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

[apogio]

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.

Wasn't the COPA case closed? That's what I thought, that COPA have officially won the case.

I see BSV maxis on Twitter who believe him, so weird.

Why weird? Twitter (or X) is a place where anyone (literally anyone) can say anything (literally anything) they want. The level of misinformation on Twitter is phenomenal. I don't talk about inaccurate info, but rather about huge lies that can have severe consequences which are much more serious. Personally I closed Twitter due to the fact that I was seeing how easy it was to lie and gain followers based on lies. This is a very serious problem in general.

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[o_e_l_e_o]

Wasn't the COPA case closed? That's what I thought, that COPA have officially won the case.

No, not at all.

The most recent development in the COPA case was a judgement on various application passed last week, viewable here: https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Ch/2023/2408.html

If you scroll right to the end of that judgement, the judge lays out a revised timetable for the rest of the trial. The main hearings aren't due to start until January.

[apogio]

The most recent development in the COPA case was a judgement on various application passed last week, viewable here: https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Ch/2023/2408.html

I have read that, thanks. Is it true that CSW claims he proved G. Andresen and J. Matonis that he can sign with the PK linked to the addresses of the first bitcoin blocks (aka Satoshi's PK)?

[BlackHatCoiner]

Is it true that CSW claims he proved G. Andresen and J. Matonis that he can sign with the PK linked to the addresses of the first bitcoin blocks (aka Satoshi's PK)?

I don't know about J. Matonis, but he did claim he proved it to Gavin. But, the worse part is that Gavin himself claimed he saw the evidence: https://piped.video/watch?v=W1f5Ms5heMM. "I think that for me, he proved it beyond reasonable doubt". Gavin also wrote it in a blog post in 2016 that he trusts CSW: http://gavinandresen.ninja/satoshi. In both the video and his page, he claims he was shown cryptographic evidence. I thought the private keys were compromised by a hacker, or lost. How could he do that? And even if he did, why not showing to everybody out there a signed message?  

As you can view from the page update, he's now believing the opposite and he doesn't want to talk about it anymore. Seems like someone got bribed to outright lie.  

His reputation is was worth as much as he was paid for this. Now more? Zero.

[apogio]

As you can view from the page update, he's now believing the opposite and he doesn't want to talk about it anymore. Seems like someone got bribed to outright lie.  

I have missed this part. Yeah it makes sense, having got bribed. However, sometimes, when I feel like something is definetely wrong, I try to think about it from the other ones' perspective. Having said that, there is a strong question in my mind. "Can someone be so arrogant and stupid, to try to convince people he is someone who he isn't ?" . Apparently and evidently yes, but... It feels so wrong, if you get what I mean.

Now, to the more technical aspect of the conversation. I can't imagine how a software engineer like G. Andresen could simply lie like that. Apart from it being unethical, it also insults our knowledge and common sense. If Craig Wright had access to Satoshi's PK, he would simply sign in front of everyone. Period! Everything else is for morons. (Forgive my lang).

[o_e_l_e_o]

Now, to the more technical aspect of the conversation. I can't imagine how a software engineer like G. Andresen could simply lie like that. Apart from it being unethical, it also insults our knowledge and common sense. If Craig Wright had access to Satoshi's PK, he would simply sign in front of everyone. Period! Everything else is for morons. (Forgive my lang).

I'm not defending Andresen by any means, but if you read the emails between him and CSW prior to their meeting in London, it is clear that Gavin already believes at that point that CSW is Satoshi. The meeting in London is not to convince a non-believer, but rather to seal the deal for someone who is already 99% of the way there. Given that every human on Earth suffers from confirmation bias to some degree, perhaps Gavin simply saw what he wanted to see. That doesn't excuse his complete failure of critical thinking, however.

If you want to read the emails in question, they were submitted as evidence during the Hodlonaut trial in Norway. The evidence pack is available as a zip file Greg Maxwell archived here: https://web.archive.org/web/20221001141835/https://nt4tn.net/scammer-craig-wright/3qqpv3.zip. The emails are in Appendix 15 (Bilag 15.pdf in Norwegian). You might also be interested in the NDA CSW made Gavin sign about the signing session in Bilag 13.

The signing session itself was an absolute sham. Here are the two very trivial lines of code which you need to add to Electrum to make it produce fake valid signatures for any key pair you like. Then all CSW had to do was get this fake version of Electrum on the laptop they were using to verify his signature. Now, instead of using the laptop Gavin had brought with him, CSW used a laptop produced by a member of his team, in a location he had chosen and previously had access to, to download Electrum and perform the verification. I'm sure I don't need to point out the dozen or so problems with that process. Why was CSW allowed to control the device being used? Why not use Gavin's laptop? Why was CSW allowed to choose which wallet software to use? Why not use Bitcoin Core? Why was Electrum downloaded over an untrusted network which CSW had access to (and therefore trivial to perform a man-in-the-middle attack and download his fake Electrum client)? Why wasn't the Electrum download verified? Why did the setting up of this laptop take, in Gavin's words, "many hours, I don’t recall how many hours, but it took much longer than expected"? Why, when Gavin asked to perform the verification on his own laptop, did CSW refuse and make stupid excuses?

Well, we all know why. But why didn't Gavin? I mean, we tell newbies on this forum not to trust any downloads and verify everything themselves. Gavin is supposed to be an expert.

[OgNasty]

Gavin made a mistake. He has come out several times in the years since that mistake and stated that he does NOT believe Craig Wright is satoshi but for some reason people just keep pointing out his mistake and making  him out to be a villain for it. It’s really weird to watch. Without Gavin, Bitcoin wouldn’t have been as successful as early on as it was. He’s a legend and should really be acknowledged as such.

[apogio]

The signing session itself was an absolute sham. Here are the two very trivial lines of code which you need to add to Electrum to make it produce fake valid signatures for any key pair you like.

So I can be Satoshi too. This is fantastic, I always wanted fame.

Then all CSW had to do was get this fake version of Electrum on the laptop they were using to verify his signature. Now, instead of using the laptop Gavin had brought with him, CSW used a laptop produced by a member of his team, in a location he had chosen and previously had access to, to download Electrum and perform the verification. I'm sure I don't need to point out the dozen or so problems with that process. Why was CSW allowed to control the device being used? Why not use Gavin's laptop? Why was CSW allowed to choose which wallet software to use? Why not use Bitcoin Core? Why was Electrum downloaded over an untrusted network which CSW had access to (and therefore trivial to perform a man-in-the-middle attack and download his fake Electrum client)? Why wasn't the Electrum download verified? Why did the setting up this laptop take, in Gavin's words, "many hours, I don’t recall how many hours, but it took much longer than expected"? Why, when Gavin asked to perform the verification on his own laptop, did CSW refuse and make stupid excuses?

Well, we all know why. But why didn't Gavin? I mean, we tell newbies on this forum not to trust any downloads and verify everything themselves.

I like the way you put those arguments. I don't know why it is not so obvious to all the people who believe him. In fact, I don't know how Gavin was convinced. Seriously! In times like this I keep asking myself if there is something I don't understand, because things go out of my common sense. But, I have come to conclusion that as BlackHatCoiner said, being bribed seems a good excuse.

Gavin made a mistake. He has come out several times in the years since that mistake and stated that he does NOT believe Craig Wright is satoshi but for some reason people just keep pointing out his mistake and making  him out to be a villain for it. It’s really weird to watch. Without Gavin, Bitcoin wouldn’t have been as successful as early on as it was. He’s a legend and should really be acknowledged as such.

We have all made mistakes. If he has sincerely changed his mind, it is good for him and I respect that.

But! This is not a mistake that can be easily forgotten. As o_e_l_e_o stated above, all those questions prove that there is something deeper that we ignore. He was, in my opinion and I may be wrong, very easily convinced that CSW was Satoshi. He didn't even seem to be suspicious at all. I mean, we know that Gavin took the leading development role from Satoshi himself (via email). Did CSW do anything (anything at all), to prove that he was the person that gave Bitcoin's development to Gavin? Did he provide any proof of having talked to him back in 2010? If not, then how was he convinced so easily?

Let me repeat though. If he has sincerely changed his mind, it is good for him and I respect that. But id doesn't change the past.

[Wind_FURY]

Gavin made a mistake. He has come out several times in the years since that mistake and stated that he does NOT believe Craig Wright is satoshi but for some reason people just keep pointing out his mistake and making  him out to be a villain for it. It’s really weird to watch. Without Gavin, Bitcoin wouldn’t have been as successful as early on as it was. He’s a legend and should really be acknowledged as such.

He's definitely NOT a villain, merely unpopular and generally unliked by some people or sub-groups within the Bitcoin community, not only because he announced that Craig Wright "is Satoshi Nakamoto", but also because,

- He went to the C.I.A. headquarters in Langley, which might have scared Satoshi. Why did he go there?

- He proposed that Bitcoin hard fork to bigger blocks with Bitcoin-XT. The community was split on that proposal, which the people who supported bigger blocks left to join the altcoins BCash and its fork BCash SV.

[BlackHatCoiner]

"Can someone be so arrogant and stupid, to try to convince people he is someone who he isn't ?" . Apparently and evidently yes, but... It feels so wrong, if you get what I mean.

To me the question is rather: "Can there be a sane person who is convinced he is Satoshi?". We often see cases like Craig, as there are too much to gain by being such a liar. This guy requested to receive the 1fee coins, just because he made up a story and fought tooth and nail to force that view on the protocol using the law.

But, there really isn't anything to gain by believing this trash. I'm genuinely curious how some were convinced.

Gavin made a mistake.

Getting bribed is an important mistake. You can't trust someone who is getting paid to lie. And if he wasn't really paid to say that crap, and was honestly convinced, then you can't trust him either as he's lacking technical expertise severely.

[DooMAD]

Gavin made a mistake. He has come out several times in the years since that mistake and stated that he does NOT believe Craig Wright is satoshi but for some reason people just keep pointing out his mistake and making  him out to be a villain for it. It’s really weird to watch.

I feel like we've had this conversation before.  Gavin alludes to the notion that Faketoshi isn't satoshi, but never seems to say it outright. 

Even the update on his own blog feels like a cop-out:

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.

He can't seem to bring himself to say "Craig Wright is not satoshi".  Is that not weird?

[ChiBitCTy]

I was watching a couple YoutTube videos over the weekend having to do with bitcoin and Craig Wrights name was brought up.  I was shocked to see in the comments section that there are still so many people who support this utter moron.  He's so clearly not Satoshi, and Satoshi didn't spend all that time and effort hiding his identity to then one day come out as the creator.  I mean it just makes no sense at all.

[Wind_FURY]

Gavin made a mistake.

Getting bribed is an important mistake. You can't trust someone who is getting paid to lie. And if he wasn't really paid to say that crap, and was honestly convinced, then you can't trust him either as he's lacking technical expertise severely.

Was Gavin Andresen really bribed, or is that just a presumption from some people? "Tin-foil hats on", yes it's very possible, BUT is there confirmation that he was bribed?

Gavin made a mistake. He has come out several times in the years since that mistake and stated that he does NOT believe Craig Wright is satoshi but for some reason people just keep pointing out his mistake and making  him out to be a villain for it. It’s really weird to watch.

I feel like we've had this conversation before.  Gavin alludes to the notion that Faketoshi isn't satoshi, but never seems to say it outright.  

Even the update on his own blog feels like a cop-out:

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.

He can't seem to bring himself to say "Craig Wright is not satoshi".  Is that not weird?

He probably doesn't want any legal action from Craig Wright, just a shower thought.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

But didn't Gavin also say he was "bamboozled" by Craig Wright and Jon Matonis? That would be enough evidence for me to believe that Gavin does not think Craig Wright to be Satoshi Nakamoto.

[franky1]

Was Gavin Andresen really bribed, or is that just a presumption from some people? "Tin-foil hats on", yes it's very possible, BUT is there confirmation that he was bribed?

gavin didnt just travel to the UK for just a free lunch
having to sign NDA's and such there is usually and commonly some form of compensation involved.
gavin in early years already mentioned he was going to retire around the time he did so its obviously a selling out of his reputation for a pay day

i see it the same situation as the native americans that thought no one can own the land so when some colonials invaded and were offering money to be declared the rightful owners. the natives just laughed and thought "free money", not thinking anything would come of it due to how they experienced their land having no owner before. thinking even after taking the money people cant claim to be a owner, thus no harm in taking a pay day

[BlackHatCoiner]

Was Gavin Andresen really bribed, or is that just a presumption from some people? "Tin-foil hats on", yes it's very possible, BUT is there confirmation that he was bribed?

Merely an assumption I have made. We obviously don't have evidence when bribing happens, but it seems extremely likely to be the case here, IMO.

I mean, we have a Bitcoin developer who is known to having technical expertise with Bitcoin in general, publicly stating he thinks CSW could be Satoshi, because... He was invited in his place to get shown cryptographic evidence privately from altered software? Didn't it cross his mind to request digital signature over the Internet? What kind of desire to do this privately is that, if Craig doesn't mind Gavin publicly stating he was shown cryptographic evidence? Can the rest of us confirm? Wild conspiracy, but they might have exchanged more than "digital signatures".  

BTW, needless to say he must have got mountains of evidence that CSW is not Satoshi, just like everyone else here. And as an icing in the cake, he still hasn't convinced us he really regret getting involved in all that shit, for if he did, it would be easy to just state the obvious; "I believe Craig is a scam".

[pawel7777]

Merely an assumption I have made. We obviously don't have evidence when bribing happens, but it seems extremely likely to be the case here, IMO.

I mean, we have a Bitcoin developer who is known to having technical expertise with Bitcoin in general, publicly stating he thinks CSW could be Satoshi, because... He was invited in his place to get shown cryptographic evidence privately from altered software? Didn't it cross his mind to request digital signature over the Internet? What kind of desire to do this privately is that, if Craig doesn't mind Gavin publicly stating he was shown cryptographic evidence? Can the rest of us confirm? Wild conspiracy, but they might have exchanged more than "digital signatures".  

BTW, needless to say he must have got mountains of evidence that CSW is not Satoshi, just like everyone else here. And as an icing in the cake, he still hasn't convinced us he really regret getting involved in all that shit, for if he did, it would be easy to just state the obvious; "I believe Craig is a scam".

To cut GA some slack, back then, Wright had a lot of positive press and was often pictured as a humble, modest genius which kind of fit in with many people's expectations of the real-life Satoshi. No one really knew what kind of psycho he would turn out to be.

And GA did admit that he regrets getting involved in it in the below statement, although he has never explicitly acknowledged that he has been duped nor called CW a fraud.

http://gavinandresen.ninja/satoshi

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.

Anyhow, he did pay a big price and went from the single most influential person in the Bitcoin space to someone almost completely forgotten.

[gmaxwell]

To cut GA some slack, back then, Wright had a lot of positive press and was often pictured as a humble, modest genius which kind of fit in with many people's expectations of the real-life Satoshi. No one really knew what kind of psycho he would turn out to be.

It's funny how polarized the community is on this. One one hand you have people being extremely damning and just failing to comprehend the psychology of someone who was victimized by a conman making really strong assumptions that there was a big conspiracy, on the other hand you have people making all kinds of excuses.  Upthread someone linked to the archive with the email chain between Gavin and Wright.  I really recommend reading it.  In particular, it has Gavin pointing to reddit posts basically explaining Wright's fraud, in one message he even says that Craig is making himself sound like a fraud!  You simply cannot say that he had no warning.  And, in fact, Wright tried to get other people to witness for him like Andreas who were prudent enough to not put themselves into an easily compromised position.

I think the thread undermines both most of the apologia but also most of the conspiracy theories.

The fact is that conmen exploit vulnerabilities in the human psyche just like a buffer overflow attack exploits a piece of vulnerable software.  If you're not the target, if you don't have a vulnerability in the same place it's going to just seem inexplicable to you.   You could imagine some anthropomorphized mailer daemons hanging out someone walks up to one says a bit of nonsense and then the target empties his wallets, takes of his clothes, and gives everything he had to the person who just babbled at him and everyone else sitting around watching is going what the actual f*ck just happened?  Humans aren't quite so fragile as software, but they're also not the entire opposite of that.

Falling for a con is something that could happen to anyone.  Now, true, you might never fall for Wright but there is probably some other con that you could fall for. The only people who are even somewhat safe are people who both admit that they're at risk and have studied cons.  Upthread apogio express incredulity that anyone could be so audacious ("Can someone be so arrogant and stupid"?)-- and that sentiment is one of the ones conmen exploit: they actually make themselves look more unreasonable to make people doubt that anyone would tell a lie that big.

Gavin long criticized other Bitcoin contributors like Peter Todd and myself of being *too paranoid* and concerned about fringe vulnerabilities, that most of the time no one attacking, most of the time most people were nice, etc.  And most of the time he would be right. But only most.  And that's the issue with security: most of the time it's a waste of effort/time/money because most of the time you aren't being attacked.  But if you don't have enough...... watch out!  I don't say this to say his position is objectively wrong: if Gavin had been as paranoid as Peter Todd perhaps he would have never encouraged other people to contribute to Bitcoin and things would have developed far more slowly and it's not hard to make a case that early in Bitcoin's life that is exactly the attitude that was needed: after all Bitcoin was worth very little in the beginning, so there was little to protect.  Different perspectives have different costs and different benefits.  One of the costs of being less cynical is increased vulnerability to attacks like Wright's.

Given the politics at the time it's easy to see how Gavin probably had a particular vulnerability.  He was already somewhat ostracized from the tech community, his position in the blocksize war drama wasn't the leading one.  Then out of the blue "Satoshi" swings in on a vine to seize victory from the jaws of defeat.  It's a very human mistake to not look a gift horse in the mouth.

Gavin has suffered greatly for his error here.  And make no mistake, it was a serious one: many people trusted him to apply the kind of expert scrutiny that they couldn't apply themselves and he simply didn't.  Unfortunately, his mistake didn't just harm himself-- it greatly harmed a lot of other people (including people who lost money on BCH and BSV as a result as well as the people Wright has been suing) and that harm is continuing to this day which is why people are still unhappy with him for it.  If you look at the footage from the Norway trial Wright still leans heavily on Gavin's endorsement and current relative silence, he'll almost certainly do so again in the UK trial.  Gavin could still improve the situation but he chooses not to, presumably because he has reasoned that he's better off being additionally disrespected by the Bitcoin community than he is drawing Wrights ire.  (Something which is probably true, but is made less true by the public pressure).  So I think we don't have to adopt either of the extreme positions:  It's both an understandable error and it's also not unreasonable for people to blame him both for the original error and his handling subsequently (including today).

But the most important thing to take away from it is skepticism. You could fall for something like this or someone you trust and listen to could be falling for someone elses scam.

[BlackHatCoiner]

To cut GA some slack, back then, Wright had a lot of positive press and was often pictured as a humble, modest genius which kind of fit in with many people's expectations of the real-life Satoshi.

Anyone who claims he's Satoshi without providing cryptographic evidence is instantly pictured as a lying scum to me. I'd question anyone who claimed the same with cryptographic evidence, let alone without. Anyone who claimed to own the private key of the genesis block without publishing a signed message for everyone to see, would do even worse impression to me. Now add that this person had also told everyone that he lost access to his private keys, and requested from Gavin to see his "evidence" privately.

You either have an extremely naive Bitcoin developer, or a bribed one; honestly, I don't know what's worse, but in both cases he can't be trusted.

But the most important thing to take away from it is skepticism. You could fall for something like this or someone you trust and listen to could be falling for someone elses scam.

Could he be afraid to go out and admit the truth (that CSW is a liar) because he might get himself a lawsuit?

[gmaxwell]

Now add that this person had also told everyone that he lost access to his private keys

The lost access story came later.

Could he be afraid to go out and admit the truth (that CSW is a liar) because he might get himself a lawsuit?

From Craig?  It's a very realistic concern. OTOH, in his shoes I'd feel honor bound to do the right thing in spite of the risk.  That said, I'm saddled under a pair of bullshit lawsuits by Wright, which I guess shows the price of principle.  But if you're just going to let bullies determine your life why bother living at all?  What kind of message is someone lets themselves be cowed like that sending to their community, their children, and prospective bullies?

If you meant from other people-- I think not.  There is a big gap between a moral wrong and a legal one, his diligance failure violated the trust of others but it isn't like he had a formal duty.  If someone were going to start lobbing lawsuits there the media that promoted Wright would be more obvious targets. Of course, frivolous lawsuits can be brought at any time for any reason, but he doesn't need to admit an error there for other people to go after him.  Though keeping a low profile and not appearing to have any significant wealth is generally protective against frivolous lawsuits.  If he were really concerned there I'd expect him to have deleted his twitter and disappeared entirely.

[Wind_FURY]

To cut GA some slack, back then, Wright had a lot of positive press and was often pictured as a humble, modest genius which kind of fit in with many people's expectations of the real-life Satoshi. No one really knew what kind of psycho he would turn out to be.

It's funny how polarized the community is on this. On one hand you have people being extremely damning and just failing to comprehend the psychology of someone who was victimized by a conman making really strong assumptions that there was a big conspiracy, on the other hand you have people making all kinds of excuses.  Upthread someone linked to the archive with the email chain between Gavin and Wright.  I really recommend reading it.  In particular, it has Gavin pointing to reddit posts basically explaining Wright's fraud, in one message he even says that Craig is making himself sound like a fraud!  You simply cannot say that he had no warning.  And, in fact, Wright tried to get other people to witness for him like Andreas who were prudent enough to not put themselves into an easily compromised position.

I think the thread undermines both most of the apologia but also most of the conspiracy theories.

It's always the better path to give someone the benefit of the doubt, although I believe Gavin Andresen cannot redeem himself anymore after trying to co-opt the network through Bitcoin-XT and after vouching for a con-artist. It's obviously the same for Roger Ver, Jihan Wu, and it should be the same for Barry Silbert for leading the New York Agreement, which also tried to co-opt the network away from the Core Developers.

Gavin has suffered greatly for his error here.  Unfortunately, his mistake didn't just harm himself-- it greatly harmed a lot of other people (including people who lost money on BCH and BSV as a result as well as the people Wright has been suing) and that harm is continuing to this day which is why people are still unhappy with him for it.  If you look at the footage from the Norway trial Wright still leans heavily on Gavin's endorsement and current relative silence, he'll almost certainly do so again in the UK trial.  Gavin could still improve the situation but he chooses not to, presumably because he has reasoned that he's better off being additionally disrespected by the Bitcoin community than he is drawing Wrights ire.  (Something which is probably true, but is made less true by the public pressure).  So I think we don't have to adopt either of the extreme positions:  It's both an understandable error and it's also not unreasonable for people to blame him both for the original error and his handling subsequently (including today).

How high would be the probability that Gavin Andresen was bribed by Craig Wright? Perhaps he was, but I refuse to believe that a person like him would easily be persuaded by money.