COPA has introduced new forensic evidence that definitively proves the inauthenticity of several documents that Craig Wright considers crucial to his claim that he is the founder of bitcoin. This was not only the conclusion of the expert COPA retained to forensically examine Wright’s documents, but the conclusion of the expert Wright retained as well.
In October 2023, Craig Wright presented previously undisclosed evidence in his defense during the lawsuit brought by the Crypto Open Patent Alliance (COPA) in The High Court of Justice of England and Wales. These digital documents, which Wright claims to have discovered on two USB drives inside a drawer in his house in September 2023, were intended to back his assertion that he is Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin.
On December 23 2023, Mr Justice Mellor reviewed this evidence submitted by Craig Wright and determined that the evidence would be allowed to be presented in trial given claims of their centrality to the question of whether Wright is indeed Satoshi Nakamoto. In his judgment, Mr Justice Mellor quoted Wright’s own argument. Wright said that:
‘The short point is that if the Additional Documents are authentic, they are likely determinative of the Identity Issue in Dr Wright’s favour.’
However, today’s published summary of the findings (covering expert evidence from witnesses for both COPA and Wright) proves that the additional documents produced by Wright have been forged. Some of the key evidence includes:
Wright’s “Bitcoin White Paper”
The bitcoin whitepaper was originally published on October 31, 2008. Wright claims he wrote the bitcoin white paper using LaTeX word processing software. Examination of the metadata by both parties’ experts led them to conclude (and agree) that, contrary to Wright’s assertion, the whitepaper was written and produced in OpenOffice, not LaTeX. Even if the whitepaper had been written in LaTeX – and even Wright’s own expert agrees it was not – the file that Wright relies on could not have been produced by that software until after 2009, after the bitcoin whitepaper was originally published. In light of Wright’s assertion that he created these files and has been in sole possession of these files since they were created, suggesting that he is responsible for – or at least aware of – their inauthenticity.
Wright’s 2007 Computer “Time Capsule”
Wright presented a file that he said was a “time capsule” captured from his computer in October 2007, containing various pieces of evidence that he said supported his claims. However, experts found proof that the ‘time capsule’ was subsequently edited in September 2023 to add, modify and delete relevant files. These modifications were done with the computer clock set back to 31 October 2007, in order to backdate the most obvious resulting digital artifacts. Wright did not account for all digital artifacts, however, and many traces remained. In reality, the additions to the ‘time capsule’ were made over the course of September 17-19, 2023. The usernames “CSW” and “Craig S Wright” were recovered from deleted files connected to these changes.
Chat GPT Forgery
A deleted file was recovered which suggests that the fabricated evidence presented by Wright was created with the help of Chat GPT. The deleted file contained part of the content of a document Wright provided and began with the words ““Certainly, here’s the LaTeX code for Section 7, which covers Recommendations.” Expert witnesses recreated this exact response from Chat GPT by asking it ““Are you able to output some template latex code for section 7 which relates to recommendations?”
The list of 20 forgeries that the Court allowed COPA to present can be found here.
Oral openings in the trial will begin on February 5.