On the BSV supporters, I'd suggest going through some threads on r/BSV and see how it works out there.
I think in general a small amount of BSV supporters coming into a space with experienced BSV debunkers does little but harm the scam: They show up and have their claims tested against facts, get pressured to justify their positions, and -- in short -- get ripped apart. When they're not too obnoxious they're a lot of fun to debunk, and it keeps the conversation going during the long lulls. Though because of this, it seldom happens even when it's permitted.
The situation is different though when active BSV debunkers don't outnumber them.
One of the really good contributors to rBSV is even a former BSV investor (though he never was one of the clowns out spreading pro-Wright lies-- AFAIK not a single one of those has ever been flipped, they just disappear from the internet if they get convinced that it's not real).
The biggest problem they've created on reddit is that interacting with them gives them more opportunities to file false reports and get accounts suspended.
r/bsv does eventually ban them but only when they're outright disruptive and harassing people or doing stuff that might get the subreddit in trouble, not because they're promoting the scam. The assumption is that >95% of the readers in rbsv are well enough informed that they're already immune to the scam (or soon will be) so the only risk to worry about is that they become annoying instead of fun for the honest participants.
Something absolutely needs to be done. If not a subforum, I'd settle for a sticky at the top of every single forum and subforum containing the text:
Craig Wright is a proven liar, charlatan and identity thief. SV is a worthless scamcoin. Anyone who supports either is scum, bereft of human decency.
Followed by all the documented evidence of Wright's forgeries and lies.
Back in 2017 I circulated a message to people to see if I could get a lot of long time bitcoiners to sign onto a message saying:
There is no credible evidence to support the claim that Craig S Wright is
Satoshi or was otherwise involved in the creation of Bitcoin. At every
opportunity Wright has provably fabricated what 'evidence' he has presented,
in an apparent effort to deceive less technically sophisticated persons.
We do not believe that Wright and his claims even merit further discussion.
Enough people replied along the lines of 'Wright is just a troll, that no one will ever believe him, all we'd be doing is giving him free attention, we should just ignore him', that I felt the effort wouldn't be successful and dropped it. (To be clear, the only person to respond saying that Wright was *legit* was Roger Ver... he since got a clue...)
Unfortunately, now that he's sued me for billions of dollars I fear that if I were to spearhead such a message that it would get explained away as an action of a defendant trying to escape a much deserved lawsuit or something. But I still think such a message would be incredibly powerful, it would just be better driven by someone who he isn't suing. Though it's really hard to overcome Gavin's continued unwillingness to retract his endorsement-- I think doing so requires enough of everyone else to sign on to make it clear that he's alone (or close to it).
I don't think though that people showing up on BCT are the ones that need to hear this-- if you've made it to bitcointalk you're probably much more clueful than the average joe.
As far as BitCoinDream's comments go-- the "ignore it and hope it goes away" approach is what the Bitcoin community adopted previously. It's been a disaster. Go plug in Satoshi or Craig Wright into google news. He already controls the media narrative. His representatives appear to be taking as many (if not more!) meetings with heads of state to speak about "Bitcoin", his story with a minor amount of tempering is usually what's being told by the press. Adding to it that there are bitcoiners fighting back wouldn't help them-- they're already on the way to a false consensus that no one seriously opposes them.
Apply some art of war to your thinking: I don't care if the opposition thinks that I'm scared or weak or whatever. I care that they aren't successful. BCT is already a pretty obscure corner of even the bitcoin universe much less the entire internet (as unfortunate as that is)-- if the profile here were 100x more visible than Wright's you'd have more of a point about giving them attention they wouldn't otherwise get. The bitcoin community *is* strong, it just needs to be mobilized.
All that said, your alternative suggestion is mostly what I'd been thinking before making the post-- though a big problem with that kind of diffuse response is that it's not good for bringing more participants into Bitcointalk who are primarily interest in dealing with the con because they threads will be lost in a sea of stuff they aren't interested in. I've found here that when some wright apologist or BSV promoter wades into a thread on BCT it's not uncommon that the arguments against them end up close to 1:1 instead of many against one, with the other thread participants just irritated that you're helping the troll take things offtopic by debunking them. I can tell you first hand that fighting misinformation 1:1 against a paid shill or a dedicated cultist feels rather sisyphean, while many against one feels like a nice game of golf. When you're 1:1 they keep diverting the substantive discussion to making it all about you personally.
Over time his necessity has evolved from a simple (although high value) tax rebate scam to an advanced fee fraud (nigerian prince) to what is,
Was it necessary? Why are you linking his fraudulent activities to the Nigerian community? You know that would irritate anyone from that country.
My apologies. I have the utmost respect for the people of Nigeria-- but few people know what advanced fee fraud is, and the particular brand of spanish-prisoner-con (apologies to spaniards) is known to essentially all english speakers as a nigerian price scam. To this day I receive frequent nigerian prince scam messages though they're finally starting to be outnumbered by tech support and amazon refund scams originating out of India. Every one of us lives with negative things done by some few scammers in our countries. I can only promise you that I know that the actions of a relatively small population of scammers in Nigeria doesn't really reflect negatively on the rest, and I'm confident that most people feel the same way.
Wright's scamming does has an African connection-- but it's by way of a conspirator in Kenya, not Nigeria.
I don't think an entire sub board would be necessary right now. Like others have said, this info would be best confined to their own relevant thread(s) and sub boards are only created if and once there's demand so that's the place you should start. Still, I don't think we need an entire board and could even be counter productive as I'm sure Craig would find a way to turn it into a win or a point of attack. He usually does.
...
Yeah, maybe rename it to BSV/Faketoshi scam sub or something.
LOL I agree on the name. Really I'd even leave BSV out-- without Wright it's just another irrelevant altcoin-- except the two are hopelessly intertwined and often people who need to hear about Wright are looking for info on BSV, since BSV is one of the ways they monetize the scam. Increasingly so as they've now agreed in court that BSV will now be handing over "his" coins.
I tend to look at BSVers as just brainwashed sheep who have fallen for an enigmatic cult leader. It doesn't matter what evidence you show them they will explain it away no matter how ridiculous the reasoning is. You could make a very rational and reasonable argument to a religious person as to why there is no god or that there's no spaceship coming to ascend a cult member off to heaven but people won't listen once they've drunk the coolaid. I'm not sure half of the BSV trolls believe Craig's bullshit anyway but have such a vested financial interest in BSV that they don't care and will promote it because they see this as getting in at ground zero and want to see BSV flip Bitcoin and take them to the moon with it.
The outspoken people are just outright paid liars (like any of their spokespeople or 'media personalities' such as wuckert)-- the rest you hear from are just what you say-- brainwashed and hoping to recover from their massive losses: They bought BSV at $400 and since then bitcoin has gone up 6x in price while BSV has dropped to $50. They'd rob their own mothers at this point (and if you listen to Wuckert's mother-- at least one of them has done pretty much that!).
As much as I despise Craig - and I hate to say it - I almost admire his tenacity with his long-con as he has quite an ingenious knack for excusing everything away with relative ease regardless of whether we can see through the obvious lies. Most people would have buckled under the enormous weight of having to keep up the ruse of piling bullshit on top of several layers of bullshit, but he's like a Terminator: he just keeps going no matter how many times he gets knocked down.
It's obviously hitting him hard, if you look at pictures of him now vs a few years ago especially when he's not sussed up for the camera, he looks like he's in his 70s now.
You're absolutely right though-- people see how absurdly incompetent about the stuff he claims to be good at-- personally I love the bullshit etymologies he comes up with on the spot even more than his bullshit technical explanations-- and conclude that he's an idiot. He's not an idiot, he's a con man, and an astoundingly successful one.
I think prison is the only thing that's going to stop him at this point. Was there any update on why the ATO haven't actually tried to arrest him given the pretty obvious tax fraud? I'm sure he's likely to have committed tax fraud in the UK too with all the losses and hacks he's reported to the police so it wouldn't surprise me if he tried to write that off on his taxes.
Last we hear their criminal investigation was still ongoing. It sounds like they're similar to US federal prosecutions-- they take their sweet time. There was recently someone convinced of some similar rebate fraud in AU, and their fraud took place a decade before they were charged. Wright is coming up on a similar timeframe. Everyone of of these dumb court cases also ends up with him making claims and exposing information that should make things easier for the criminal prosecution.
So I'm hopeful there, but at the same time-- the ATO is going to chase their own interests and so we can't count on them to protect the public at large.
I agree that the only thing which will actually stop him is criminal charges... but for our purposes we don't really need him to stop: he just has to be discredited to the point where he can be ignored and where he isn't suckering in newbies (esp governments) at a rate much greater than other bitcoin-attacking scamcoiners. A lot of that is taking the nearly universal view in the bitcoin community that he's a joke and making it clear to the broader public, while playing the tactical defense to mitigate his damage before we get to that point.
I don't think crowdsourcing this type of information is probably not the best way to accomplish your stated goal. I think it would probably be better for a group of well-funded individuals (presumably who have been subjected to the kind of harassment described in the OP) to hire an attorney to privately contact those who have lawsuits filed against them with information about how to best defend against these kinds of cases. I have noticed that many of the cases have been filed outside of the US, but in the US, courts can only consider information that has been presented to the court, and the court will not consider publicly available information if it has not otherwise been submitted to the court (also, generally the plaintiff or defendant has standing to submit evidence in most situations).
Nearly all of the quite powerful discrediting used against him in court so far has come from the community. Truth has the property that it's reproducible by others. So when community members find information which disproves Mr. Wright, we're able to point the lawyers at it for validation and reproduction. This is essential because replacing the public's efforts in isolating the conflicts and contradictions with paid experts at hundreds of dollars per hour would be utterly ruinously expensive. Your mental model of "well-funded individuals (presumably who have been subjected to the kind of harassment described in the OP)" is just off base. They do not exist. Wright and his conspirators are legitimately well funded: They expect billions in return. All his opponents can do is hope to mitigate losses (unless they flip and accept his bribes, I've heard that he's offered as much as $10 million dollars to people for supporting his efforts), even where they technically have the means to pay for the litigation it's with a heavy heart because it comes at a great personal cost with no hope of a benefit from it other than Bitcoin's continued health.
The fight in court is also a public information war more than you realize. When some professional-- a lawyer, a press person, a ghost writer, etc-- is contacted by Wright to take Wright on as a client and effectively become a paid conspirator in his scheme they have to decide if they're going to be able to plausibly deny knowing it was fraud to protect their reputation later after it collapses (and potentially avoid criminal charges themselves). The more limited Wright is in his selection the less successful he'll be. What the rules say and what the practice on the ground is are two distinct things: even judges in the US absolutely do look at what's said in public, even informally, and are going to take a second read of things which might end up making them look like idiots in the future. Some of the arguments -- like general impossibility of Wright's efforts to force a coin stealing backdoor onto the network-- are themselves directly a question about the public temperature on the subject of his demands and several times already mass media articles have show up as evidence in court cases as evidence of the public's perception of the subject.
But also the fight in court is also only one element of dealing with this fraud-- it's the most obnoxious because its the one where "just ignore it and let him scam people" is not a realistic option (at least for the targets), but his attack does go beyond court. For example, Wright's conspirators have been meeting with heads of state in many parts of the world pitching their agenda (which involves outlawing bitcoin and adopting their Bitcoin knockoff). The only way they're getting these meetings is that whatever overworked staffer is vetting the schedule does a quick search and doesn't find information that exposes what a big reputation risk an association with this conman and his con would be.
