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Craig Wright, the controversial crypto entrepreneur, lost an attempt to prove he was the inventor of bitcoin in the High Court when Mr Justice Mellor made his ruling at the end of a five-week trial in March. Wright has long claimed to be Satoshi Nakamoto, the author of the bitcoin white paper and inventor of the famed cryptocurrency. In a written judgment ...
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post: Judge Mellor has just delivered his written judgment that Craig Wright is not Satoshi, which carefully dissects Wright’s tangled web of forgeries and lies. Thanks to community support, COPA proudly stands for truth and justice. We look forward to developers continuing their… post: Today’s ruling is the result of a concerted and united effort across the entire open source community - from developers, to those who selflessly contributed to funding this important case, to all members of COPA. THANK YOU ALL for the time, dedication and support. Your efforts…Approved Judgement Dr Craig Steven Wright (‘Dr Wright’) claims to be Satoshi Nakamoto i.e. he claims to be the person who adopted that pseudonym, who wrote and published the first version of the Bitcoin White Paper on 31 October 2008, who wrote and released the first version of the Bitcoin Source Code and who created the Bitcoin system. Dr Wright also claims to be a person with a unique intellect, with numerous degrees and PhDs in a wide range of subjects, the unique combination of which led him (so it is said) to devise the Bitcoin system. 2. Thus, Dr Wright presents himself as an extremely clever person. However, in my judgment, he is not nearly as clever as he thinks he is. In both his written evidence and in days of oral evidence under cross-examination, I am entirely satisfied that Dr Wright lied to the Court extensively and repeatedly. Most of his lies related to the documents he had forged which purported to support his claim. All his lies and forged documents were in support of his biggest lie: his claim to be Satoshi Nakamoto. 3. Many of Dr Wright’s lies contained a grain of truth (which is sometimes said to be the mark of an accomplished liar), but there were many which did not and were outright lies. As soon as one lie was exposed, Dr Wright resorted to further lies and evasions. The final destination frequently turned out to be either Dr Wright blaming some other (often unidentified) person for his predicament or what can only be described as technobabble delivered by him in the witness box. Although as a person with expertise in IT security, Dr Wright must have thought his forgeries would provide convincing evidence to support his claim to be Satoshi or some other point of detail and would go undetected, the evidence shows, as I explain below and in the Appendix, that most of his forgeries turned out to be clumsyFollowing his ruling at the end of trial that Craig Wright is not Satoshi Nakamoto and not the author of the Bitcoin White Paper, today, Mr Justice Mellor has handed down his written judgment in the COPA v Wright trial. Across its 1736 paragraphs, the judgment forensically demolishes Wright’s fraudulent claims, finding every aspect of his claimed identity to be a lie. Notably, Mr Justice Mellor finds that: Wright’s evidence was “at best questionable or of very dubious relevance or entirely circumstantial and at worst, fabricated and/or based on documents I am satisfied have been forged on a grand scale by Dr Wright”. Wright was personally responsible for the creation of each of the forgeries that COPA alleged. Wright failed to understand basic aspects of Bitcoin technology. And that Wright, “is not nearly as clever as he thinks he is. In both his written evidence and in days of oral evidence under cross-examination, I am entirely satisfied that Dr Wright lied to the Court extensively and repeatedly….” Justice Mellor concluded: “Dr Wright’s attempts to prove he was/is Satoshi Nakamoto represent a most serious abuse of this Court’s process… It is clear that Dr Wright engaged in the deliberate produ