now onwards.

[l8orre]

This fucking noob ass fucking wannabe piece of shit!
Why did gavin and friends go along w/ this bullshit?!
This guy was never prepared to sign proof of early blocks... fucking scam!
I knew it, its hilarious shit!

What is more hilarious is that he managed to con BBC and the economist.
Publications will be more careful about what they publish from now onwards.

hahaha - I would not be so sure about that!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitler_Diaries

 

[cryptodevil]

For all those who seem to be overlooking the explanation for his motivation to attempt this hoax, it has already been clearly explained:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/4hm5l1/telling_craig_wright_deflected_question_about/

A few months ago when Craig Wright first leaked documents to news outlets to attempt to out himself as Satoshi, it came to light that his company was the recipient of $54 Million in R&D subsidies from the Australian Tax Office, for which he was under investigation (and later had his home raided). In order to qualify for the subsidies, Wright claimed to have spent millions of dollars on R&D. However, his company did not spend a cent on R&D. He claimed that he "signed over the rights" to millions of dollars worth of bitcoin to a third party, and that it was spent on R&D. This was detailed in a company document. (The document was taken offline. If someone happened to save a copy, please post it. It used to be here: http://demorgan.com.au/assets/150511_demorgan_54mausindustryrebate.pdf).

In this document, he allegedly "signs over the rights" to his satoshi coins to a third party, which could (conveniently) only be loaned back to him for R&D purposes. Also, like a child, he calls out the person who is investigating him from the ATO in this document. Paraphrased: "See! I told you I was Satoshi! Now get off my back" https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2644014-Tulip-Trust-Redacted.html

Are you starting to see the motive here?

Long story short, the Australain government wasn't buying the story that he was satoshi nakamoto and that he spent millions of dollars worth of bitcoin on R&D. His only way out would be to somehow convince the ATO that he is in fact Nakamoto, and does in fact own the bitcoin that he claimed to spend on R&D.

When asked about this in the BBC interview, he made it seem as though the Australian Tax Office was investigating him because they wanted him to pay taxes on his alleged bitcoin holdings. This is 100% false. They are coming after him for claiming to own Satoshi's coins and spending them to get a large R&D subsidy. The fact that he misrepresented the situation rather than addressing the actual issue when asked about it in the interview is very telling with regard to his likely motive.

He's been trying to convince them he's Satoshi for quite some time it seems. He can't prove it by direct means because he isn't Satoshi so doesn't have the PK, which is why he has had to risk escalating his claims with sleight-of-hand shenanigans and smooth-talking socially-awkward nerds like Gavin.

[aliashraf]

...
In Dr. Wright's Case, he had to  convince people by:
1- Showing his absolute and deep knowledge and vision
2- Convincing people, trust worthy people, who know Satoshi better
3- Presenting his deep concerns and good intentions about the technology under consideration
4- Using his reputation and background as a respected, honest , trust worthy person
5- Putting forward his new and solid ideas about the future
6- Reasoning about his disappearance
7- Justifying his decision to reveal his Identity

And I think he has almost done all of this!
...

You are most likely a sock puppet of CSW or of his group.

Here are appropriate answers to your list to help determine is CSW is Satoshi:
1. Irrelevant. This information is speculative and doesn't determine if he is Satoshi.
2. Irrelevant. This information is speculative and doesn't determine if he is Satoshi.
3. Irrelevant. This information is speculative and doesn't determine if he is Satoshi.
4. Irrelevant. This information is speculative and doesn't determine if he is Satoshi.
5. Irrelevant. The issue here is the past and this doesn't determine if he is Satoshi.
6. Irrelevant. This information is speculative and doesn't determine if he is Satoshi.
7. Irrelevant. This information is speculative and doesn't determine if he is Satoshi.

According to your list, I have done everything you listed except number 2 so far.
So all I have to do is convince Gavin and three others, and you will go to bat for me?

Well. It is good as I said before to have people on board of thinking and discussing. But You have to be more specific than tagging things 'Irrelevant' . How is it possible being a qualified, 'opinionated', 'focused', honest, prestigious, convincing person who puts all his credit (very good credit) on the table and takes the responsibilty of being Satoshi (without any speculated interest)  is 'irrelevant' but holding some sequence of bits in the pocket is relevant?
As most of the people I have met here, you suffer from Crypto- Exageration syndrome, obviously. I just can't help it. but .... let's try:

1- You and no body else can have an admin level knowledge of the technology without a formal, recorded top level engagement in the core team.
2- You have not convinced the reference people (suppose not tried though)
3-You have not a thorough vision about the technology or have not presented it to us yet
4- You do not hold the same level of legitimacy and popularity of Craig Wright
5- According to Gavin (trust worthy in this domain) Craig Wright has a lot of matured ideas and plans for the future of Blockchain and bitcoin. What's yours?
....
And Finally You have not claimed to be Satoshi! You have not shown any willingness to take the responsibility.

And neither you nor any other person in the planet can pass all the items of such a checklist with zero failure other than Satoshi (and Dr. Craig Wright).

Now putting it the way you like and hypothetically rejecting my test or similar 'speculative' check lists ...
What's your alternative? How does Satoshi have to convince you to be himself? With PKs? This is it? He should mathematically prove what? Possessing some bit strings exactly proves what (other than possessing them)? ....Rejected!
Any other alternatives? Don't think so.

We real, mathematically non-provable human beings, living in a nonlinear chaotic real world have no choice other than continuing our 'speculative' thinking and reasoning. We do show respect to each other, we do love each other , ... based on this methodology. We have no choice, and should be happy with this fact ... I prefer to be dead and not been 'provably' respected or loved because of my 'provable' characteristics.
See? provability is totally 'irrelevant' here.

Craig Wright's Satoshi claim is not about registering some transaction in Blockchain or any GL ... It is about love, it is about appreciation and respect, it is about humanity, it can not be measured by some naive and preliminary branch of mathematics,  analytical mathematics.

[pereira4]

Well, it's obvious now that this was all either a scam from the guy that wants to get a lot of attention and media around him to later capitalize on it, or this is indeed a PSYOPs operation to take power away from Core devs as pointed by some people that cleverly realized this is a really serious option to consider.

[mki8]

One thought that crossed my mind was,
Craig wright seemed for a long time try to indicate he had a role at the start
maybe he was doing this to get investment privately implying or telling investors he created bitcoin
so he could get investment
he did get nearly $30m in BTC investments,
then he tried using them to pull a tax scam, to claim back $3m in fiat in tax refunds

Maybe he was still telling or suggesting to investors that he was Satoshi,
and maybe one of those investors called his bluff and told him go public, or prove he is satoshi and they will invest
if he was trying to secure invest of a few hundred million, then it would be worth a try in his mind

[fenican]

Still unclear how he fooled Gavin. Might there be a bug in Electrum's signed message verification code?

[steven0021]

Still unclear how he fooled Gavin. Might there be a bug in Electrum's signed message verification code?

perhaps. gavin also said that they verified it on a brand new laptop. it is unclear if gavin knows for a fact that the laptop was indeed "brand new".
of course gavin (plus the other 4(?) people) being fooled is not the only possibility.

[Cuidler]

Still unclear how he fooled Gavin. Might there be a bug in Electrum's signed message verification code?

perhaps. gavin also said that they verified it on a brand new laptop. it is unclear if gavin knows for a fact that the laptop was indeed "brand new".

This reminds me of first stage of every magic trick, show the audience the deck of card or whatever else is not rigged.

But I can understand people can be often fooled by scammer pretty easy because they dont expect to deal with one - it happens so infrequently. Even with magician trick, you often can not be sure how exactly the magician fooled you, even though your sure the magician fooled your attention somehow.

[thejaytiesto]

It's obvious that he is taking a position in advance to try to get the coins on all those tax heavens like seychelles or whoever they put all those early mined coins at, and it's also obvious this guy is not satoshi, but he was indeed involved in Bitcoin since the early days and mined a lot of it, but guess what, a lot of random people we don't even know also has tons and tons of Bitcoin.

[maokoto]

He knows he can relent and be forgotten soon because he gave no real proof he was satoshi. If he had provided something credible, relenting would not solve anything.

[aliashraf]

And yet there is another problem haven't seen people talking about enough: Is 'he' the real Craig Wright? I mean, the person who claimed being Satoshi has not proved to be Craig Wright in the first hand ... so nobody can accuse Craig Wright of anything. That 'person' (if a single one person at all)  is supposed to provide proof, some Pks of transactions known to be signed by Craige,  tisn't he? Instead of this he just used regular trust oriented uncertain social belief about him being Craig Wright, unacceptable and irrelevat, such a claim needs pure mathematical proof ... wait ... I am becoming confused about my identity as well ... OMG ... where are my PKs?   

[cjmoles]

And yet there is another problem haven't seen people talking about enough: Is 'he' the real Craig Wright? I mean, the person who claimed being Satoshi has not proved to be Craig Wright in the first hand ... so nobody can accuse Craig Wright of anything. That 'person' (if a single one person at all)  is supposed to provide proof, some Pks of transactions known to be signed by Craige,  tisn't he? Instead of this he just used regular trust oriented uncertain social belief about him being Craig Wright, unacceptable and irrelevat, such a claim needs pure mathematical proof ... wait ... I am becoming confused about my identity as well ... OMG ... where are my PKs?   

I know!  We don't need private keys.  We have trusted third parties to validate our claims for us.  All of this private key, trustless ledger stuff is ruining our fractional reserve banking system.  We need to come together as a community to bring back the trusted third parties because we aren't intenomogent enough to make our own financial decisions.

[Holliday]

And yet there is another problem haven't seen people talking about enough: Is 'he' the real Craig Wright? I mean, the person who claimed being Satoshi has not proved to be Craig Wright in the first hand ... so nobody can accuse Craig Wright of anything. That 'person' (if a single one person at all)  is supposed to provide proof, some Pks of transactions known to be signed by Craige,  tisn't he? Instead of this he just used regular trust oriented uncertain social belief about him being Craig Wright, unacceptable and irrelevat, such a claim needs pure mathematical proof ... wait ... I am becoming confused about my identity as well ... OMG ... where are my PKs?   

Using a private key as evidence to support a claim doesn't mean that it is the only evidence that can be used in every example. It just so happens that it would be strong evidence in this specific example.

You are the only person I've seen taking the extreme view that we must use private keys for everything, while pretending everyone else is doing exactly that.

[interbtc]

He knows he can relent and be forgotten soon because he gave no real proof he was satoshi. If he had provided something credible, relenting would not solve anything.

It was obvious from the very start that it's a hoax. The guy proved nothing and all he ever wanted was to be on the spotlight.
The dumbest part of the whole thing to me was Gavin's statements about him; how could he ever say that he believes that he is the real S.N ?

[AlexGR]

Still unclear how he fooled Gavin. Might there be a bug in Electrum's signed message verification code?

They said they downloaded Electrum, yet no UK IP address did so that day.

[bri912678]

Still unclear how he fooled Gavin. Might there be a bug in Electrum's signed message verification code?

This reddit post makes it clear it's not the first time Gavin's been bamboozled. It's more likely that there was a bug in Gavin's critical evaluation of Wright's demonstration than there being a bug in Electrum's signed message verification code.


https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/4hl5ma/its_certainly_possible_i_was_bamboozled_andresen/d2qk298

Gavin co-founds the Bitcoin Foundation with Karpeles
I was bamboozled!

He doesn't ask questions when the MMMGlobal Ponzi scheme is added as a Bitcoin Foundation Member
I was bamboozled!

He publicly vouches for Peter Vessenes as Chairman of the Foundation, who is accused of taking 20 grand, and has various other court cases pending, accused of taking 5 million from MTGox
I was bamboozled!

He includes Charlie Shrem as a founding member of the Bitcoin Foundation, who was later found to be coordinating with a darknet drug money launderer, with full knowledge
I was bamboozled!

He attaches himself to the Bitcoin Unlimited project, and promotes Peter R's work, who is accused of being a plagiarist on various occasions
I was bamboozled!

He promotes the MyBitcoin service as where users of Bitcoin of the future will store their Bitcoins safely, the service later disappears with people's Bitcoins
I was bamboozled!

He promotes the work of Mike Hearn, who later turns on Bitcoin and calls it "failed" and then does a press tour and blog posts slamming Bitcoin
I was bamboozled!

There was no download of an Electrum signature file to the UK on Apr 7th when Gavin met Wright, so how can Gavin have checked Wright was using a legit Electrum wallet?

https://mobile.twitter.com/ElectrumWallet/status/727366861592076288

Electrum –  ‏@ElectrumWallet

Note: There was no download of a signature file of electrum (.asc file) from a UK IP on Apr 7th.
10:19 PM - 2 May 2016

[cjmoles]

Still unclear how he fooled Gavin. Might there be a bug in Electrum's signed message verification code?

They said they downloaded Electrum, yet no UK IP address did so that day.

I think Electrum claimed that no "signature" was downloaded to a UK ip that day, as opposed to "wallet."  But, according to Gavin's description, the signature was transferred between machines via a USB drive, which I find peculiar.    The signed message went from CW's machine, to a USB drive, to newly unwrapped machine in Gavin's control where it was verified.  It had to be done twice because of an accidental omission, which I also find strange.

[AlexGR]

Still unclear how he fooled Gavin. Might there be a bug in Electrum's signed message verification code?

They said they downloaded Electrum, yet no UK IP address did so that day.

I think Electrum claimed that no "signature" was downloaded to a UK ip that day, as opposed to "wallet."

That's correct.