Craig Wright And The Judges
The finest quotes collected from two decades of judgments
Written and compiled by Arthur van Pelt
ABOUT EDITS to this article: as more material may become available after the publication of this article, it could have edits and updates every now and then. In that sense, this article can be considered a work in progress, and become a reference piece for years to come.
Now that the Norway ruling in the hodlonaut v Wright lawsuit is only four days old, with a bombshell outcome in favour of hodlonaut, it’s a good time to look back at previous rulings, judgments, orders and verdicts in legal cases where Craig Wright was involved. There were quite a few, and put together they give an eye-opening overview of the character that is Craig Wright, and his antics that he shows in- and outside court rooms.
The title of each ruling links directly to the source of the quotes, which are in italic. You will find my personal notes between the quotes.
Let’s go.
1. Wright v Ryan & Anor [2005] NSWCA 368 (27 October 2005)
“On 31 August 2004 Gzell J found the appellant guilty of contempt of Court by breaching undertakings given to the Court on 4 September 2003. The breaches involved carrying on business in competition with DeMorgan Information Security Systems Pty Ltd (the company) and directly or indirectly approaching “any company, business, entity or person who is or was, as at 8 August 2003 a customer of [the company]”. On 15 November Gzell J sentenced him to imprisonment for 28 days suspended on condition that he perform 250 hours of community service, and he was ordered to pay the costs of the proceedings.”
Oldest known ruling against Craig Wright. Mind you, this is ‘criminal’ contempt of court as civil cases don’t end up in imprisonment.
“The further evidence was essentially directed to an email apparently sent by the appellant to Mr David Spencer of RIC at 11.23 am on 10 September 2003 (the disputed email). The appellant did not give evidence at his trial, but the respondent tendered that part of his affidavit of 24 October 2003 (blue 113) where he denied sending that email.
A copy of the disputed email was found on the hard drive of the appellant’s computer when an Anton Pillar order was executed at his home at Bagno near Mt White on 16 September 2003. The email purported to come from “Craig S Wright [cwrigh20@postoffice.csu.edu.au]”, and was sent to “Spencer, Dave; Wright_c@demorgan.com.au; Spencer, Dave”. It stated:
“More details to follow (ie proposal)”
Here we see the first raid on Craig’s premises being executed. An Anton Piller order (otherwise known as a ‘search order’, note the typo of the court) is an order from a court which permits the — without notice — inspection of the defendant or respondent’s premises and civil search for and seizure of relevant materials and documents where there is a serious case with major concern of evidence destruction. They’re also called ‘dawn raids’ as they often happen in the early morning, while the inhabitant of the premises is barred from entry to his properties. (with help from Thomson Reuters, Practical Law)
Craig Wright appealed the judgment — appealing will become the standard Modus Operandi of Craig — with an email that reeks of a forgery from the get-go.
“The disputed email was found on a computer at the appellant’s home during the Anton Pillar raid on 16 September 2003 (blue 109). It was found on a temporary Internet file opened and viewed during the raid when a copy to self folder used to store email messages online was accessed (blue 107, 108, 109). It had not originated on that computer, but had been sent from a remote location. However its presence in a “copy to self” file supported an inference that it had been sent by the appellant.”
The chain of custody being inquired, and it’s not looking good for Craig Wright.
“In his affidavit of 23 August the appellant said that the calls from his mobile phone on 10 September (sup blue 1/132) at 11.09 am and 11.48 am were shown as sent from Cowan and Berowra respectively so that at the time the disputed email was sent he must have been in his car approximately 20 minutes away from his home and could not have sent it (orange 17).
The mobile phone records for 16 September show that this inference cannot be drawn. Times on the copy of the disputed email found on the appellant’s hard drive (blue 109) showed that the raid was in progress at 11.47 am on 16 September. The appellant said that at that time he was outside his home using his mobile telephone (orange 17). His mobile phone records (sup blue 1/132) show that he made phone calls at 11.33 am, 11.46 am, and 11.59 am. These too are shown to have been made from Berowra, as was one of those calls said to have been made by the appellant from his car 20 minutes drive from his home on 10 September. It is therefore clear that the mobile phone records for 10 September do not establish that the appellant was not at his home at 11.23 am when the disputed email was sent.”
Craig Wright found lying. Will not be the first case of perjury either, I’m afraid. In later judgments we will find the word ‘perjury’ used many times.
“It would have been extremely difficult for an outsider to fabricate the disputed email containing the details it did [para 11]. Mr Spencer and the appellant communicated with each other many times on 9, 10 and 11 September by email, telephone, and in person. Somehow this email managed to make sense and fit in with these other communications. The fabrication of such an email by an outsider without this being immediately detected by the recipient is glaringly improbable. A copy of the email reached the appellant. He replied to his emails without delay and if the disputed email had been sent to him by a third party he would have become aware of its existence almost immediately.”
So there you have it, dear reader. The stage is set for two decades of Craig Wright perjury, false evidence and forgeries. You will learn that, in overwhelming majority, judges are not impressed with Wright when it comes to his performance between the walls of a court room. So far, Craig Wright has escaped jail time for this behavior because they are all civil cases, that need to be ramped up to a criminal case before a judge will rule jail time like in the Ryan v Wright case that kicked off this article.
A verdict with jail time being sentenced is, in my opinion, only a matter of time. The clock is ticking. The Australian Taxation Office is already “conducting a criminal investigation relating to Craig Steven Wright” since 2015 when they performed their raids on Craig’s house and office in December, and otherwise it won’t be long before the growing list of civil court cases with numerous examples of perjury and boatloads of his forgeries being exposed will return to Craig Wright like a boomerang.
With that said, let’s continue with the list of rulings in historical order. We have arrived at the Kleiman v Wright case, where Magistrate Judge Reinhart and Federal Judge Bloom showed no mercy for Craig Wright in the 2018–2021 era. Since this case ended up in a trial in front of a jury in Miami in November 2021, we will also find out what they ruled against Craig Wright.
2. Kleiman v Wright: ORDER ON PLAINTIFF’S MOTION TO COMPEL (1)
“Dr. Wright concedes that a list of his bitcoin holdings could be generated from the information in the encrypted file in the trust. DE 204 at 4 (the encrypted file contains, inter alia, “other data from which information about bitcoin mined after block 70 could be re-generated.”). Dr. Wright voluntarily encrypted this information using a Shamir system. Id. at 5 (Dr. Wright “purposely set up a Shamir system.”). His declaration indicates that he is aware of the other individuals who possess decryption keys. Those individuals are trustees of Dr. Wright’s blind trust. He has not explained why he cannot obtain, and has not obtained, the necessary keys from these third parties. At this point, the record before the Court fails to demonstrate that Dr. Wright cannot through reasonable diligence comply with the Court’s March 14th Order. The Court will allow the parties to develop a full evidentiary record before it decides whether sanctions are warranted.”
Craig Wright being lectured by Judge Reinhart how a Shamir scheme actually works, why his explanation about trustees makes no sense, and that he will be sanctioned if he doesn’t finally comply. This sanctioning will eventually happen, as we will find out further down this article.
In this order we find Craig Wright incompetently struggling with several false moves to bring in additional members in Dave Kleiman’s company W&K Info Defense Research LLC (in short W&K) by rewriting W&K’s history, using false, conflicting statements and several forgeries.
“In his Motion, Defendant argues that both Nguyen and Coin-Exch were members of W&K, and that their membership would destroy diversity in this action. ECF No. [144], at 11–13. Then, for the first time in his Reply, the Defendant argues that his ex-wife Lynn Wright was also a member of W&K. ECF No. [171], at 6–7.
This is not the first time that the Defendant has made certain representations regarding the membership of W&K. Indeed, the Court notes that the Defendant has made several conflicting statements regarding even his own ownership of W&K. ECF No. [256], at 29:24–25 (“Judge, I get that there are a number of different statements by Dr. Wright.”)
These statements include:
- On April 2, 2013, the Defendant signed a contract, representing that Dave Kleiman is 100% owner of W&K, which was filed before the Supreme Court of New South Wales. ECF No. [83–5], at 1.
- On or about July and August of 2013, the Defendant filed a sworn affidavit in the Supreme Court of New South Wales declaring that he and Dave Kleiman each owned 50% of W&K. ECF No. [83–4], at 4.
- On April 16, 2018, in a sworn affidavit the Defendant stated that he has “never been a member of W&K.” ECF No. [12–2], at ¶ 12 (emphasis added).
- On June 28, 2019, during his deposition the Defendant testified under oath that he has “no idea” who the owners of W&K were, and unequivocally stated that he was not an owner of W&K. See ECF No. [242–1], at (233:12–14) (“Q: Who owned W&K in reality? A. Not me.”) and (233:22–23) (“Q. You have no idea who owns W&K? A. I do not know that.”).
Now, in his Motion and contrary to the statements above, the Defendant argues that three additional parties may be members of W&K. Defendant claims that the record evidence supports the presence of the additional members. ECF No. [144], at 11–14. The Defendant recognizes, in both his Motion and at the Hearing, that in determining whether the Defendant has sufficiently challenged subject matter jurisdiction on a factual attack, the Court is “free to weigh the evidence” presented by the Defendant in his challenge. ECF No. [144], at n.3 (citing RG Martin Inv., LLC v. Virtual Tech. Licensing, LLC, 2017 WL 7792564, at *2); ECF No. [256], at 12:14 (“[M]y obligation is — initially to put this in play, is to show the Court evidence. The Court can weigh the evidence.”). The Court has thus conducted a careful review of the evidence presented by the Defendant and the record in this case, and finds, however, that the Defendant has failed to present any credible evidence showing that any of the parties he suggests are members of W&K.”
“At the Hearing, Defendant argued that the Court cannot both rely upon and find that the statements and evidence provided by him are untrue. See ECF No. [256], at 100:6–9 (“Judge, if everything’s a lie, then the stuff they rely on when Wright files a contract, or when Wright makes a statement, can’t be credited either.”). Here, Defendant’s argument is novel. He seems to argue that even though his numerous conflicting statements are the very reason confusion has been created as to the ownership of W&K, the Court should nonetheless use these statements as a basis to challenge the Court’s subject matter jurisdiction. In essence, the Defendant uses the evidence proffered as both his sword and his shield. Unfortunately, the record is replete with instances in which the Defendant has proffered conflicting sworn testimony before this Court. In weighing the evidence, the Court simply does not find the Defendant’s testimony to be credible. As for the remaining “extrinsic evidence,” none of the evidence demonstrates additional membership in W&K other than Dave Kleiman.”
As said, above is one of several failed attempts of Craig Wright to try introduce other members in W&K with false, conflicting statements and several forgeries. Even at the moment of writing (October 2022), Craig is still trying with lawsuits that he started alongside the Kleiman v Wright case to try annoy Ira Kleiman with incompetent attempts to have him kicked from W&K in one way or the other. These attempts will only delay the inevitable, of course.
Dave Kleiman was 100% owner of W&K, and no false spin of Craig Wright is ever going to change that. What remains is an order where a competent judge is painfully unraveling Craig’s fraudulent court antics.
4. Kleiman v Wright: ORDER ON PLAINTIFFS’ MOTION TO COMPEL (2)
Here is a classic Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart destruction again.
Buckle up.
“There was substantial credible evidence that documents produced by Dr. Wright to support his position in this litigation are fraudulent. There was credible and compelling evidence that documents had been altered. Other documents are contradicted by Dr. Wright’s testimony or declaration. While it is true that there was no direct evidence that Dr. Wright was responsible for alterations or falsification of documents, there is no evidence before the Court that anyone else had a motive to falsify them. As such, there is a strong, and unrebutted, circumstantial inference that Dr. Wright willfully created the fraudulent documents.
One example is the Deed of Trust document for the Tulip Trust. Among the trust assets identified in the purported Deed of Trust creating the Tulip Trust on October 23, 2012, are “All Bitcoin and associated ledger assets transferred into Tulip Trading Ltd by Mr David Kleiman on Friday, 10th June 2011 following transfer to Mr Kleiman by Dr Wright on the 09th June 2011. This incles [sic] the 1,200,111 Bitcoin held under the former arrangement and the attached conditions.” P. Ex. 9 at 2. Notably absent from the list of trust assets is any encrypted file, software, public or private keys. The Deed of Trust states that the parties forming the Tulip Trust are Wright International Investments Ltd and Tulip Trading Ltd. Id. at 1. There was credible and conclusive evidence at the hearing that Dr. Wright did not control Tulip Trading Ltd. until 2014. P. Exs. 11–14; DE 236 at 88–96. Moreover, computer forensic analysis indicated that the Deed of Trust presented to the Court was backdated. The totality of the evidence in the record does not substantiate that the Tulip Trust exists. Combining these facts with my observations of Dr. Wright’s demeanor during his testimony, I find that Dr. Wright’s testimony that this Trust exists was intentionally false. (Although I am only required to make this finding by a preponderance of the evidence, I find clear and convincing evidence to support it.)
Dr. Wright’s false testimony about the Tulip Trust was part of a sustained and concerted effort to impede discovery into his bitcoin holdings. Start with Dr. Wright’s deceptive and incomplete discovery pleadings. He testified at the evidentiary hearing that at least as early as December 2018 he knew that he could not provide a listing of his bitcoin holdings. Yet, the Court was not told this “fact” until April 18, 2019. I give Dr. Wright the benefit of the doubt that prior to May 14 the Plaintiffs were seeking information that went beyond a list of his bitcoin holdings on December 31, 2013. After the May 14 discovery hearing, however, Dr. Wright was aware that the Court expected him to provide Plaintiffs with sufficient information so those bitcoin holdings could be traced.
Nevertheless, having failed to hold off discovery on legal grounds, after March 14, Dr. Wright changed course and started making affirmative misleading factual statements to the Court.”
Please go read the linked document. This whole order by Judge Reinhart is truly a doozy. All Craig Wright’s conflicting and misleading statements, his straightforward perjury and his forged documents are grabbed together in a damning ruling about the Tulip Trust not existing.
5. Kleiman v Wright: ORDER ON DISCOVERY
And Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart again on a roll in another order in the Kleiman v Wright lawsuit.
“Nevertheless, I give no weight to sworn statements of Dr. Wright that advance his interests but that have not been challenged by cross-examination and for which I cannot make a credibility determination. I have previously found that Dr. Wright gave perjured testimony in my presence.”
This quote of Judge Reinhart shows perfectly what happens when you have repeatedly been found lying: your other statements, under oath or not, are not taken seriously anymore. This is not only a logical consequence inside courts, but also outside courts. No one in the Bitcoin community, and hardly anyone outside the Bitcoin community except for a little club of Craig Wright fans, believe anything that Craig brings forward. Everything is being checked and double checked. And that includes Craig’s evidence about his educational background.
Craig Wright was involved as witness in a case that his wife ran against Reliantco Investments Ltd around 2017–2020. Although his wife won that case, the judge did not exactly paint a pretty picture of Craig’s performance.
“Dr Wright gave evidence. He was an unsatisfactory witness in many respects. He was belligerent, argumentative and deliberately provocative. He evaded questions to which he did not wish to give a straight answer. On occasion he refused to accept what documents plainly indicated. He was prepared to make grave and unsustainable allegations, for example in relation to the supposed fabrication by or on behalf of Reliantco of an email from him of 3 September 2017. He sought on occasion to blind with (computer) science. I came to the conclusion that I could not rely on Dr Wright’s evidence as to whether and how particular events had happened unless it was supported by documentation, other evidence I could accept or by the inherent probabilities.”
We also find Craig Wright bragging and lying about the Tulip Trust and his ‘leased’ sports cars in this case.
“What however did emerge from Dr Wright’s evidence were certain features of his character and circumstances which I consider to be of relevance in assessing the factual issues in this case. In the first place, as Dr Wright made clear, he is someone who has amassed a considerable fortune in Bitcoin. He said that he has US$14 billion of Bitcoin in a trust. The following were representative passages of his evidence:
‘On the other hand, I don’t really care about this because my car is worth more than their whole thing is [by which I understood him to mean the value of this case]. I have got a Lamborghini. I have got other sports cars. Their whole thing is a rounding error for me. (Day 2/187) …
You again seem to think I would care about $5000 deposits. I have a watch that bloody makes this a rounding error. (Day 3/19)’”
If this judge (the honourable Mr Justice Butcher) only knew about the ATO reports and the Kleiman v Wright orders and rulings…
Talking about Kleiman v Wright, let’s go back to that case.
“Former House Speaker Tip O’Neill famously pronounced that all politics is local. Locality also matters for weather, linguistic dialects, real estate prices, and topological manifolds. So, too, with attorney’s fees.
After protracted litigation over production of documents identifying Dr. Wright’s bitcoin holdings, I granted Plaintiffs’ Motion to Compel [DE 197, 210] and denied Dr. Wright’s Motion for Protective Order [DE 155]. See generally DE 166, 277. I granted Plaintiffs leave to seek attorneys’ fees associated with litigating these two motions. DE 277 at 28.3 Plaintiffs have now filed a motion for attorneys’ fees, which the District Court referred to me for appropriate disposition. Plaintiffs request a total of $658,581.78, comprising $592,558.00 for attorneys’ fees and $66,023.78 for expenses.”
“Based on the foregoing, Plaintiffs’ Motion for Attorneys’ Fees and Costs (DE 346) is GRANTED IN PART and DENIED IN PART. By March 30, 2020, Defendant shall reimburse Plaintiffs as follows:
Attorneys’ Fees: $113,760.00
Expenses: $ 52,040.09
Total: $165,800.09
DONE AND ORDERED in Chambers this 16th day of March, 2020 at West Palm Beach in the Southern District of Florida.”
As indicated earlier, Craig Wright had to pay for his shenanigans in this case: he was sanctioned almost $166,000 for not picking up adequately on court orders, thus obstructing the court processes.
8. Kleiman v Wright: FINAL JUDGMENT
Eventually, Craig Wright would lose the Kleiman v Wright case after an exhausting jury trial in Miami, Florida USA in November 2021. Craig had (and still has) to pay a whopping $100,000,000,00 to plaintiff W&K Info Defense Research LLC, a company that is now managed by Dave Kleiman’s brother Ira Kleiman.
A full report about this Conversion judgment, and the utterly fraudulent line of actions that Craig Wright executed while performing this Conversion in July — November 2013, can be found in one of my other articles, published December 10, 2021: “Craig Wright Ordered to Pay $100 Million in Kleiman v Wright Lawsuit”.
And it didn’t end there either, as Ira Kleiman also won the battle about the pre-judgment interest that should be added to this Conversion judgment. An Amended Final Judgment in the Kleiman v Wright case was issued on March 9, 2022. Craig Wright has to pay another $43,132,492.48 on top of the $100,000,000.00 awarded to W&K a few months earlier.
Again, not a penny of the $143,132,492.48 total has been paid yet by Craig Wright at the moment of writing (October 2022).
We now move to the Wright v McCormack lawsuit, a case about supposed defamation that Peter McCormack, a famous podcaster in the Bitcoin industry, committed on Twitter and in a YouTube video early 2019. The judgment, issued on August 1, 2022, contains a plethora of fine quotes again.
9. Wright v McCormack: APPROVED JUDGMENT
“I have carefully considered whether the case being advanced until a few days before trial could have been inadvertently false. I accept that some at least of the evidence showing it to be so came from Dr Wright’s own disclosure. The timing, however, suggests that it was the service of the evidence of Prof. Darwazeh and Mr Wolf (10 days before trial, on 12 May 2022), which prompted the acceptance in Dr Wright’s third witness statement (on 17 May 2022) that his earlier evidence was incorrect. There is nothing to indicate that Dr Wright had noticed that his case was inconsistent with his own disclosure at any time before that.
The explanation given by Dr Wright for abandoning this part of his case was that the damage to reputation arising from the disinvitations occurred outside England and Wales. This does not withstand scrutiny. His case had been expressly confined to harm sustained within the jurisdiction for many months. If he had really been concerned that the disinvitations gave rise to harm only outside the jurisdiction, he could have abandoned this part of his case long ago. The timing suggests, as Ms Evans submitted, that its abandonment was occasioned by its exposure as factually false and not by a late realisation that it was unsustainable for jurisdictional reasons.
I have borne in mind what Dr Wright said about his autism and its effects on the way he explains things to others. But the evidence in para. 41 of Dr Wright’s first witness statement was not merely inadequately or infelicitously explained. The vice was not that it omitted explanatory background, but rather that what it did say was straightforwardly false in almost every material respect.
A conclusion that a witness has given deliberately false evidence should not be drawn lightly. There are times, however, when the application of Occam’s razor impels such a conclusion. In this case, there is no other plausible explanation. I reach that view having observed Dr Wright give oral evidence and on the basis of a combination of: (i) the circumstances in which the case on serious harm was pleaded; (ii) the extent to which that case — and the evidence contained in the first witness statement — were subsequently shown to be false; (iii) the timing of Dr Wright’s third witness statement (in response to the new evidence exposing the falsity of his earlier case); (iv) the vague and unimpressive oral evidence given by Dr Wright in support of his new case at trial; and (v) the lack of any adequate or convincing explanation for the falsity of the original case and evidence.
I therefore conclude that Dr Wright’s original case on serious harm, and the evidence supporting it, both of which were maintained until days before trial, were deliberately false.”
“In a libel action brought by an individual, compensation is awarded for injury to reputation (objectively assessed) and for injury to feelings. Had it not been for Dr Wright’s deliberately false case as to serious harm, a more than minimal award of damages would have been appropriate, though the quantum would have been reduced to reflect the fact that Mr McCormack was goaded into making the statements he did and, having found Dr Wright not to be a witness of truth, I would have rejected in its entirety his case as to the distress he claims to have suffered.
But the deliberately false case on serious harm advanced by Dr Wright until days before trial in my judgment requires more than a mere reduction in the award of damages. In my judgment, it makes it unconscionable that Dr Wright should receive any more than nominal damages.”
Yes, dear reader, you read that correctly. If the judge (Mr Justice Chamberlain) had known earlier that Craig Wright was trying to advance an utterly false case in his court room, he would have immediately thrown it out! And this fact alone is giving high hopes for the still-to-come costs judgment that we can expect to be issued in the upcoming months. What we currently know is that Peter McCormack is aiming to have all his costs paid back to him, including the costs of intermediate rulings that he lost during the course of the lawsuit.
This section will be updated when the costs judgment in the Wright v McCormack case is issued.
10. hodlonaut v Wright: Judgment
The hodlonaut v Wright case that played out in Oslo, Norway since 2019 and that came to conclusion in October 2022 with a judgment by District Court Judge Helen Engebrigtsen, is for one reason a groundbreaking ruling.
As this is the first time that a court speaks out about Craig Wright’s Satoshi-ness. And I’m sure that Craig his fans are not amused about this judgment. Because, let’s read what the judge had to say.
“The court believes that hodlonaut had sufficient factual grounds to claim that Wright had lied and cheated in his attempt to prove that he is Satoshi Nakamoto. At the time of the remarks, there was public discussion about whether Wright is Satoshi Nakamoto or not. In media coverage, the prevailing opinion was that Wright was not Satoshi Nakamoto. The court refers to the previously mentioned articles from Gizmodo (2015), and BBC News The Guardian and GQ Magazine (2016).
Both parties have tried to prove that Wright is and is not Satoshi Nakamoto, respectively. The court points out that the evidence brought in the case is not suitable to change its prevailing opinion that Craig Wright is not Satoshi Nakamoto. A number of documents have been produced which Wright claims are early versions of the White Paper and source code. Both KPMG (on behalf of hodlonaut) and BDO (on behalf of Wright) have found that these documents contain at best unexplained changes which are likely to have been made after the date the documents are claimed to be from. KPMG and BDO believe that this applies to:
1) Inconsistency (missing) in metadata that is not naturally based on normal use/editing, and
2) Use of fonts.
KPMG has concluded that it is “probable that several of the files in the data material have been changed so that they appear to have been created earlier than they actually are”. Although BDO and Cyfor, both of whom are engaged by Wright, have individual discrepant findings compared to KPMG’s report, the court perceives their reports and explanations to mean that they have essentially found the same conditions that KPMG points to, and which are the basis of KPMG’s conclusion.
Wright has brought a number of witnesses to court. What these witnesses have in common is that they knew Wright at the time when Satoshi Nakamoto developed bitcoin. They have all explained themselves well about Wright’s intellectual abilities and capacity, which is otherwise not disputed. However, statements from these witnesses relating to whether or not he is Satoshi Nakamoto are not supported by contemporary evidence. The court notes for the record that it has been 13 years since Nakamoto developed bitcoin.”
What we see happening here is that the judge is simply using common sense in her judgment. As it should be, I would like to add. Craig Wright’s December 2015 reveal failed to impress, his 2016 signing proof sessions and related blog posts failed to impress too, the Satoshi forgeries pack that Craig dropped in the hodlonaut v Wright case failed to impress, and Craig’s eye witnesses without any physical evidence, same story: completely failed to impress either!
Knowing all this, is it then, according the judge, unlawful to call Craig Wright a fraud, who is fraudulently trying to prove he is Satoshi Nakamoto?
“The general attitude in the community was, and is, that it is in principle possible to verify whether one has access to the cryptographic keys and/or the first blocks that belonged to Satoshi Nakamoto. It is generally agreed that if one can provide evidence that one can move bitcoin from any of these first blocks, or sign with keys associated with these blocks, then that will be strong evidence that one is Satoshi Nakamoto. It is not necessarily conclusive evidence, because the keys could in theory have been stolen, but there is no indication of such theft associated with the keys that belonged to Satoshi Nakamoto. The court adds for the record that the values associated with Nakamoto’s early blocks at today’s bitcoin rate are several billion kroner. There have been no movements or transactions associated with these blocks since 2009. Following the 2016 media articles, it has been widely believed that Wright has not provided cryptographic evidence that he is Satoshi Nakamoto.
Against this background, the court believes that hodlonaut had sufficient factual grounds to claim that Craig Wright is not Satoshi Nakamoto in March 2019. Wright has come out with a controversial claim, and must withstand criticism from dissenters. Overall, the court believes that the wording and claims made by hodlonaut do not exceed the threshold for defamation and infringement of privacy. The statements are not unlawful.”
No, it is certainly not unlawful to call Craig Wright a fraud. Amen to that.
Outtro
This article was inspired by an image that I’m happily using on Twitter for a long time already, an image that is regularly updated to reflect the most recent updates in court rulings, judgments, orders and verdicts. It is used to make people aware of the long list of damning rulings that Craig Wright received in the last two decades. It contains a summary of the quotes that can be found back in this article, where you have now seen them in full context, as usual in my articles with links to their sources.
What we can learn from all these quotes is that Craig Wright is shamelessly dropping forged evidence in his lawsuits, is not afraid to commit perjury in the court room, either by submitting false statements and incorrect affidavits or by lying through his teeth during hearings and depositions. What we also notice is that literally not any judge is buying it.
Craig’s. Lies. And. Forgeries. Are. Called. Out. Each. And. Every. Time.
Just like the Bitcoin and Craig Wright debunk community has been doing for many, many years already. Sometimes I summarize these dynamics with “law follows consensus, not the other way round”. It appears that this is a suitable mantra when it comes to Craig Wright and his court performances.
And mind you, this article (and the image that inspired it) does not even contain the numerous quotes from the Australian Taxation Office reports where even more of Craig Wright’s Bitcoin and Satoshi Potemkin Villages were basically found a “nullity based on sham” in 2013–2015, after which ATO officials told The Weekend Australian early 2016: “we firmly believe Craig Wright is not [Satoshi Nakamoto] the creator of Bitcoin, and he may have created the hoax to distract from his tax issues”.
The following image reflects the most recent installment of it.
This image has, for example, been used by reknown Bitcoin community members Jameson Lopp and Peter Todd in a Twitter conversation with Craig Wright himself on October 24, 2022, the day of publication of this article. Awesome!
The end. Thanks for reading again!
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