Gavin Andresen calls it a "mistake" to trust CSW

[AverageGlabella]

I may only speculate on the benefit of going back on his words today.  Can he not get rid of liability in case things go against his way?  People get to trust Craig, Craig proves to be a scammer, then people sue Gavin because he said Craig was Satoshi.  Or something like that.

No because you would have to prove that Gavin Andresen knew that CSW was a scammer and we do not know if that is true. I think he could have been naive and fell for the tricks that others have by Craig. He is a master at it that is why he has a following but on the other side I thought Gavin would know better because of his technical skills with btc and he is still intelligent as he showed in the early years but him taking so long to talk about the mistake of trusting Craig goes against him. He should have talked about it sooner and he probably would have a better reputation among the btc community and would have looked better in front of a court if someone did try to sue him. I do not think they could sue him for damages though because you can never prove he knew that csw was a scammer.

I think it is not going to be enough to actually save his credibility and I think it is not going to change anything at all. While I believe that it is not going to change anything, he could do it himself to save himself. This way if anyone asks, he could say that he rejected CSW eventually, which people will say it was too late, but at least he could have a defense ready for it, and he could say he was fooled and he found the truth and rejected it when he learned.

This won't change peoples views of him, but it could at least give him some sort of defense mechanism to protect himself from hatred, a way to change the perspective a bit if he could do it.

It might not save him but I would respect him more if he did make a stronger statement about not trusting csw. He still has influence because we are talking about him today. People reading the history of btc will come across Gavin and will trust him because he had direct contact with Satoshi and that is talked about on this forum so even if veteran members know of this newer members are going to research and see he was heavily involved with Satoshi and trust him because of that until they do their research and find out more about it they will keep trusting him and that could mean they start trusting csw before they find out what happened.

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[gmaxwell]

Nothing is going to wash the following shame

Anyone can make a mistake.  It's what you do about it after that is evidence of your character.

Just for the context as Gavin's statment may not be just coincidence: "Craig Wright's UK Case Against 16 Bitcoin Developers to Go to Full Trial", 3rd February 2023.

More likely because Wright and his conspirators had again been linking to the old statement as 'proof' of their claims.

Devs are supposed to be smart. I had a lot of respect to people who are smart enough to update code and implement bug fixes, but then we have this

There are many kinds of error that are *easier* to make if you're smart.  A fool would look at something suspicious and go "this is complicated, you're probably trying to scam me"-- while a smart person might be able to pretzel logic themselves into putting down their cynicism and gut instinct buying into a contrived story.  A smart person can usually reason their way out of danger while someone less smart has to rely on instinct and caution.  Being smart works until it doesn't and there are plenty of examples of extremely smart people who got conned.

Being smart also doesn't mean being street smart.  You can go back and find posts from before Wright by Gavin insulting other bitcoin developers saying they are obsessed with potential threats and attacks and waste too much time making things secure, and counter insults towards him saying he's naive for thinking the world is benign.

My view is that much of the time much of the world is mostly benign, but we have to prepare for when it isn't: when things are benign things will go right no matter what choices we make, it's when they aren't that our choices matter.  Gavin was totally unprepared to be the target of a conman that was willing to spin an arbitrarily convoluted story -- while I was prepared.  But at the end of the day I'm the target of two lawsuits one demanding billions the other demanding hundreds of billions, sucking up my time and causing me stress and he isn't.  So much for being 'right'.  I think I'd rather be in his position: You'd all think I'm a fool or corrupt, sure, but no one who cares what random people on the internet thinks will ever be happy.

It is genuinely surprising to me that any technical person ever fell for Wright-- he just is so *obvious* with his technobabbling and bogus excuses and even was back when the endorsement happened.  But if any Bitcoin contributor fell for Wright Gavin would have been the most likely both because of his trusting perspective and the fact that Wright aligned himself with Gavin's position in the political dispute at the time (which, from my perspective Gavin was losing or even had already lost). An endorsement by Satoshi would have been a total hail Mary and hard for many people to resist.

Fundamentally that blocksize drama was driven by the same underlying perspectives:  Should bitcoin eliminate a technically and economically important limit one critical to the long term economic argument for security and then trust that things are going work out (somehow), or should it maintain limits that establish needed incentives and which bound how wrong things can go?  (It's fun to point out that in BSV they got the limit removed and then have bloated the chain specifically to make it impractical for people to run nodes and block their efforts to edit the ledger to steal coins-- one of the vulnerabilities we pointed out might arise from removing the limit that the people opposing us thought was too ridiculous to bother countering...)

In any case, I think it's important to realize that anyone can fall for a conman, that's what conmen do.  We can be more or less vulnerable based on our attitudes and actions, but blaming victims for falling for a con doesn't protect anyone.  To fall for a con you need only make one bad decision on one bad day. Everyone has a bad day now and again.

It's also easy to fault Gavin for what happened after, but at the same time-- what did other people do after?  Gavin was at least tricked and had to face the barrier of cognitive dissonance and the ego hit of admitting error, other people didn't suffer the same challenges. Where's the statement from developers, the project, industry groups debunking Gavin's endorsement?  The bitcoin core project removed Gavin's remaining unused access to the repo to counter the risk that he'd hand it to Wright but pretty much stopped there.   A few people, like me, carried on debunking Wright's claims but as individuals it carried little weight, were largely ignored by the public and media, and it's ultimately why I'm a target of Wright's lawsuits.  As a whole the Bitcoin community (including the technical subcommunity) didn't act to counter Wright but just ignored him and let him fester, amassing strength and resources, exchanges went along and listed his scamcoin token -- pumping cash into his coffers.   Would all these PR agencies and law firms be working for Wright, would these billionaire sponsers still be pumping money into him had it been established in the public consciousness that he was a con and a crook?  Quite possibly not.

he had direct contact with Satoshi and that is talked about on this forum

That's true for many other people, usually without anyone noticing them (including people in this thread!)  Wright and people promoting him have put a lot of effort (any money) into playing up people when they think it benefits the credibility of their con.  There are plenty of other former early bitcoiners and contributors who you almost never hear mentioned (including some of the victims of Wright's vexatious litigation).

Bitcoin is decentralized, there is no person who has any type of say in bitcoin,

Somewhat related, I ran into this old thread recently where a querulous Bitcoiner was asking bitcoiner's to post letters of commitment promising that they'd never be naughty.

I rejected the concept, arguing that any promise meaningless and that his demands were "completely pointless— not because people are trusted to not do evil but because Bitcoin users won't accept technology that makes it possible"

By comparison, Gavin played along: "I hereby promise and solemnly swear on pain of atomic wedgie that I will never ever work on or endorse any changes to the Bitcoin system that would enable any person or group to confiscate, blacklist, or devalue any other person or group's bitcoin."

...and what we have today is the latter person having an incompletely and late withdrawn endorsement of someone who's trying to confiscate coins,  while I'm getting slammed with multiple court cases demanding billions in damages for *not* playing along with the confiscation attempt.

It just goes to show that words are just words.  It's important that we have systems whos security doesn't depend on meaningless commitments and important that each and every Bitcoiner act to protect those properties.

[pooya87]

The higher you climb, the harder you fall.

Gavin wasn't some random schmuck who knew about bitcoin. He was a well known bitcoin developer who also had control over the reference implementation project, bitcoin core. Some people may have even considered him a replacement for Satoshi after he went away.

Someone in a position like this needs to be more careful about what he says and does. Otherwise a small slip would lead to a big fall. Supporting the scammer was a big slip, so was the fall.
This is why whatever he does after making the mistake is not going to matter much, specially when it is many years after the mistake.

[franky1]

i think its much more simple than 'someone was duped' or "he is dumb'
tl:dr
(much like how ex doctors get paid to go against their skills and knowledge to go on speaking tours to say some anti-vaxxer BS, they know its wrong to say it, but the money is good)
waffle explainer:
i seen gavin in early adopter years mention he will only want to work on bitcoin for a few more years before retiring to try other things.
a few years later arrived and his reputation and credibility was already damaged due to the whole brand wars of bitcoin reference clients. so knowing he was nearing his retirement deadline was close, just decided to take an offer of a payday for the cost of his remaining reputation. thinking his reputation meant nothing to him beyond that date.

so not duped into a con. but contracted to sell his reputation(soul). which was then used to promote a con

(it makes more logical common sense then pretending he was just dumb)

as for the narrative about what intrigued ga to visit CSW being "we talked a bit and he sounded like a satoshi" pfft.
when CSW is not just paraphrasing known satoshi quotes. csw back then more so but even now says things about bitcoins functions and features that are nothing like what the real satoshi said

and anyone normal can see that, so i dont think ga was lulled into believing csw. i think it was just a contract to make a speaking endorsement using some lame contracted narrative

[gmaxwell]

Impossible to prove or disprove franky1,  and some people have cited his comments about it not being good to hold bitcoin as suggesting there might be jealousy reasons to burn it down.  I know for a fact that some other early Bitcoiners turned on to full bitcoin hate because they lost or gave away their Bitcoin or never acquired a large amount when they could have.   But that kind of stuff is just speculation and I think in this case it fails occam's razor: People get conned, it happens and it happens more often than complicated movie plot payoff schemes.

I think I'd have to see evidence of a *huge* payment to rate the bought off theory more highly than someone who was just tricked-- and there is no reason to think the Wright would have been able to make a huge payment in the first place.

csw back then more so but even now says things about bitcoins functions and features that are nothing like what the real satoshi said

It's true but Wright clearly has some magic charisma over people in person.  I think in 1:1 interactions Wright is probably highly effective at controlling the direction of conversation through carefully calibrated abuse, feigned outrage, storming out, etc.

Satoshi was also more abrasive towards Gavin in private than we know him to have been in public communications (e.g. more like that dismissal of future altcoin scammer Larimer, the only time Satoshi was ever outright abrasive in public).  Especially if Gavin had recently reviewed his discussions with Satoshi he might have been newly offended and when wright was a dick he could have thought "well, that checks out". For the rest of us we see Wrigt's public conduct as 180 degrees off of Satoshi, but Gavin might have over valued the few criticisms he got from Satoshi and thought the two weren't polar opposites.

Probably the most shocking thing to me is that in Gavin and Wright's communication, at some point Wright started fire and brimstone-ing about patents or something and Gavin responded with something along the lines of "see when you talk like that it makes people think you're a scammer".  WTF, why did Gavin coach him to scam better??  Total facepalm moment there, but I guess Gavin was already committed to the believe that Wright was legit.

[franky1]

I think I'd have to see evidence of a *huge* payment to rate the bought off theory more highly than someone who was just tricked-- and there is no reason to think the Wright would have been able to make a huge payment in the first place.

back in the 2015-6 days CSW didnt have much money in his own pockets. but remembering from some of the stuff said in court cases about who was in attendance at the 'proof event' it was not just GA and CSW

(forgive memory..) i think it was S.mathews, ayres and possible j.nguyen
and some (excuse bad memory.. cant be assed to go back through notes) about legal team baker mckenzie involved
and more contract signing after arriving in england* but before the purchase of the clean laptop**

we all know CSW is funded by s.matthews, J.nguyen and ayres in those days and these days

*this was "the" NDA(disclosed at court) also signed before travelling to the UK
**https://www.youtube.com/embed/R03ypV9CsTc?start=3204&end=3242
take CSW buddies words with alot of salt but s.mathews said in the london hotel GA signed another NDA in that session

Probably the most shocking thing to me is that in Gavin and Wright's communication, at some point Wright started fire and brimstone-ing about patents or something and Gavin responded with something along the lines of "see when you talk like that it makes people think you're a scammer".  WTF, why did Gavin coach him to scam better??  Total facepalm moment there, but I guess Gavin was already committed to the believe that Wright was legit.

Ga mentioning about 'talking about patents sounds like a scammer'.. i see that was not picked up as a hint by CSW as CSW continued to mention patents.

[gmaxwell]

we all know CSW is funded by s.matthews, J.nguyen and ayres in those days and these days

I don't think they'd fund Gavin to lie-- as far as anyone can tell Wright was suckering Ayre and probably needed Gavin's endorsement to convince Ayre too.

GA signed another NDA in that session

Thanks for the citation, interesting point.

i see that was not picked up as a hint by CSW

I think we've seen that Wright has been extremely slow to learn from his errors-- a common trait for narcissists because it's difficult to learn from an error if you can't admit you made one.

We're very fortunate because one of the things the community does poorly is withholding knowledge of his mistakes until the knowledge is strategically useful.  Fortunately, he's gone on to submit to court docs that randos on twitter already proved were forgeries and stuff like that.

Some past errors he's mostly stopped making, e.g. his modern talks almost never go into technical details (which has made them much less amusing to watch) but his improvements seem to come extremely slowly.

[franky1]

firstly i think that ayres wasnt even at that point needing "proof" he was already involved and invested in whatever greed CSW can produce for profits on investment
from what i can recall CSW was promising returns by way of patent claim compensation, book deals and movie deals(biographies) aswell as other business investment deals.. which is why even though we all and ayres knows CSW is not satoshi. ayres is still feeding CSW out of greed not beleif
(scamer B does not need to know scammer A's story is proven. scammer B just needs to know how much ROI he can make out of any con A wants to do)

gavin didnt sign (in america pre-travel) out of just pure interest. nor get on a plane and stay at a hotel using his own money(there was money amounts moved to get him to london via that first contract). and no one signs subsequent NDA's with breach punishments without also having compensations for compliance too.

if gavin did sign a NDA without getting money out of it. then i too would call GA a idiot

from my opinion.. and common sense
CSW cant sign a satoshi key. so lets put that story to bed that a "satoshi proof" actually/truly happened (that was just the scripted narrative to tell public).. in my opinion

common sense is there was no real address signing session.. and instead was a  contract NDA event of future speaking events.. of scheduling speaking dates to set a narrative up
(the hotel contract had dates of when gavin could say things, but only what CSW allowed to be said(which was why there was a few months delay between the event and gavins first mentioning of it))

..
there is ofcourse the narrative that
GA was duped by CSW paraphrasing public satoshi quotes and revealed emails to fool GA into going to london. and gavin did attend and seen CSW do something on CSW laptop(edited to CSW goals). and then a fresh laptop with CSW copy of linux and wallet put on it(edited to CSW goals) and gavin seen both proofs and went away amazed.. but unable to show the wider public what he seen.. via no screen shots no usb sticks of messages or signatures. etc

but that just sounds too "fantasy story without proof beyond his word" to me

..
come on.. even you as a spokesperson if told by contract you cannot say a-s  for X months, but at the X month you can say d-g but not a-c nor h-s
even you would want to get some spokesperson fee out of the future speaking events, correct

i personally am independently wealthy. so i havnt, nor want nor need to be paid to speak. i just say things how they are and am frank about it.
but if someone did want to shut me up or control what i should say. they could not afford me. but no one should be controlled and restricted for free

[BitcoinMoses]

Impossible to prove or disprove franky1,  and some people have cited his comments about it not being good to hold bitcoin as suggesting there might be jealousy reasons to burn it down.  I know for a fact that some other early Bitcoiners turned on to full bitcoin hate because they lost or gave away their Bitcoin or never acquired a large amount when they could have.   But that kind of stuff is just speculation and I think in this case it fails occam's razor: People get conned, it happens and it happens more often than complicated movie plot payoff schemes.

I think I'd have to see evidence of a *huge* payment to rate the bought off theory more highly than someone who was just tricked-- and there is no reason to think the Wright would have been able to make a huge payment in the first place.

csw back then more so but even now says things about bitcoins functions and features that are nothing like what the real satoshi said

It's true but Wright clearly has some magic charisma over people in person.  I think in 1:1 interactions Wright is probably highly effective at controlling the direction of conversation through carefully calibrated abuse, feigned outrage, storming out, etc.

Satoshi was also more abrasive towards Gavin in private than we know him to have been in public communications (e.g. more like that dismissal of future altcoin scammer Larimer, the only time Satoshi was ever outright abrasive in public).  Especially if Gavin had recently reviewed his discussions with Satoshi he might have been newly offended and when wright was a dick he could have thought "well, that checks out". For the rest of us we see Wrigt's public conduct as 180 degrees off of Satoshi, but Gavin might have over valued the few criticisms he got from Satoshi and thought the two weren't polar opposites.

Probably the most shocking thing to me is that in Gavin and Wright's communication, at some point Wright started fire and brimstone-ing about patents or something and Gavin responded with something along the lines of "see when you talk like that it makes people think you're a scammer".  WTF, why did Gavin coach him to scam better??  Total facepalm moment there, but I guess Gavin was already committed to the believe that Wright was legit.

Perhaps in addition to the  current situation, which few self centred forum members and few others those who are aware that in every social experimentation the members of the movement divide themselves on the basis their personal interest instead of the collective interest.

The blockchain  implemention and its application also its improvement and scalling fully depends our selfless efforts now and in the future.  As I told you, there should be a minimum age rule without a transaction fee which has not realised.  If the Bitcoin community continuously fight each others just for their self centred interest it not noodles good at all for the main purpose bitcoin advent.  It can halt the smooth running of Bitcoin. On the topic I can say that each person know their own personal fault.  Gavin and Craig both have caused a serious setback for the Bitcoin progression. On the other hand they both are playing their parts according to their abilities and capacities. They both have personal responsibilities to correct themselves for the benefits of the Bitcoin community.  Perhaps, I may have to take a new disconnect for the current situation of court cases filed by Craig.  Each person has rights to enjoy their liberty and freedom but when some one become utterly greedy for selfish purposes is unacceptable.

As PM Sunak has reshuffle his cabinet, I think it is time for me to use the parliamentary model to improve the Bitcoin community image for the best interest of the Bitcoin community.

According to the generation rule that says that a free transaction must be 3 blocks deep before it can be transfered again for free, which has not fully realised.  If Gavin could have pay more attention to it then it would have been done accordingly.  So is the case of Gavin and Craig. They both have their own mistakes and fallout.  I am impressed to see the credibility of Craig to stair up the thing time to time by filling new cases against bitcoin forum members and developers. I think he does not get exosted because of mind's capacity.  After all, I have really nothing to say about the current climate in the Bitcoin community because I am not there to say anything which is legitimate or reasonable because I am out.  It is time for Bitcoin community members to setup new policies to tackle any collective problems arises collectively.

[aysg76]

I think it is not going to be enough to actually save his credibility and I think it is not going to change anything at all. While I believe that it is not going to change anything, he could do it himself to save himself. This way if anyone asks, he could say that he rejected CSW eventually, which people will say it was too late, but at least he could have a defense ready for it, and he could say he was fooled and he found the truth and rejected it when he learned.

The fact is he is not ready to accept the reality and keep on pushing the bar high in all these court filings to prove the lie in building his fake identity.As you said about committing his mistakes and getting less hate is option but he is not willing to take that path which is why at last he will be having nothing but the clown indentity in the whole audience views.

Judge Mellor said that to prevent default judgments against defendants, amended claims from Wright must remove references to copyright infringement on the Bitcoin File Format. Mellor additionally denied Wright permission to appeal today’s decision; Wright will first need to gain court permission if he wishes to do so.

As for the latest case against core bitcoin developers to make the changes so that he has access to his coins is already on the losing verge as UK court is ruling out his filing in which he will gain nothing at the end.He is already losing his net worth with such cases in hope to earn billion dollars but you know he is not ready to accept his mistakes which I said earlier also so his fate in his hands.

[franky1]

Judge Mellor said that to prevent default judgments against defendants, amended claims from Wright must remove references to copyright infringement on the Bitcoin File Format. Mellor additionally denied Wright permission to appeal today’s decision; Wright will first need to gain court permission if he wishes to do so.

As for the latest case against core bitcoin developers to make the changes so that he has access to his coins is already on the losing verge as UK court is ruling out his filing in which he will gain nothing at the end.He is already losing his net worth with such cases in hope to earn billion dollars but you know he is not ready to accept his mistakes which I said earlier also so his fate in his hands.

CSW lost the case aysg76 quoted as it was about CSW trying to say he owned literacy copyright of the blockheader file.  the judge knows literacy rights(copyright) is if someone owns a quote. and someone else plagiarised it(stole his copyright) CSW would have had a case.. but the judge also knew enough about bitcoin to know that CSW couldnt win

(very short and dumbed down version of why CSW couldnt win)
the block header changes every block. new prevblock id in every block, new times in every block, new tx merkle tree hash in every block, new nonces in every block. new difficulty every 2016 blocks, new version number every few years
no blockheader contains the same content (or in literacy terms no block is the same paragraph of words)

so no plagiarism. oh and the real satoshi relinquished copyright ownership over to the MIT open licence.

as for the other case.. about the core developers. well they are not CSW employees nor under any contract with CSW to do as CSW wants
also. CSW has said many times that its CSW belief that BSV is "the bitcoin" and so if CSW wants coins off "bitcoin" then he can take them coins off the addresses in BSV, as that is CSW property and what CSW deems is "bitcoin"
thus no need to be bothering core devs
CSW already has his cake and can eat it

if CSW wants to own BSV, he already does
it wont require "proof of satoshi" to claim ownership of BSV, craig already owns it
thus he already owns access to the addresses and has access power to move coins out of his addresses on his BSV

im sure core dev lawyers(solicitors) can word it better than i have

[AverageGlabella]

The main question I have for Gavin Andresen is why he has stayed silent when all of this was going on? I thought someone like him who had a reputation once would want to keep his reputation and would have spoken out about this sooner? Does CSW have secrets on Gavin that he is scared might get out if he comes out more strongly in public? I find it odd that someone would allow their name to be dragged through the mud without every returning back to the btc community.

[franky1]

The main question I have for Gavin Andresen is why he has stayed silent when all of this was going on? I thought someone like him who had a reputation once would want to keep his reputation and would have spoken out about this sooner? Does CSW have secrets on Gavin that he is scared might get out if he comes out more strongly in public? I find it odd that someone would allow their name to be dragged through the mud without every returning back to the btc community.

it doesnt require knowing secrets about GA to blackmail GA into silence for the X years
its instead very simple.. an few NDA's

[OgNasty]

The main question I have for Gavin Andresen is why he has stayed silent when all of this was going on? I thought someone like him who had a reputation once would want to keep his reputation and would have spoken out about this sooner? Does CSW have secrets on Gavin that he is scared might get out if he comes out more strongly in public? I find it odd that someone would allow their name to be dragged through the mud without every returning back to the btc community.

Gavin has stated many times that he did not believe CSW was satoshi. It never seems to be good enough for the core developers that constantly slander him. This latest round of harassment caused him to amend an old blog post but I think he really just wants to be left alone. He did a lot of great things for Bitcoin, then gave up his power and left. Still, for some reason people think they’re entitled to more from him. I feel bad for him, as he’s been a constant target by developers that will never reach his level of contributions to Bitcoin.

[AverageGlabella]

Gavin has stated many times that he did not believe CSW was satoshi. It never seems to be good enough for the core developers that constantly slander him. This latest round of harassment caused him to amend an old blog post but I think he really just wants to be left alone. He did a lot of great things for Bitcoin, then gave up his power and left. Still, for some reason people think they’re entitled to more from him. I feel bad for him, as he’s been a constant target by developers that will never reach his level of contributions to Bitcoin.

It might be that he said it many times but I have only seen this blog post and the posts that he made endorsing CSW. I get he might want to be left alone and I respect that. I have nothing personal against him I would like to see him come out once and for all and say that CSW should not be trusted and own up to his mistakes. Changing a old blog post looks like you are hiding your tracks instead of coming out and announcing to the public what happened and why he thought he could trust CSW.  The NDA would be admissible because Gavin is getting attacked and slander (if he does have a nda) and can appeal a nda but a nda is just for ideas that have not been disclosed Gavin does not have to talk about the specific reason he just needs to come out and denounce CSW more strongly. No Nda in the world will stop you from doing that it stops you talking about previous dealings but he does not have to talk about that or could say that he cannot talk about it which would mean the same thing and would not get him in trouble. I refuse to believe that Gavin who is smart would get tied up in a nda by Craig. 

[Carlton Banks]

In any case, I think it's important to realize that anyone can fall for a conman, that's what conmen do.  We can be more or less vulnerable based on our attitudes and actions, but blaming victims for falling for a con doesn't protect anyone.  To fall for a con you need only make one bad decision on one bad day. Everyone has a bad day now and again.

Magicians/clairvoyants etc have one basic principle: know your mark

Even experienced conmen themselves can be conned on this basis, the starting point is to get good information about what a person's strong beliefs or expectations are, then use that as a guide to devise the framework for a trick (all the more clever is to use crowd/group psychology to influence those expectations/beliefs in ways that 1-to-1 would not be reliable/viable). The point is to exploit the frontier of someone's awareness: discover the edges of that frontier, then you can think about where to target

and this of course means that courtroom officials can easily be conned, no-one is out of the question. it's quite easy to see how (particularly in the British courts) the overall culture of the justice system is designed to impress the casual observer with it's legitimacy, which of course shouldn't be necessary...  why would simply dispensing justice not be enough?

A few people, like me, carried on debunking Wright's claims but as individuals it carried little weight, were largely ignored by the public and media, and it's ultimately why I'm a target of Wright's lawsuits.

I don't mean to sound unsympathetic, but courts in the self-proclaimed civilized world can/will/have ignored what experts, the public and the media knew about disputes that end up in a courtroom. There is no good reason to believe that popular awareness of the facts would have averted Wright's lawsuits.

As a whole the Bitcoin community (including the technical subcommunity) didn't act to counter Wright but just ignored him and let him fester, amassing strength and resources, exchanges went along and listed his scamcoin token -- pumping cash into his coffers.   Would all these PR agencies and law firms be working for Wright, would these billionaire sponsers still be pumping money into him had it been established in the public consciousness that he was a con and a crook?

you have all, knowingly or not, entered into perhaps the highest strata of politics by way of working on this project. In essence, you guys woke a sleeping giant, kicked the hornets nest etc.

The clues that such apparently innocuous behavior pisses certain resourceful people off (i.e. open source software that turns powerful+profitable industries into landfill) were actually already there for all to see. Satoshi more than implied that he was seeking to usurp an entrenched and corrupt system, and we might argue that central banks are the most egregious such example, if not simply among the worst. I'm surprised the attacks have not yet been more fierce.

Call that victim-blaming, but I'm just saying what I'm seeing. I'm definitely not going for consolation, that's equally worthless to you all as my 20/20 hindsight.

By comparison, Gavin played along: "I hereby promise and solemnly swear on pain of atomic wedgie that I will never ever work on or endorse any changes to the Bitcoin system that would enable any person or group to confiscate, blacklist, or devalue any other person or group's bitcoin."

...and what we have today is the latter person having an incompletely and late withdrawn endorsement of someone who's trying to confiscate coins

and so Gavin is definitely overdue that atomic wedgie

I don't know what rationale Wright claims for how he devised the list of people "he" is suing, but it's for sure curious to consider who he left out, and what the (real) reasons could be. Gavin and Mike Hearn are just about the only Bitcoin developers who ever got a hearing in major news outlets, and Gavin on more than one issue. If anyone is some kind of "face of Bitcoin" by the simplest/most superficial means, then one would assume that suing Gavin was more than worth a shot (surely the guiding principle of all overly-litigious efforts). Yet every divisive, controversial or publicly known figure is consistently absent from Wrights prosecutions.

Surely this latest (simple) argument that the (quoting the white paper: "electronic cash" ) system should have made allowance for recovering users lost funds not have implicated the earliest contributors more than any others? Is it not they who progressively made that less possible? (despite the feature-not-bug reality)

and does that not implicate Gavin most of all in such a damages claim? Andresen was leading the earliest dev team in the original effort to (continue to ) e.x.p.l.i.c.i.t.l.y make it increasingly more impossible for the developers to choose who should be assigned which money, for any reason, however arbitrary?

together:
1. the (heavily publicized by Wright) meeting between Wright and Andresen
2. the ~2 years direct relationship Satoshi had with Andresen before he went quiet

demonstrates that Wright has had many opportunities to speak directly with Gavin about this very issue, both before, during and long after these damages were "inflicted" (assuming on point 2 that you were to believe Wright's stories)

When you put this all together, I don't buy this interpretation of "greedy/bored billionaire bankrolls extravagantly disingenuous conman in convoluted court cases", that to me sounds like the real crime-caper movie plot.
That it's taken so long for an attack against the Bitcoin developer ecosystem to reach even this point may indicate that there is some fairly careful planning going on, and that we should all expect more.

[ChiBitCTy]

I’ve asked about the first Twitter statement here before but not sure I’ve been given a definitive answer. So my question for you Mr Robots in here ..are either of these statements by CW true at all..do they prove he’s lying…Or perhaps neither?

When I asked him this on Twitter I figured it proved he’s lying but perhaps this statement simply means btc was built to be programmable in a way that would allow for SC’s to run on it ..eventually?



Szabo says btc isn’t Turing complete (have seen Andreas say the same)..so doesn’t this prove he’s not Satoshi ?

https://youtu.be/bxzgGwdcTuE

[Kryptowerk]

Feb 2023: I don’t believe in rewriting history, so I’m going to leave this post up. But in the seven years since I wrote it, a lot has happened, and I now know it was a mistake to trust Craig Wright as much as I did. I regret getting sucked into the “who is (or isn’t) Satoshi” game, and I refuse to play that game any more.

I'll take it.  Perhaps it could have been more explicit, but it's easy enough to read between the lines and take the inferred meaning.  Pride is probably a factor too.  It's not always easy to admit when someone has made a fool of you.

There is no shame in being caught up at some point in the fangs of a narcissistic nutcase. Happens to the best - it's a learning experience most have to go through at least once in life unfortunatelly.
Makes me a little sad that CSW is still a topic to talk about. Would be great to have his name slowly disappear from anything related to Bitcoin, he's just a meaningless, sad egocentric individual, nothing more.

[gmaxwell]

It never seems to be good enough for the core developers that constantly slander him.

Provide a link to any "core devlopers" doing anything to trigger that response or admit that you're just making some shit up (yet again).

Gavin has stated many times that he did not believe CSW was satoshi.

I wish that were true, I suggest you go read his deposition in Kleiman v. Wright. Especially page 163:

I still think it's most likely that he did not bamboozle me during the signing ceremony.

Q And he really does have possession of the private key to block 9?

A I still think it's more likely than not that he does.

That said, AFAICT no "core developers" current or former are saying anything about him to trigger this-- it's clear that he's got the position he's got and never changing it, and there is no use blaming a victim of a con.  (even here after the fact you see me saying that it's understandable, that he probably wasn't paid off, that it's unproductive victim blaming...)

but it's for sure curious to consider who he left out, and what the (real) reasons could be.

Can be reproduced easily:  Technical experts that directly interacted with Satoshi and could be called on to give evidence that Wright isn't Satoshi + people with actual commit access in the project (for appearances) - people that have supported Wright and can be trusted to keep their mouth shut so long as they're left alone.

should have made allowance for recovering users lost funds not have implicated the earliest contributors more than any others?

Or the guy who designed it that way and advocated for the way it actually works (e.g. when people asked about lost coins).

and does that not implicate Gavin most of all in such a damages claim? Andresen was leading the earliest dev team in the original effort to (continue to ) e.x.p.l.i.c.i.t.l.y make it increasingly more impossible for the developers to choose who should be assigned which money, for any reason, however arbitrary?

So I take it you wouldn't consider it improper for the defandants to join GA as a defendant in the case?

[o_e_l_e_o]

-snip-

It is true of course that anyone can fall for a conman. But after said conman had been exposed, if my testimony/blog posts/statements/whatever were being used by said conman in court as evidence to support suing innocent third parties, I would be eager to rescind those posts as soon as possible.

Probably the most shocking thing to me is that in Gavin and Wright's communication, at some point Wright started fire and brimstone-ing about patents or something and Gavin responded with something along the lines of "see when you talk like that it makes people think you're a scammer".  WTF, why did Gavin coach him to scam better??  Total facepalm moment there, but I guess Gavin was already committed to the believe that Wright was legit.

I always read that like Gavin trying to convince himself. Like, he still had some small logical part of his brain saying "This obviously isn't how Satoshi would behave", and that manifested in him telling CSW not to behave like that anymore to try to ease Gavin's cognitive dissonance.

Gavin has stated many times that he did not believe CSW was satoshi.

Sources?