Craig "Faketoshi" Wright saga continues. His team turns against him.

[apogio]

His first lawsuit against varrious Bitcoin devs doesn't even depend on his claim to be Satoshi.  He's suing us to force us to publish (and somehow make effective) backdoored bitcoin code to grant him control of 111k BTC that he claims to have purchased long ago, but pretty obviously never owned (the 1feex and the 12ib7 coins).

I really need to find more information. I don't know if it's my lack of experience in regards to cryptography, but I really don't understand how you can write code to give him access to any Bitcoin Address. In fact, I even hate the idea. All of us live with the idea that we must make sure our seed is secured, otherwise we lose our coins. How exactly is he supposed to be better than us. Besides, why does he want BTC since he loves BSV more?

Exactly my point. He doesn't need to win. Holdonaut's legal defense cost over $2 million, even though he won the case. Hodlonaut is/was a teacher, who had nowhere near that kind of money. Cobra has been served with a bill of $640,000 despite not even mounting a defense. And these were relatively short and straightforward trials. The COPA trail referenced above has been going on for years, will be going on for several more years, and involves a lot more time, effort, money, paperwork, stress, etc, for all involved than his other sham lawsuits, even if he eventually loses.

No comment man, really... Unethical attack...

[franky1]

he doesnt care about winning or losing, he personally didnt pay when there were loses, his entourage of scammers and dupes did.
all of this drama win or lose is just more content for his fame story which he thinks he can sell for hundreds of millions to publishers and movie producers and repeat it by having one story of becoming famous, one story of becoming infamous. then other stories of how he stepped between the two and so on (hoping for near billions in all life movie rights deals)
and its these promises of hundreds of millions that end up keeping his entourage of scammers and dupes to keep funding his campaigns

yes these lawsuits are SLAPP(frivolous) and yes it affects many people involved and many not involved. but even in a frivolous lawsuit if there is even a grain of salt of one valid dispute in the claim that needs judgement it wont just be dismissed as frivolous, so the only way to stop him would be if his entourage/dupes stop funding his campaigns

[BlackHatCoiner]

I really need to find more information.

You should check out these threads from last year:

- Hodlonaut Trial.
- So, you want to get sued by a scammer?.
- BSV subforum.

I think they pretty much sum up what happened in the last years with this pathetic liar.

I don't know if it's my lack of experience in regards to cryptography, but I really don't understand how you can write code to give him access to any Bitcoin Address.

You can't, it'd require to fork the client and specify that particular transaction outputs can be spent without a cryptographic signature, which would obviously not be accepted by the Bitcoin network. Nonetheless, he surely has ruled that small detail out in BSV clown network by implementing on-chain censorship: https://twitter.com/BobSummerwill/status/1577714409618931713 (the tweeted link is archived in here).

[Fivestar4everMVP]

Happy that i was here when the whole saga started and to me, Craig wright was a man i followed back then because he sure knows how to make people like me have a good laugh, he was simply a comedian.
I used the word "was" because i think that all his claims about being the real Satoshi Nakamoto is now in the past, He himself right from time knew that no body believed him and neither will people ever believe him, he has the money, all he was doing is what we call over here "publicity stunt", A way to get himself famous and known worldwide.

And he did achieve that, at least today, he's or his name is not written in the book of history, as one the men who once claimed to be Satoshi Nakamoto.

[franky1]

You can't, it'd require to fork the client and specify that particular transaction outputs can be spent without a cryptographic signature, which would obviously not be accepted by the Bitcoin network. Nonetheless, he surely has ruled that small detail out in BSV clown network by implementing on-chain censorship: https://twitter.com/BobSummerwill/status/1577714409618931713 (the tweeted link is archived in here).

yes it would have to be a hard fork breaking many rules.. but also having to get the economic nodes of services/exchanges and merchants to accept the fork as "bitcoin"..
however CSW could just fork it himself,(he already done it 2017/8) it does not need core devs to fork and produce a chain that allows funds to be moved without private key signing.
but again it still requires the economic nodes of major services to treat the fork as "bitcoin" and no longer service the natural bitcoin consensus we use today
CSW knows that trying to sue core devs wont get him "access to bitcoin" it would just be another altcoin airdrop of some ignored fork no service caters to. so ultimately he just wants to poke at core devs for publicity and malice knowing he wont get the claimed demands he wants

[gmaxwell]

I really need to find more information. I don't know if it's my lack of experience in regards to cryptography, but I really don't understand how you can write code to give him access to any Bitcoin Address.

Anyone who can program can write a backdoored version of the Bitcoin software that lets someone bypass the authentication-- go comment out the signature checks, to give a simplified example.  This wouldn't actually *work* because obviously users wouldn't adopt the backdoored version and any that did (presumably Wright) would just form a separate independent currency as their blocks would be rejected by everyone without the backdoored software.  If his position was that people would adopt it, because it were somehow desirable he wouldn't need any of us to do it.

But it doesn't have to work form him to claim it does and tie people up in court-- it just has to be not blindingly obvious to a judge that knows relatively little about Bitcoin.

[apogio]

Anyone who can program can write a backdoored version of the Bitcoin software that lets someone bypass the authentication-- go comment out the signature checks, to give a simplified example.  This wouldn't actually *work* because obviously users wouldn't adopt the backdoored version and any that did (presumably Wright) would just form a separate independent currency as their blocks would be rejected by everyone without the backdoored software.  If his position was that people would adopt it, because it were somehow desirable he wouldn't need any of us to do it.

But it doesn't have to work form him to claim it does and tie people up in court-- it just has to be not blindly obvious to a judge that knows relatively little about Bitcoin.

Exactly my point. There is no way, no matter what changes you decide to make, that all other users (miners, nodes) will accept them. In my opinion, CSW only does that in order to disturb and lead you to money loss in legal expenses. I may be wrong though.

[gmaxwell]

Exactly my point. There is no way, no matter what changes you decide to make, that all other users (miners, nodes) will accept them. In my opinion, CSW only does that in order to disturb and lead you to money loss in legal expenses. I may be wrong though.

Also, and likely foremost, because he has sponsors that believe him that it would work and finance him as a result.

This doesn't make anything any better however.  The targets of the lawsuit are no more able to ignore it-- and if Wright bamboozles the court as he's bamboozled so many others and he wins they'll be facing bankruptcy and potentially even arrest when they're unable to do the impossible.  And if they don't fight him vigorously and competently he'll win by default.  Being in the right doesn't make you win in court if you don't fight any more than it lets you win in a duel when you fail to raise your gun. While Bitcoin users are safe from the backdoor itself, if he's able to disincentivize participating Bitcoin will be much more vulnerable to other issues and attacks.

The fact that he's demanding an impossibility just makes the public under-react because they wrongly think it's not a serious threat.  But it's not the thing he's demand for that is the threat, it's the nature of the demand.

Consider this: What would people say if the UK government banned Bitcoin.org from distributing Bitcoin, instead leaving people to go find more dubious alternative sources or malicious ones?  I think they'd be outraged and there would be vigorous opposition to this act of censorship.  But guess what?  It already happened!  But because it happened through Wright getting a judgement against the person operating Bitcoin.org it gets treated as just as much an irrelevant joke as Wright himself is.  But the effect is the same: the UK government has banned Bitcoin.org from distributing bitcoin.  The fact that some fking scammer clown was the proximal cause isn't relevant in terms of the seriousness of the effect, it's only relevant in terms of the actions needed to put a stop to it.

So likewise, we have the power of the UK government being used to intimidate and harass open source developers working on Bitcoin, making people afraid to participate, and making it clearly against their rational self interest to participate.  That's whats happening.  That ought to be basis for evaluating the seriousness and impact.  If it were the scammer clown alone or just with the help of some bought and paid for promoters that could well be addressed by ignoring it or an occasional editorial making fun of his antics.  He's not relevant when it comes to the seriousness of the issue, he's only relevant because his fraud is the causative factor and shutting it down is the shortest path to ending the abuse.

[apogio]

.............

Thanks for the response. Could you tell me what's his argument concerning the UTXOs that you mentioned above (1Feex etc)? He claims he owned the private keys that derive those addresses, but he lost them somehow? If so, how? And again, why does this have anything to do with the bitcoin Devs? I am curious to know and of course any relevant link is well accepted.

There are some links above from some users but I haven't been able to read them today. I probably will do so tomorrow.

Thanks to everyone for the info you have provided. Much appreciated.

[gmaxwell]

Thanks for the response. Could you tell me what's his argument concerning the UTXOs that you mentioned above (1Feex etc)? He claims he owned the private keys that derive those addresses, but he lost them somehow? If so, how? And again, why does this have anything to do with the bitcoin Devs? I am curious to know and of course any relevant link is well accepted.

He claims that he purchased the coins 1feex and 12ib7 in 2011/2010. He has claimed that in February 2020 "hackers" hid a wireless access point in his home behind a TV and used it to compromise his computer and erase the keys.  This is conveniently right after the date he was supposed to get access to his bitcoin fortune via a 'bonded courier'.  He claims that the coins were also stored in one drive and google drive and that they were 'synchronized' and erased too (so much for backups...).  He claims that after discovering the hack and the loss he wiped his own computers to be sure they were free of hackers.

The coins have not moved since 2011/2010, wright explains the "hackers" failing to move the coins-- unlike any hacker previously known to man-- by claiming the coins were protected by unspecified "algorithmic masking" (the precise meaning of which which he never explains, I would suggest that people refrain from making up things it could mean because he'll just adopt your explanations as people here are likely to be significantly more clue-full than he is).

The 1feex coins were well known to be coins that belonged to mtgox customers which were stolen long before Wright came on the scene back in March 2011 when they last moved.  Wright had previously included the 1feex and 12ib7 addresses on lists of addresses he claimed to own to the Australian Tax Office as part of R&D tax credit and GST rebate fraud.  The ATO concluded he didn't own the claimed coins, because (among other reasons) he couldn't sign with their keys when challenged.  After the lists became public the real owners of some of the addresses on his lists were identified. One even signed a message calling Wright a liar and a fraud.  I believe 1feex and 12ib7 were the only large addresses from the lists that hadn't been moved away by the time he started the lawsuits.

Wright provided a few records to demonstrate his ownership.  They are obvious forgeries (some apparently created to support the GST rebate fraud, some apparently newly created for case), but even if they weren't they wouldn't be particularly persuasive as they'd still just be his assertion-- they aren't third party verifiable.

You can read in detail in the documents at https://bitcoindefense.org/our-work/ under "tulip trading".

Particularly, our preliminary issue application goes into some detail about Wright's "evidence" being junk: https://bitcoindefense.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/2023.07.11-Elliss-1-Preliminary-Issue-Application-FINAL.pdf and after that was filed we gained access to prove even more of it was forged, which is described starting at paragraph 40 in https://bitcoindefense.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/BL-2021-000313-Tulip-Trading-Ltd-D2-12s-skeleton-argument-for-3-October-2023.pdf  

And again, why does this have anything to do with the bitcoin Devs?

Wright has asserted that the people he's suing in that case have both the ability to introduce changes into the bitcoin protocol bypassing its authentication to allow him to seize these coins (the backdoor I referred to up-thread), and that we owe him a fiduciary duty under the law to do so.  A fiduciary duty is a duty of single minded loyalty, pretty much the strongest and most rare duty in the law.  We reply that he has not proved the coins are his, which is unsurprising because they're pretty obviously not his, that we don't have any duty to help anyone recover coins, much less write or publish backdoors, that we don't have the ability to grant him access to these coins. (and if we did, there are coins the defendants have lost that we'd have have recovered for ourselves first!)  While anyone could make a backdoored version of bitcoin, including presumably us, no one would run it because it would expressly defeat the purpose of the system as clearly explained by Satoshi (who wright claims to be!) and so it would have no effect (except perhaps creating another altcoin like BSV that no one but Wright wants, and destroying the authors reputations which I'm sure would suit him fine).

The argument that contributors to MIT licensed open source software owe fiduciary duties to rescue users of the software, in spite of the clear license language to the contrary is extremely concerning.  In both the US and the UK a police officer standing next to you with a life preserver has no duty to try to save you if you start drowning... yet Wright wants uncompensated volunteer open source contributors to be exposed to billions of dollars in damages if they don't rescue users from misfortune which the contributors had nothing to do with except having contributed to the software the user was using.  It's hard to imaging how open source could exist in a world with that kind of liability.

It would be a large scale disaster far outside of Bitcoin if he were able to establish that precedent that the MIT license waver of liability were insufficient.

As to why he's doing this when it plainly won't work:  Some of the defendants, like myself, had previously spoken out against Wright's obviously false claims of being Satoshi (as experts on Bitcoin related tech and first hand witnesses of its history).  Wright made numerous tweets saying that he intended to destroy the lives of the Bitcoin developers, making it pretty clear that retaliation is at least part of his motivation.  Wright's litigation (and lifestyle) is being funded by a wealthy sucker who may believe Wright's claims that the coins could be taken this way-- expecting a multi-billion dollar windfall.  Suing almost all the still visible "OG" bitcoin developers may have also been a strategic move to undermine our value as witnesses in litigation over his claims to be Satoshi and certainly has discouraged other people from stepping forward and speaking out against him.  It also explains his choice of defendants-- and it includes many people who stopped working on Bitcoin prior to his supposed theft but whom had attracted his attention by calling out his fraud (like me!).

Fortunately the Bitcoin legal defense fund was created to make sure that the outcome wouldn't be Wright "winning" by bankrupting his targets before the case even reached a resolution. (As happened in his lawsuit against podcaster Peter McCormack; though Wright seized defeat from the jaws of victory by getting caught lying about his damages.)

The legal tradition common to the US and UK torts makes some fairly strong assumptions that the participants are incrementally mostly honest because being dishonest will make you lose if you're caught (and potentially receive worse sanctions, though that's rare). But when you never had a real prospect of success and were only litigating to harass or for some collateral benefit (e.g. to keep getting funded) these incentives don't work well.  In the US we have widespread anti-slapp laws that are a basic attempt to try to address this weakness, but the UK is behind on these sorts of protections.  His willingness to tell arbitrary lies, forge documents, etc. makes it difficult and costly deal with this litigation even though it should be an easy slam dunk.

[dansus021]

In my opinion, the court cases, arguments and all the unnecessary and boring discussions are not necessarily. Satoshi have Bitcoin wallets and account in this forum. If Craig claimes to be Satoshi, he should login his account in this forum and make a post to convince the Bitcoin community. On the other hand, let him make a transaction from Satoshi's wallet. If he fails to do any of the above, I will gladly join the group that see him as a laughing stock.

True at least just sign some message from the address  If Craig can do that then he real satoshi and doesn't need this ongoing drama for a couple of years. Neither he nor his friend still talked about Bitcoin Satoshi Vision that pretty much community didnt accept it

[Wind_FURY]

Either way, I think its a symptom of some kind of neurological or psychological problem. We should stop giving him so much attention.

The Bitcoin community essentially ignored him from half way through 2016 until 2018.  

I believe 2015 was when Faketoshi was first "introduced" to the community when he joined Nick Szabo and other Bitcoiners in a panel through live stream. There were some people, the big blockers, who insist that it was Nick Szabo who introduced him as Satoshi, which is simply not true.

Plus was the community ignoring him from 2016 to 2018? It was a nocoiner friend of mine that texted me that "Satoshi's real identity was discovered" after early news of Gavin Andresen and Faketoshi's "private signing sessions" was everywhere during 2016. That's probably when the community started talking about him.

In the darkness he was able to assemble a scamming crew of well over a hundred people, including a marketing firm, a media company, acquired an altcoin factory, and the services of four law firms on different continents.  I've heard credible estimates of around 300 people working in service of the greater scheme there, not including the attorneys.  His representatives are lobbying governments all over the world, meeting with state and federal congress people in the US.

The name that never gets mentioned is, Jon Matonis. How important is he in the anti-Bitcoin apparatus launched by Faketoshi?

[apogio]

....

I will return to this post once I have some merit to send. Thanks, very well explained.

[tygeade]

No idea if anyone is still interested in the adventures of our good friend, Dr Craig Wright, who, for those who got into Bitcoin recently, claims to be the real Satoshi Nakamoto, but I'm glad to hear that his biggest backer, Calvin Ayre, finally lost a fate and is turning his back on him.

Not really shocking considering how long could someone stay with a person who claims to be someone they are not? I mean at first you may try to help him, hell at first you may even believe him, but slowly you will realize that this is going to a point where he might literally hurt himself trying to prove to the world that he is someone who he is not and that is going to end up being a bigger trouble.

I believe that he should be doing something else, give his time to something that will benefit the world, and he could even start a charity at this point. That way, people who still trust him and believes in his cause could donate to him, and he will spend his time helping someone, which would rebuild his entire reputation as well. It's really a smart move.

[gmaxwell]

Plus was the community ignoring him from 2016 to 2018? It was a nocoiner friend of mine that texted me that "Satoshi's real identity was discovered" after early news of Gavin Andresen and Faketoshi's "private signing sessions" was everywhere during 2016. That's probably when the community started talking about him.

That's why I said half way though 2016, by June his claims were well and truly debunked and dead in the Bitcoin community.  He went on to sucker bcashers for a while.

The name that never gets mentioned is, Jon Matonis. How important is he in the anti-Bitcoin apparatus launched by Faketoshi?

He was briefly nChain's CEO but dropped out. I tried contacting him several times after trying to see if he had changed his position, including forwarding him posts by Wright fraudulently claiming to be involved in the formation of the Bitcoin foundation (which Jon would have known first hand was a lie) but I heard nothing in response.

If he's still involved he's in deep cover.

Last I heard he was backing Samurai Wallet.  I hope they wouldn't accept funding from/through someone involved with faketoshi.

[apogio]

Last I heard he was backing Samurai Wallet.  I hope they wouldn't accept funding from/through someone involved with faketoshi.

I hope so too, otherwise I will stop using Samourai, Sentinel and Dojo server, which, so far, I like a lot.

- Hodlonaut Trial.

I read all of it, including the reddit posts by gmaxwell as o_e_l_e_o suggested. Good information and I am glad CSW lost the case.

By the way, I think you can find the whole trial on YouTube in case anyone wants to.

Finally, I kinda like this https://cryptocloaks.com/product/space-cat-figurine/ and I will order it. I saw that the seller sent 50% of the sales to support hodlonaut's trial back then. Pretty cool figurine.

To all of you:
I am curious to know all your thoughts on Gavin Andresen who claimed that CSW signed in front of him But he was given the chance to be a core developer by satoshi himself.

[DooMAD]

By the way, I think you can find the whole trial on YouTube in case anyone wants to.

The thing you have to be slightly careful of is who the video is made by.  Ayre's propaganda outlet, CoinGeek, have uploaded videos to YouTube to cover that trial (along with other subjects), which are full of misrepresentations and spin.  Avoid these ones unless you enjoy being lied to. 

[Wind_FURY]

Plus was the community ignoring him from 2016 to 2018? It was a nocoiner friend of mine that texted me that "Satoshi's real identity was discovered" after early news of Gavin Andresen and Faketoshi's "private signing sessions" was everywhere during 2016. That's probably when the community started talking about him.

That's why I said half way though 2016, by June his claims were well and truly debunked and dead in the Bitcoin community.  He went on to sucker bcashers for a while.

The name that never gets mentioned is, Jon Matonis. How important is he in the anti-Bitcoin apparatus launched by Faketoshi?

He was briefly nChain's CEO but dropped out. I tried contacting him several times after trying to see if he had changed his position, including forwarding him posts by Wright fraudulently claiming to be involved in the formation of the Bitcoin foundation (which Jon would have known first hand was a lie) but I heard nothing in response.

If he's still involved he's in deep cover.

Last I heard he was backing Samurai Wallet.  I hope they wouldn't accept funding from/through someone involved with faketoshi.

I hope not to weaponize one of Bitcoin's most popular CoinJoin apps against it. Tin-foil hat on, but knowing what the BCash SV people's Modus Operandi, they will probably try to co-opt the Samourai developers. I believe they successfully did it to Nassim Taleb, because why would a smart man like him join Craig Wright? 🤔

Plus, Craig Wright likes to sue people that have admin control/own webservers' that host the Bitcoin white-paper for "intellectual rights violations", no? He should sue Patrick McHenry.

https://mchenry.house.gov/uploadedfiles/bitcoin.pdf

Policymakers should be on the side of innovation and ingenuity, which are vital to American competitiveness. I hope others in US govt join me. #Bitcoin

https://twitter.com/patrickmchenry/status/1354195437520084992

Breaking down political barriers.

 

[o_e_l_e_o]

So, looks like CSW has changed his legal team yet again, now moving to a firm called "Shoosmiths". Not clear if this is because Ayre pulled the funding from Travers Smith, or perhaps they (like multiple previous legal teams) realized that CSW is a fraud and all his "evidence" is forgeries. Or perhaps CSW fired them since they were unwilling to lie in court. Who knows?

Congrats to @Shoosmiths. So we have:

-Clayton Utz
-Rivero Mestre
-ONTIER
-Wikborg Rein
-Schjødt (were also replaced by Travers Smith, right?)
-Travers Smith
-Shoosmiths

This is so expensive, I'm sure I forgot a few... 🤭

Meanwhile none of his opponents ever changed counsel.

Note that this is for the Coinbase case and not the COPA case. As far as I know, there has been no word yet if Travers Smith are also dropping out of the COPA case. I guess time will tell.

[DeathAngel]

There are still people who blindly believe his nonsense, that he is Satoshi. I see BSV maxis on Twitter who believe him, so weird. Maybe they don’t but it suits the narrative to protect their shitcoin value. He is losing court cases regularly now, it won’t be long before he is a mere blip on the radar of bitcoins illustrious history & soon future. There have been many fraudsters & snake oil salesmen since bitcoin was created, there aren’t many more conniving & devious, maybe even desperate as Craig Wright. He’s irrelevant but soon will just be a distajt bar memory.