My Top 5 Craig Wright Forgeries From The hodlonaut v Wright Trial
As exposed by KPMG in their report. Plus one bonus!
Written 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.
In an upcoming “Dr Bitcoin — The Man Who Wasn’t Satoshi Nakamoto” podcast episode for the Dr Bitcoin Supporters Club I will ramble about my top 5 forgeries that Craig Wright created for the hodlonaut v Wright lawsuit.
Since the voice-only podcast platform has little to no possibilities for image support, here’s the breakdown of that same top 5 — in the form of the literal podcast script — with added images.
This top 5 has been picked from the “71 documents […] which substantiate that Craig Wright is Satoshi Nakamoto” that KPMG forensically inquired.
And where did KPMG obtain the files from?
With that being said, there’s no misunderstanding about the chain of custody. All these court exhibits came from Craig Wright and went without delay straight to KPMG, who thoroughly forensically inquired all these files and documents. Their findings were damning.
Now let’s go to my top 5 of these Craig Wright forgeries. The reader will actually notice that this article, en passant, covers dozens of forgeries at the same time.
Number 5: The Flowchart
“Let’s kick off with a development flowchart that, at first glance, appears to be created on June 9, 2008. That’s the date that KPMG found on the file and in the metadata of the file. So when real, this would of course have a cool Satoshi ring to it, right?
But nah.
KPMG figured out that the chart was created with a program called Adobe Acrobat Distiller 15.0 for Windows. And that version of Adobe Acrobat Distiller was only released on April 7, 2015. So the flowchart was undoubtedly created AFTER that date. Then Craig Wright altered the metadata of the flowchart file to make it appear as if it was created in June 2008. That’s how our cosplayer works. If you know the tricks, it’s not hard to debunk Craig-made forgeries.”
Number 4: The Text File
“Then we have a text file, a file that normally comes with the source code, with copyright information, and a lot of technical information, for example which compilers are supported. This file states on the first line “BitCoin Version 0.0.8 Alpha”. And Bitcoin is written with a capital C. This was a typo that Satoshi made in the beginning of 2009 in this file, which he corrected in the course of 2009, as he knew it was a typo. Satoshi never wrote Bitcoin with a capital C elsewhere, only here once. So actually, this looks OK!
Then it says Version 0.0.8 Alpha. Now you have to understand that the first public Bitcoin release in January 2009 was Version 0.1.0 Alpha. So version 0.0.8 Alpha comes just before that, let’s say in November or December 2008 somewhere when Bitcoin was not released yet. This looks OK to me again. So at first glance this has a firm Satoshi Nakamoto ring to it again, doesn’t it?
Well… Let’s go to the next line, the second line in that file. That line states “Copyright 2008 Dr Craig Wright”. And here I can’t help but to start giggling. For several reasons. First of all, Satoshi had already chosen a long time ago to be anonymous with everything Bitcoin related. His communication with Wei Dai and Adam Back months earlier for example, or when he obtained the Bitcoin.org domain, when he shared pre-release code with Hal Finney and Cryddit and others in the period before, when he released the whitepaper… Literally everything was already under the Satoshi Nakamoto moniker. So it makes totally no sense for Satoshi to have his real name floating around in his source code in this period, end of 2008. But the killer is that Craig Wright just had to add a title “Dr” in this forgery. Craig Wright wasn’t a Dr in this period, that is, we know that he was pretending to be one long before he obtained a Dr title in 2017 with a heavily plagiarised thesis (but that’s another story for another day!). So of course he will try to use this false claim to a title in his backdated forgeries too.
But this isn’t all yet. The reason why we know this is a backdated forgery, where Craig Wright took an existing source code file and edited it a little, he scrubbed Satoshi’s name out and replaced it with his own name and then saved it, then handed it to his counsel Wikborg Rein who gave it to hodlonaut as part of the total line of forgeries that ended up being debunked by KPMG… Let’s skip a few lines in that file and let’s go to the section called “Compilers Supported”. Here I wished we had a camera to present these things on a screen, but I hope you’re all following.
A few more lines further down the text file, we will find a line that says “MinGW GCC (v3.4.4)”.
Now you have to try to place yourself in the mind of a sloppy forger like Craig Wright. This is going to be a little technical, so please bear with me. In the actual first release of Bitcoin in January 2009, Satoshi had put that same line but not for GCC 3.4.4 but for GCC 3.4.5. Note this is 1 version number higher, from 4 to 5 at the end. So Craig thought that lowering that version number from 5 to 4 would make sense to the casual observer. Still following?
But here’s the killer. It doesn’t make sense at all! Because GCC 3.4.4 was actually never released! Well, it was, but you have to understand this first. GCC only releases patches specifically for parties like MinGW and Cygwin. And Satoshi didn’t use Cygwin, but he used MinGW, and MinGW only, instead. And you can feel it coming… GCC patch version 3.4.4 was ONLY released for Cygwin all the way back in 2005! MinGW, which Satoshi as said exclusively used for Bitcoin, had been using GCC patch 3.4.5 since February 2008, and that is what Satoshi has been using ever since to compile Bitcoin. So when you read MinGW GCC 3.4.4 every software engineer with a little knowledge of how these things work will start to giggle, because they know this totally doesn’t make any sense whatsoever!
But this is the type of forgeries that Craig Wright is creating, dear reader. Sloppy all over. These types of forgeries only impress a gullible audience of non-technical people, who might think that Craig is indeed Satoshi instead of a serial forging cosplayer.”
Number 3: The Code Print
“This one is hilarious too. In the Satoshi evidence pack of Craig Wright, there was a printout of very old Bitcoin source code (at least, that’s what Craig Wright said), but there was a inexplicable ‘break’ in it, the code appeared not to flow logically, and a part of the code had ended up on the last page of the print out. As it turned out, in 2013, someone (Cryddit for those in the know, he was one of the several people who had helped Satoshi with examining the Bitcoin code before it was eventually released in January 2009) had put his set of prerelease code from Satoshi Nakamoto on the BitcoinTalk forum, but due to text restrictions within the forum post, he could not contain all the text of the code in one single post, and therefore had to cut the text of the code into several pieces before posting it. And in the process of cutting and pasting, things got mixed up a little.
So apparently, Craig had found that (clipped up) forum post from Cryddit, copied the material in his document editor, I think he even added his own name as copyright holder again, printed it and scanned it back in again. But sloppy Craig forgot to remove the ‘clippings’, and so his beautiful print out could be traced literally to Cryddit’s forum post from 2013! An amazing example of Craig’s sloppiness again.”
Number 2: The Bitcoin.exe Files
“Now let’s go to the Bitcoin.exe files that Craig Wright forged for hodlonaut. I specifically say “for hodlonaut”, because in the BSV camp there are false rumours circulating that these files had been used in other lawsuits like the Kleiman case also, but no, that is not true. These files, almost all the files that Craig gave to his counsel Wikborg Rein as supposed genuine Satoshi evidence, have never been used in other lawsuits. KPMG basically exposed a complete new line of Faketoshi forgeries.
Now bear with me again, this is going to be a little technical again. This was almost my number 1, if it wasn’t for the fact there will be an even more damning one coming up next as my top favourite. But this one is so, so good also. By the way, the Bitcoin.exe file is a so-called executable file, it’s the client file that Bitcoin users doubleclick to start running a Bitcoin client, a Bitcoin node so to say.
So Craig Wright submitted two identical Bitcoin.exe files that were actually binary edited versions of the Bitcoin.exe v0.1.0 file that was released to the public in January 2009. Craig made it appear as if they were earlier versions of the Bitcoin.exe file with the version number v0.0.8. We’ve seen this earlier in this overview with a text file too, remember? But to support those v0.0.8 Bitcoin.exe files Craig Wright also submitted a bunch of source code files that were altered by Craig to contain Craig’s copyright and version numbering. Something that Satoshi would never have done, of course, he was using his anon moniker Satoshi Nakamoto for many months already in everything and everywhere. Like in all his emails and forum posts, he remained anonymous when he bought the bitcoin.org domain, and all his source code files only contained his Satoshi Nakamoto nickname. You’ve seen this for example in the screenshot earlier of Cryddit’s post with Satoshi’s Bitcoin source code of 2008 on Bitcointalk. In other words, there is no reason whatsoever for the real Satoshi to have files floating around with his real name in it!
So KPMG found no less than 43 of these forged source code files with faked copyright changes where Craig Wright scrubbed the text “Satoshi Nakamoto” and replaced it with his own name (and Craig couldn’t even spell “Dr” correctly all the time, as shown above).
Then all these altered files were handed to his counsel Wikborg Rein who submitted them, together with dozens of other Craig Wright forgeries, in the hodlonaut case as “Bitcoin v0.0.8 source code” to “substantiate that Craig Wright is Satoshi Nakamoto”.
However, the binary editing of these v0.0.8 files was quickly exposed by KPMG because there was no match between Craig’s v0.0.8 source code of the file called “ui.cpp” and the v0.0.8 Bitcoin.exe file. Now what exactly happened here?
You have to understand that the version numbering in the source code is dynamically determined by the build software, but in the v0.0.8 binary of Craig Wright it was hard coded. It was manually entered in the code. This is already clearly hinting to a forgery. Additional problems with the v0.0.8 Bitcoin.exe files that were found by KPMG are the “build time” and the so-called “checksum”. These numbers and codes were EXACTLY the same as embedded in the binary of the January 2009 v0.1.0 Bitcoin.exe. That is of course clearly hinting to a manually forged set of files again.
Then, Craig’s v0.0.8 source code contained two release notes files mentioning compiling with MinGW GCC 3.4.4 while the binary itself tells that it had been compiled with the 3.4.5 version of MinGW GCC. We just discussed this, how that was indeed a massive fuck up of Craig Wright.
Now, to add more credibility to the Bitcoin.exe files, Craig had added a never used Genesis block hash into his v0.0.8 code as a comment to make it all look more legit. However, this exact same block hash was found on the BitcoinTalk forum discussing supposed early code by Satoshi, so that’s where Craig quite obviously took this Genesis block hash from.
What Craig also did, he modified a Satoshi Nakamoto uibase.cpp file for his own pretend-2008 v0.0.8 set of file forgeries, and in the process he replaced a Bitcoin public address somewhere deep into this file in the comments around the code that Satoshi made. The address that Craig Wright used in this forgery to replace the address that Satoshi had put there:
2STD5BhabrNpx56pWuC6wctxz3Qf2gdD7.
KPMG however found out that this address is a so-called “compressed public key address”, and this type of address was not introduced in Bitcoin until version v0.6 which was released in 2012! Again a massive, massive fuck up by our “Dr. Oops! (I Did It Again)” Craig Wright while creating these forgeries. And believe me, dear listener, I’m drooling all over this one, as it perfectly shows scammer Craig Wright with his signature tricks. Trying to impress with his (false) version of history, but there’s ALWAYS a detail provably wrong. ALWAYS. As Tim_Bitcoin said on Twitter about this KPMG debunk: “I like this one — it’s subtle but deadly.”
But here’s the killer. This is so hilarious. Craig Wright’s v0.0.8 code contained the bug fix that Hal Finney reported to Satoshi on January the 10th 2009 by private email. So Craig’s early code had already fixed the bug that Hal Finney would find and report a few weeks later! Now let that one sink in!
This is how KPMG described that in their report, let me quote it.”
Let’s move on to my all time favorite Oslo, Norway forgery in the hodlonaut lawsuit. This is such a beauty for the chain of custody story behind it, and a lie that Craig Wright told while he was on the stand. Truly a multi-facetted forgery.
Number 1: The Modern Consensus Forgery
“And again, I’ve saved the best for last. Well, at least I find this one the best. It started when Craig Wright was on the stand on day 3 of the trial. He stated, under oath, that he had been using the Satoshi Nakamoto moniker since 2005. That immediately made me think about an interview with Modern Consensus that Craig did in 2019. During that interview Craig showed a printed document with his handwritten notes to the interviewer, on camera, with the story that it proved the moment where Craig had chosen the Satoshi moniker. That document was dated early 2008. And Craig was telling the story that the Satoshi moniker was chosen in 2008. So there I caught Craig lying on the stand. Perjury in court language.
Now you have to know, that this document was immediately debunked in 2019 as a forgery, because it was clearly visible, on camera, that the printed 2008 date was altered on the last 2 positions. Because the fonts within the number 2008 were different, and the 08 part was slightly smaller than the 20 part. So that document must have had a different year before it was printed by Craig, and the clear indication is after 2010 because the last 2 positions had been altered by Craig. It was already figured out that it must have been 2015, actually.
But it didn’t end there, dear reader. After the trial, the KPMG report and the exhibits that they inquired for hodlonaut became public. And o shocker, that exact same document with the exact same handwritten notes that Craig put on it after printing, that exact same document that Craig showed to Modern Consensus in 2019 popped up, part of Craig’s evidence pack that he gave to his counsel Wikborg Rein to hand to hodlonaut as Satoshi evidence. So obviously Craig Wright was unaware of this document being debunked as a forgery in 2019 already, or he thought that people would have forgotten about the 2019 debunk, I don’t know. But oh surprise, KPMG found the exact same alteration in the 2008 year based on the font differences, and several more of these flaws in the numbers and text on the document. It was for example also found that the use of IP addresses in the footer of the document (which Craig had changed on the original document to an IP address that he had in 2008 before he printed it) wasn’t even in use by the provider of the original document in 2008!
Now let this sink in.
There’s this printed document with handwritten Craig Wright notes on it that Craig showed on camera in 2019 as genuine Satoshi evidence. It is immediately being debunked as a forgery. Then this VERY SAME printed document with handwritten notes by Craig Wright pops up in court presented as genuine Satoshi evidence. Then it is being debunked as a forgery AGAIN by a serious forensic expert for the same, and more reasons. And there is this time no mistake whatsoever about the so-called “chain of custody”. This is important in legal matters to determine fraud of the criminal kind, and to be able to pinpoint who is committing this fraud.
Craig Wright created this forgery, not some hacker or something, no, Craig Wright and only Craig Wright created this forgery and presented this document multiple times as genuine evidence of his Satoshi-ness, and it gets called out multiple times as a forgery, outside court and inside court. This is serious shit if you ask me. Hodlonaut might have a document in his hands here that will ignite a criminal proscecution with Craig Wright on the receiving end.
Now allow me to end with what WizSec Bitcoin Research said on this day as a conclusion for what they witnessed happening in court Oslo, digesting the plethora of forgeries that were discussed. And I couldn’t agree more!”
BONUS FORGERY
This one didn’t make it to the Dr Bitcoin podcast due to time constraints, but my readers will enjoy this Craig Wright forgery anyway as an exclusive bonus addition to this article. It’s one of a few early draft versions of the Bitcoin whitepaper, at least that’s how Craig tried to sell them, that he handed to hodlonaut to “substantiate that Craig Wright is Satoshi Nakamoto”, as his counsel Wikborg Rein worded it. However, Craig his whole pack of Satoshi evidence was exposed as recent day forgeries by the KPMG forensic experts. These drafts were no exception.
The reader will learn that this whitepaper draft is another classic Craig Wright forgery, of course with his signature sloppy flaws. And with a piece of rather unknown very early Bitcoin history on top of it that Craig Wright had no idea about, that additionally helped expose this forgery as such.
So, let’s have a look at it.
This whitepaper forgery contains Craig Wright’s name and credentials on top. We see the name Bitcoin appearing in the same title that we know from the real Bitcoin whitepaper.
Fun fact: another Craig Wright whitepaper draft forgery contains the name “TimeCoin”. It has the same credentials, and issues, as described further below.
In the metadata of this document a date in May 2008 can be found, implying that Craig supposedly created this draft whitepaper in that month.
However, a “date created” of March 24, 2009 was also found in the metadata of the document. Oops. March 24, 2009 is the creation date of the original whitepaper that is currently hosted on bitcoin.org. So that little detail actually indicates where Craig Wright took the original whitepaper from, to start altering it to his fraudulent needs. But Craig obviously forgot to delete/alter that specific field in the metadata while creating this forgery, leaving behind a clue for the KPMG forensic experts.
So there we go again. Classic Craig Wright sloppiness.
But again, it didn’t end there either. On the last page of this (backdated to) May 2008 forgery, we find a reference to Wei Dai and his 1998 b-money paper, as having been inspirational to Satoshi Nakamoto’s Bitcoin.
However, the real Satoshi Nakamoto only learned about Wei Dai and his b-money paper in, hold on to your chair now, dear reader… August 2008. So this reference to Wei Dai’s b-money could never have been on a real Satoshi May 2008 draft whitepaper! Oops again. But how do we know this?
We know this from an interview with Adam Back (another reference in the Bitcoin whitepaper as can be seen in the screenshot above) in January 2020. Adam explained to CoinTelegraph’s Cassio Gusson that he heard for the first time from the real Satoshi in August 2008 (possibly July 2008):
“I suggested Satoshi should look into B-Money, which he didn’t seem to know about at that time, and this is how I think B-Money was added to the paper.”
Says Adam.
And what happened next? We know what happened next from a few email conversations between the real Satoshi Nakamoto and Wei Dai that have become public almost a decade ago.
This email is dated August 22, 2008 and shows that the real Satoshi had indeed only learned about Wei Dai’s b-money from Adam Back a few days, maybe a few weeks at the most, earlier:
Note that Satoshi Nakamoto in his first email to Wei Dai on August 22, 2008 was guessing that the b-money paper of Wei Dai was released in 2006. Wei Dai corrected that in his reply:
“Hi Satoshi. b-money was announced on the cypherpunks mailing list in 1998. Here’s the archived post:
http://cypherpunks.venona.com/date/1998/11/msg00941.html
There are some discussions of it at
http://cypherpunks.venona.com/date/1998/12/msg00194.html.
Thanks for letting me know about your paper. I’ll take a look at it and let
you know if I have any comments or questions.”
So there you have it. A genuine May 2008 Bitcoin whitepaper draft could never, ever have contained a reference to Wei Dai’s b-money, for the simple reason that the real Satoshi had no idea yet that it existed at that timeframe! It was only some 3–4 months later that Adam Back pointed the real Satoshi into the direction of Wei Dai’s b-money, and even then in August 2008 Satoshi was guessing that the b-money paper was released in 2006, hence it ALSO makes no sense for the real Satoshi to mention 1998 in a draft whitepaper dated May 2008!
All in all, a debunk by the KPMG as fine as you can get them. And my last thought would be: the real Satoshi Nakamoto wouldn’t need all these forgeries to prove who he is, while Craig Wright provides them by the boatloads with no genuine, untampered evidence between them whatsoever… But that’s another story for another day…
The end. Thanks for reading again!
