ZeMing M. Gao, A Craig Wright Apologist Debunked (1)
“Mathematical proof that Dr. Craig S. Wright is Satoshi Nakamoto”
Written by Arthur van Pelt
ABOUT EDITS AND UPDATES to this article: as more material might become available after publication of this article, it might have edits and updates every now and then. In that sense, this article can be considered a work in progress, to become a reference piece for years to come.
ZeMing M. Gao (ZeMing) made some fame in the BSV camp with a 2021 article called “Mathematical proof that Dr. Craig S. Wright is Satoshi Nakamoto”, as it was republished on CoinGeek. Since then, BSV and Craig Wright fans sometimes try to throw this article into Twitter debates with Craig Wright critics, I noticed. But no one took the effort to fully debunk the article. That’s going to change today.
For who’s interested, ZeMing describes himself as follows on his blog.
“I am a Company-as-a-Product (CaaP) builder, intellectual property architect (patent attorney), business strategist, entrepreneur and investor, with a focus on new tech fields, especially blockchain and AI. I am based in California, US. I am a student of science, technology, law, and economics. Outside of work, I am also a student of the Bible. I write to share my thoughts on various topics such as Bitcoin & Blockchain, Business & Technology, and Time & Eternity.”
But talking about the article, I’m not going to give any attention to his actual mathematical model. ZeMing doesn’t call it a model but rather a ‘framework’. It’s gobbledygook maths that doesn’t need any debunk. So I’m skipping the first half of his article. I’m only going to give attention to the input parameters of his mathematical framework.
Because when the input parameters are wrong (and they massively are), then logically the outcome is likewise massively wrong. So here is what ZeMing is using as input parameters for his framework. What is exactly wrong with them?
Mounting evidence and attestations
Australian polymath Craig S. Wright is Satoshi Nakamoto, the inventor of Bitcoin. Despite the negative or distracting impression that most people get from the popular narrative and propaganda, the truth is gradually breaking out from a net of misinformation.
It’s telling that before we are treated by his input parameters, ZeMing is describing us the bias that he is using to present these input parameters. However, his perception that ‘the truth is gradually breaking out’ is very true, except not in the way that he thinks. More about that later.
As someone who for certain reasons has always had strong aversion to personality cult, I started by accepting the then prevailing (and still prevailing) narrative that Craig Wright was a fraud, but reached an opposite conclusion after an independent study.
We will see later that this ‘independant study’ is biased, incomplete and not executed according, nor supported by, any scientific method. ZeMing will only make a lot of assumptions without any evidence whatsoever, and leave it at that.
One has to study the entire history to draw a reasonable conclusion. This could take articles or even books to explain (and books will be written and movies will be made), but one may start with the following (and also further follow through the links provided in the references):
How I know Craig Wright is Satoshi Nakamoto: Connor Murray.
In expectation of the historic Bitcoin trial: Kleiman v. Wright;
Let’s take the first link as an example. Connor Murray gives several reasons why he ‘knows’ Craig is Satoshi. For example: “Dr. Wright’s astonishing number of patents. […] We would expect the creator of Bitcoin to be one of the most innovative in the space.” and a number of 3,208 is then mentioned for the amount of patents that Craig Wright has supposedly written and released.
This number is by far not correct though. As of September 13, 2023, 488 patent applications have been published: 380 patents are pending; 81 patents have been granted (of which 3 have been opposed); 11 patents have been allowed; and 16 patents have been refused or withdrawn.
To add, Craig Wright has not been involved with all these patents, and recently we learned that Craig Wright often put pressure on his ex-colleagues at nChain to have his name connected to a lot of patents while he wasn’t involved with inventing the subject matter. I’m saying ex-colleagues, because Craig Wright was sacked from nChain on September 24, 2023 by Stefan Matthews and then-CEO Christen Ager-Hanssen on accusations of fraud and forgery.
Connor Murray also gives several examples of, at first glance, Craig’s mindblowing Bitcoin knowledge.
At second glance, though, not much remains of this extraordinary Bitcoin knowledge of Craig Wright. Bitcoin never was, is not, and never will be Turing Complete, and everyone who studied Bitcoin for a bit will mention the Poker Game and the Marketplace in the early code. The Double Hash has been discussed and explained on other places too, like Bitcoin StackExchange, Crypto StackExchange and Reddit.
I’ll leave it to the technical experts to judge whose explanation comes closest to the truth, but it appears to me that Craig Wright is alone with his version. Lastly, BSV (which is not Bitcoin, of course) does not scale. Camp BSV made the choice to pump arbitrary data in the blockchain by the boatloads, of which Satoshi already said in December 2010 that it “doesn’t scale”.
And that has become painfully visible between 2018 and today: BSV nodes have dropped from around 400 to around 10 today.
Then, Connor Murray adds a list of people who allegedly support Craig Wright in his roleplay as Satoshi Nakamoto.
Over the years, Gavin Andresen his opinion has dramatically changed. Already shortly after the BBC interview he said “Given his extreme efforts to avoid releasing a public signature, I’m starting to doubt that Craig actually possesses the key he claims he has, and he did somehow manage to trick me and, perhaps, has been deceiving people for many years.”
In February 2023, Gavin also added a “it was a mistake to trust Craig Wright as much as I did” disclaimer on his original May 2, 2016 blog post.
Ian Grigg, Jon Matonis and Joseph Vaughn-Perling so far never found the courage to distance themselves from their endorsements of Craig Wright’s false Satoshi Nakamoto claim.
But the Clemens Ley story on the other hand is a complete fabrication.
Of those family members, Lynn Wright is known to have stated in 2016 (shortly after Craig Wright’s failed self-dox to Wired and Gizmodo magazines) that Craig Wright’s Satoshi claim is “rubbish”:
Oh, and ZeMing? After you put Lynn Wright in your mathematical framework, please tell me how does the ATO related quote, see article above again, “Australian authorities are understood to firmly believe Mr Wright is not the creator of Bitcoin and that he may have created the hoax to distract from his tax issues.” fit in your framework?
Lastly, the Craig Wright to Dave Kleiman email about editing the Bitcoin whitepaper was, oh surprise, a forgery. As it happens, two versions of that Craig Wright made forgery are described in the so-called Madden Report of forensic expert Madden in the COPA v Wright lawsuit.
Let’s go back to ZeMing his article.
While doing your research, ask yourself some very hard questions:
1. How many people in the world who are both known to be related to at least the early stage of Bitcoin and also know how to program in Forth (the requisite language used for Bitcoin script designing)? (Answer: exactly one)
Here ZeMing is making the mistake of presuming beforehand that Craig Wright is related to the early stage of Bitcoin. He isn’t. There is no genuine, untampered evidence dated before July 2011 that Craig Wright even knew that Bitcoin existed, let alone was touching it in any sense. And there is also no evidence that Craig Wright knew how to program in Forth in the, say, 2000 to 2008 era. In this period of his life he did not obtain any coding related certificates or diplomas either.
2. How many people in the world who are both known to be related to at least the early stage of Bitcoin and also worked extensively on digital cash systems for years before Bitcoin’s release? (Answer: exactly one)
And again ZeMing is making the mistake of presuming beforehand that Craig Wright is related to the early stage of Bitcoin. He isn’t. Bitcoin already existed for 2.5 years, and Satoshi had actually already left the project to Gavin Andresen, when finally Craig Wright learned about Bitcoin in July 2011. To add, there are several people cited in the Bitcoin whitepaper that had previously worked on digital cash solutions. For example, Wei Dai and Adam Back. These people were provably actively involved in the space leading up to Bitcoin’s release.
3. How many people in the world who are both known to be related to at least the early stage of Bitcoin and are also an expert on all the following key disciplines which are clearly a requisite for inventing Bitcoin (if you have read the actual white paper you would agree): economics, monetary systems, law, computer sciences, cryptography, and gaming theory? (Answer: exactly one)
And ZeMing is doing it again! Again he is making the assumption BEFOREHAND that Craig Wright is related to the early stage of Bitcoin, instead of finding that as a result of the mathematical framework after putting in all the evidence. But no, ZeMing is again creating the ‘evidence’ from thin air!
To add, and lastly, Satoshi never claimed to be an expert in law. In fact, he said the exact opposite to Mike Hearn in 2011.
“I am not a lawyer and I can’t possibly answer that.”
4. How many people in the world showed understandings of Bitcoin scripts and gave explanations of their theoretical considerations and practical applications to a level that only their designer would? (Answer: exactly one)
Craig Wright has actually never done this. There’s a reason that ZeMing is not adding any evidence to his statements; simply because there is none. Craig Wright’s videos about Bitcoin are mostly cringe examples of incompetent gobbledygook and incoherent rants about remotely related subjects.
5. How many people in the world knew the answers to such questions about Bitcoin that even the question itself seemed strange let alone an answer: why double hash? why 21 million coins? etc. (Answer: exactly one)
Not exactly one, ZeMing. Earlier in this article I showed that the double hash question has been discussed online quite a few times. There’s nothing new nor mythical nor professional about Craig Wright’s viewpoint on the double hash question. The only question is, is it technically sound what he is saying. Not likely, but I’ll leave that to the experts to determine.
Why 21 million coins was touched upon by Satoshi himself already back in the days. He said “Eventually at most only 21 million coins for 6.8 billion people in the world if it really gets huge. But don’t worry, there are another 6 decimal places that aren’t shown, for a total of 8 decimal places internally. It shows 1.00 but internally it’s 1.00000000. If there’s massive deflation in the future, the software could show more decimal places.”
6. Who gave an original (the first ever) explanation for why Bitcoin is not encrypted (and therefore is not crypto), and why Bitcoin protects privacy but does not create anonymity, and why Bitcoin is designed to not only comply with the law, but in fact further enhance the rule of law, rather than be antigovernment (something that would become crystal clear with hindsight once one has learned about it and goes back to read carefully the whitepaper again)? (Answer: Craig Wright and no one else)
‘Bitcoin is not encrypted and therefore not crypto’ is actually a double, make that triple, self-own of Craig Wright. While it is true that Bitcoin is not encrypted in any shape or form, which is known to everyone in Bitcoin and their goldfish, the label ‘crypto’ or ‘cryptocurrency’ refers to cryptography instead, and it does not, and has never, refered to encrypted. So there you have it, self-own number 1. Another self-own is that Craig Wright himself has called Bitcoin a ‘cryptocurrency’ in his career a few times, and ditto for Satoshi Nakamoto!
Anyway. Craig, listen. Maybe you can learn something here. As there is certainly cryptography to find in Bitcoin, for example in the hash functions. A cryptographic hash function is a mathematical function which takes any data as input and produces an output with special characteristics. The Bitcoin protocol mainly uses SHA-256 for all hashing operations. Most importantly, hashing is used to implement Bitcoin’s Proof-of-Work mechanism.
Then there are the digital signatures. Bitcoin implements a digital signature algorithm called ECDSA which is based on elliptic curve cryptography. While ECDSA allows a private key to sign any type of message, digital signatures are most frequently used to sign transactions and send bitcoin.
In bitcoin, we also use public key cryptography to create a key pair that controls access to bitcoin. The key pair consists of a private key and — derived from it — a unique public key. The public key is used to receive funds, and the private key is used to sign transactions to spend the funds.
Information above taken from River Intelligence’s page “How Bitcoin Uses Cryptography” and Andreas Antonopoulos’s book “Mastering Bitcoin” (Chapter 4. Keys, Addresses).
I hope the reader doesn’t mind, but I’m skipping the privacy/anonymity and law discussions for the moment. I’m trying to keep this article a bit compact, and those subjects are more opinions about aspects of Bitcoin, instead of cold hard facts that need debunking.
7. Who gave the original explanation for why Bitcoin’s security is not primarily based on a computational design, but rather on economic principles (again, something that would become crystal clear with hindsight once one has heard about it and goes back to read carefully the whitepaper again)? (Answer: Craig Wright and no one else)
Here, ZeMing is likely referring to this blog article “What Proof-of-Work Is Used for (in Bitcoin)”, one of handfuls of Craig Wright blog articles that are riddled with lies, errors, plagiarisms, forgeries, Satoshi contradictions and self-owns. I hardly go to Craig’s blog site anymore these days, as I get itchy on places I can not reach when I have to dive into that drivel. However, I happen to remember this blog post from this nothing short of brilliantly dumb quote: “Each node on the network creates its blocks, and verifies the completed blocks produced by other nodes. Nodes do not vote on rules; they enforce the rules.” Yes, Craig really wrote that. There’s your Satoshi, ladies and gentlemen.
But the quote I was actually looking for is this one. “Proof-of-work is not the security mechanism in Bitcoin; the publicity of the hash chain is. Proof-of-work presents an economic signal, acting game-theoretically to incentivise the players’ honest behaviour and, alternatively, provide a punishment mechanism. […] Proof-of-work, on the other hand, provides the ability to find out the location, the where, and who runs a node. It is the threat of action, the ability for law enforcement to step in that maintains security in the Bitcoin network. I have said it many times: Bitcoin is an economic system and not a cryptographic system.”
Meanwhile, the Bitcoin whitepaper simply states “Businesses that receive frequent payments will probably still want to run their own nodes for more independent security and quicker verification.”, in other words, the security focus is alone on the tech side instead of the law enforcement and economic side of things.
Sorry, Craig. You scored no points again.
8. How many people in the world knew that Bitcoin was Turing complete from the very beginning, before they have seen it proven or heard it from someone else? (Answer: exactly one)
ZeMing, we’ve been here, and done that. Bitcoin is not Turing Complete and never will be. No score for Craig again in your mathematical framework.
9. How many people in the world have multiple witnesses who were the earliest prominent participants of Bitcoin and had intensive personal interaction with Satoshi Nakamoto (these include Gavin Andresen, Ian Grigg, etc), and were later convinced based on intimate personal knowledge that the person Satoshi they had interacted with matches exactly the person in question? (Answer: exactly one)
Earlier in this article we discussed Connor Murray his article, where he mentioned these witnesses. Half of them have fallen from this witnesses list, most notably Craig’s ex-wife Lynn ”rubbish” Wright and Gavin “he did somehow manage to trick me” Andresen. Please adjust the input numbers of your mathematical framework, ZeMing!
10. How many people in this world have multiple witnesses testify under oath that they knew the person had been working on something that was clearly and identifiably the subject matter of Bitcoin, before the Bitcoin whitepaper was released? (Answer: exactly one)
To be fair, at this point I cannot blame ZeMing for completely missing this point. Although everyone with a working brain knows that these witnesses “under oath” had hardly anything to tell beyond the level of hearsay, it took until a year after publication of this article of ZeMing to test these witnesses in a court case that mattered: hodlonaut v Wright in Oslo, Norway. To cut a long story short, the witnesses were professionally questioned by hodlonaut’s counsel: “can you provide any physical evidence” to which all had to admit they couldn’t, and then the District Court Judge Helen Engebrigtsen ruled:
“The court points out that the evidence brought in the case is not suitable to change the prevailing opinion that Craig Wright is not Satoshi Nakamoto.”
And again the request to ZeMing to adjust the input numbers of his mathematical framework.
11. How many people in this world can produce evidence, any evidence, that they had some work products, including the registration of the domain name bitcoin.org, before the Bitcoin whitepaper was released (the evidence is there, although not presented in the recent Kleiman v. Wright trial due to its lack of sufficient relevance in the case, but will come out eventually)? (Answer: exactly one)
ZeMing, please. The answer is: exactly zero. Craig Wright never produced any evidence, any work products, any registration of domain names, anything. Instead he produced over 200 homemade forgeries in Kleiman v Wright, 71 homemade forgeries in hodlonaut v Wright and 431 homemade forgeries in COPA v Wright. And that includes a forgery of the credit card payment for bitcoin.org, yes. Please adjust your input numbers again, ZeMing!
12. How many people in this world are known to have reported Bitcoin as capital gain in his/her year 2009 tax return, and were further identified and attacked by the tax authority as the one who owned and controlled Bitcoin in those earliest years? (Answer: exactly one)
And again the answer is: exactly zero. Because this never happened, and is even explicitly denied by the Australian Taxation Office. A few snippets from the Kleiman v Wright trial in November 2021. Here Craig Wright is being questioned by Vel Freedman, lawyer for Ira Kleiman.
“Q. And do you recall during cross-examination, I asked you about whether you and Dave kept your Bitcoin partnership a secret, and you responded that “At least 3- or 400 people knew that I was Satoshi in Australia” and that you registered Information Defense and recorded it with the Government?
A. Yes.
Q. You also testified that, “I had claimed Bitcoin in June 2009 as an asset. The tax office said there was no value to this thing called Bitcoin. It is a hobby. I claimed expenses of 2.2 million in setting up Bitcoin. The tax office said it is a sham because this stuff thereby is never worth anything.” Do you recall that?
MR. RIVERO: Objection, Your Honor. Objection, Your Honor. It’s just publication of prior testimony.
THE COURT: The —
MR. RIVERO: I’m sorry, Judge. It’s just publication of prior testimony. It’s neither impeachment nor a question.
THE COURT: Overruled.
BY MR. FREEDMAN:
Q. Do you recall that?
A. Yes.
Q. And that was on behalf of Integyrs and Information Defense; right?
A. I mentioned those companies, yes.
Q. Dr. Wright, do you know that the Australian Tax Office found that the audit reports for those entities contains no reference to Bitcoin whatsoever?
MR. RIVERO: Objection. Beyond the scope.
THE COURT: Overruled.
THE WITNESS: I disagree.
MR. FREEDMAN: Ms. Vela, can you please bring up P-320. It’s in evidence. Let’s go to Page 52, and let’s zoom in, please, on Paragraph 275.
BY MR. FREEDMAN:
Q. “Dr. Wright has stated that he mined the 1.1 million Bitcoin and tried to sell the rights to it to Information Defense and Integyrs and that the ATO disallowed his personal deductions related to mining and did not accept the transfer to the two companies.”
MR. RIVERO: Judge — Judge —
BY MR. FREEDMAN:
Q. “He has conversely stated that it was mined by Information Defense and Integyrs. The ATO audit report for these entities contains no reference to Bitcoin.”
[…]
MR. FREEDMAN: Ms. Vela, can you bring us to Page 50, and can you zoom in on Paragraph 260?
BY MR. FREEDMAN:
Q. “We dispute Dr. Wright’s contention that the ATO audited and disallowed deductions related to Bitcoin mining on the basis that Bitcoin mining was a hobby and that he tried to transfer equitable interest in Bitcoin to related companies. The audit report contains no references to Bitcoin.” Do you see that, Dr. Wright?
MR. RIVERO: Same objection.
THE COURT: The objection is noted. It’s overruled.
THE WITNESS: I see that line.
MR. FREEDMAN: Ms. Vela, can you please bring us to Page 25, and can we zoom in on Paragraphs 140 through 142, please. 140 to 142.
BY MR. FREEDMAN:
Q. “The taxpayer contends that the following adverse ATO audit outcomes where the ATO disallowed Dr. Wright’s deductions for Bitcoin mining, disallowed the sale of rights to Bitcoin he had mined to Information Defense and Integyrs. Dr. Wright transferred his 1.1 million Bitcoin to David Kleiman, a U.S.-based friend and business associate of Dr. Wright who died in April 2013.” “The taxpayer has provided a blog post as evidence of his intention. ATO forensics advises it is possible to backdate blog posts. We note that the audit record of these entities do not refer to any transactions involving Bitcoin.” Do you see that, Dr. Wright?”
ZeMing, please adjust your input numbers accordingly again, will you?
13. Who has the registered copyright to the Bitcoin whitepaper and Bitcoin genesis database? (Answer: Craig Wright and no one else, and no one else has challenged the copyright by producing any evidence or even just claiming to be the true author instead)?
And again ZeMing makes a formidable mistake. Craig Wright doesn’t have a registered copyright anywhere to anything Bitcoin related. What Craig has registered with the Copyright Office in USA is called a ‘copyright claim’, and a handful of other people (including the undersigned) have registered the exact same claim. Only a lawsuit can now determine which person or entity is the real owner of the copyright.
Will you adjust the input numbers of your mathematical framework again, ZeMing?
14. How many people in this world have invented and filed hundreds of patent applications for technologies related to or derived from the original Bitcoin? (Answer: exactly one)
This might be true and all, but what does that have to do with being, or not being, Satoshi Nakamoto? Besides, these patents have a technical relevance of 0.00 anyway. This is not what one would expect from ‘the inventor of Bitcoin’, right, ZeMing?
“nChain Holdings Limited […] have the weakest portfolios in this regard.”
15. Who leads the building of the only platform in the world that is truthful to the original Bitcoin whitepaper, claims to be Satoshi Nakamoto, and has a world-class teams agreeing with his claims and devoted to building the Satoshi vision, even though they know quite clear the whole digital currency world is against them, and they’re going to lose opportunities of making quick money by not following those “number go up” Ponzi schemes? (Answer: Craig Wright and no one else)
The list can go on.
Well, ZeMing, let’s say the situation has drastically changed since you wrote this article in 2021. Craig Wright still claims to be Satoshi Nakamoto, but he is not leading the building of the only platform in the world that is truthful to the original Bitcoin whitepaper anymore.
Reason is, Craig Wright attended a COPA v Wright mock practice trial on September 22, 2023, and according sources he was “grilled and torn apart” when he had to defend himself about the numerous forgeries that COPA found in the evidence that Craig had handed over. For who’s interested, 50 of these forgeries are described in detail in “Faketoshi And The Madden50”.
Then, plug your answers to the above questions into the mathematical framework outlined in this article (see the first two sections), reach an objective and honest conclusion.
No ZeMing, you do that. And please let us know what the outcome is.
[…]
Here I cut a few non-material paragraphs from the original article again. And we jump straight to ZeMing closing words.
Given the totality of the evidence, I’d say:
1) Those who haven’t examined the evidence should stop saying Craig Wright is not the inventor of Bitcoin, just so that you don’t find yourself embarrassed one day; and if you can’t say yes, just honestly say you don’t know, and are willing to learn about it.
2) Those who’ve examined the evidence but are still able to believe Craig Wright is not the inventor of Bitcoin, you’ve got an extremely hardened heart, capable of denying any truth or fact you don’t want to believe. It’s a detriment, not a blessing.
3) People who already know that Craig Wright is the inventor of Bitcoin yet for some reason have to deny it publicly, I’m sorry life has come so hard on you. Losing freedom due to earthly bribes is a sad thing.
No ZeMing, sorry. It is perfectly clear that Craig Wright is not Satoshi Nakamoto. Your mathematical framework is not able to prove otherwise.
Because your framework does not take into account that Craig never did a signing that could be publicly verified, he never used Satoshi’s PGP keys, he never posted as Satoshi on SourceForge, P2PFoundation or Bitcoin Forum, he has no untampered documents dating 2007–2011 proving his Satoshi-ness, no OG devs confirming an original private email from his hand, nothing. Instead of simply signing the Bitcoin Genesis block address to have that signature publicly verified (5 minutes work at no costs) he is on an extremely costly and very unsuccessful legal quest to prove his ‘identity’ with 100s of forgeries and worthless eye witnesses without physical evidence. And your framework doesn’t cover all that either.
Remember ZeMing, that you claimed at the start of this article that ‘the truth is gradually breaking out’? Here you’re trying to imply that more people are starting to believe that Craig Wright is (possibly) Satoshi Nakamoto, while I dare to claim the opposite: that group is certainly not growing, but rather shrinking these days, for good reasons.
Maybe you should now try to write a full debunk of my article “Craig Wright Is Not Satoshi Nakamoto”? Looking forward!
That’s all, folks! Thanks for reading.
