Craig Wright Leaves the Stand But His Witnesses Are No More Convincing

The Crypto Open Patent Alliance (COPA) legal team has finished its cross-examination of Satoshi Nakamoto-wannabe Craig S Wright in the U.K. high court case that may finally disprove his fantastical delusions once and for all.

With Faketoshi off the stand, you may think that the defense lawyers would be able to breathe a sigh of relief as the prosecution turns its attention to Wright’s ‘expert’ witnesses. However, on the initial evidence, it would appear that the Australian’s corroborators are just as “confused” and “hazy” as he is.

Craig Wright’s nearly 30 hours of cross-examination in the dock was an almost textbook example of how to come across as an unreliable witness:

We have already addressed Wright’s unconvincing assertion that all of the forged documents he has produced to date in support of his claim were created by other people to frame him. These include a Word document with doctored meta-data claiming to be created in 2002, but with formatting not introduced until 2007 and fonts not included until 2015.

The ‘computer scientist’ also stumbled when asked about ‘unsigned integers’, a function used over 500 times in the initial Bitcoin source code programmed by Satoshi Nakamoto. Wright could not explain what unsigned integers were, scoring an unnecessary own goal under no pressure from the prosecution, which was just following a routine line of questioning.

When questioned regarding a cryptographically signed blog post that had since been declared a hoax, Wright decried “experts” who “cannot verify their work”, insisting that the keys he used could not be accessed by anyone other than Satoshi. However, he added that:

“You don't prove by having identity through possession of something. You prove by knowledge. Who you are. What you create.”

Even the opening statement given by Wright’s legal team claimed that his refusal to show that he could access Satoshi’s wallet (and, you know, prove that he invented Bitcoin) was down to “philosophical differences” and his “core belief” in privacy; a belief that clearly wasn’t held when Wright promised to do exactly that back in 2016.

On his final day of questioning, when asked by the judge whether he could produce any undoctored early Bitcoin documentation, Wright conceded that such evidence would not be available.

And so to the expert witnesses: day one produced a man who vaguely remembered Wright asking him to build a Lego blockchain in 2008, and another two who claimed they had discussed subjects related to bitcoin, blockchain and digital currency with Wright in the late 2000s. All agreed that their recollection of events from 16 years ago may have become clouded with time.

The trial continues today with the cross-examination of Wright’s sister, a man who met Wright in the late nineties, and a patent lawyer who has worked with Wright since 2015. Who better to prove to the world that you invented Bitcoin?