Blogs & Articles: ZeMing M. Gao, A Craig Wright Apologist Debunked (2) 🔗 24 weeks ago

“Cases involving Dr. Craig Wright’s Satoshi identity”

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.

Welcome back at this little ZeMing series, I hope you enjoyed “ZeMing M. Gao, A Craig Wright Apologist Debunked (1)”. We continue with (2) and we will close this series with (3) in the upcoming days.

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.”

Today we are going to have a look at ZeMing’s very recent (October 4, 2023) article “Cases involving Dr. Craig Wright’s Satoshi identity” which was republished on CoinGeek on October 12, 2023. I have copied it in full, and will comment where needed.

Let’s go.

The trial of COPA v. Wright is set to start in mid-January 2024. For the first time, the central issue of a lawsuit is the truth (Satoshi’s identity) itself. Thus, the case has a unique significance.

In anticipation of COPA v. Wright, I wrote a separate analysis of that case: The key issue in COPA v. Wright. I also wrote a piece on cases co-pending with COPA v. Wright.

Briefly, COPA (Crypto Open Patent Alliance), a coalition of some of the most powerful companies in Silicon Valley, wants the court to declare that Dr. Craig S. Wright is not Satoshi.

To start, let’s note that there is technically speaking only 1 company, Meta, located in Silicon Valley. Seven others have their HQ addresses in San Francisco (which is NOT Silicon Valley): Coinbase, Block, OKCoin, Chia, Protocol Labs, Kraken and WorldCoin.

To add, COPA not only wants Justice Mellor to rule about Craig being Satoshi or not. COPA also wants a ruling that Craig does not own any Bitcoin related copyright, and COPA has requested, and will get, a third ruling about Craig Wright being a Fraud, Dishonest and a Forger.

At the same time, the public remains misinformed about the cases involving Dr. Wright’s Satoshi identity. People’s general impression, including that of many otherwise highly intelligent individuals, is that ‘Craig Wright has been proven a fraud in all lawsuits he is involved in’.

The present article provides a brief summary of several major cases involving Dr. Wright’s Satoshi identity.

We look at the court records at two different levels:

(1) the judgments (the court decisions); and

(2) specific pieces of evidence.

People’s impressions about ‘Craig Wright has been proven a fraud in all lawsuits he is involved in’ are quite correct, ZeMing. You will notice.

That’s him.

The judgments

Let’s first see what has happened at the first level, i.e., the court judgments. These judgments were either for Dr. Wright, or against him on company property distribution or on the legality of defamation but not on the truth in identity. Given the facts, one should wonder why people think every one of these cases was a judgment against Dr. Wright with regard to his Satoshi identity.

ZeMing, you are changing the subject now. You have now changed ‘proven fraud in all lawsuits’ into ‘against Satoshi identity in every one of these cases’. This is very confusing, because in none of the cases Craig’s identity was addressed except in the hodlonaut v Wright case in Norway, while in all cases several types of fraud were addressed.

1. Kleiman v. Wright

The court decided that there was no partnership between Dr. Craig Wright and David Kleiman, because, after hearing three weeks of evidence and testimonies, the jury decided that Dr. Wright alone created Bitcoin.

This is incorrect. The jury did not decide about this — Dr. Wright alone created Bitcoin — at all. On the contrary, this was explicitly excluded from the rulings of the case.

Source: CourtListener

The court also decided that the post-Bitcoin-release intellectual property belonged to W&K, a company created by Wright and Kleiman, and therefore, Wright should return $100 million to W&K.

No, this is also a completely wrong assessment of the $100,000,000 “Conversion” ruling in Kleiman v Wright. In summary, W&K was raised by Dave Kleiman in February 2011. Together with Craig Wright they tried to land 4 IT/cybersecurity projects at Homeland Security US (DHS). This failed, all 4 projects were rejected by DHS and about a year later in 2012 W&K dissolved without ever making any revenues.

In 2013, shortly after Dave Kleiman’s death in April, Craig Wright dropped 2 claims against W&K for a total of almost AUD 60,000,000 in New South Wales Supreme Court (NSWSC). In these claims, Craig abused the 4 project proposal numbers from 2011 to falsely rewrite the history of what had happened in 2011. The 4 IT/cybersecurity project proposals were now suddenly all kinds of Bitcoin related activities, with Bitcoin IP, Bitcoin code and Bitcoin mining mingled in the false stories, created by Craig Wright from thin air. However, NSWSC did not perform any due diligence and Craig, playing both plaintiff and defendant in the case, was awarded almost AUD 60,000,000 in false, fake claims that he could subsequently pass forward in his Australian companies to try get fraudulent tax returns for.

Make no mistake here. This is Conversion by Craig Wright from the fraudulent type.

Credit: CoinGeek

Note it is a fact that the judgment against Dr. Wright in that case was about intellectual property created after the creation of Bitcoin, not the Bitcoin creation, which was valued at over $100 billion, rather than $100 million.

Completely wrong again, ZeMing. Since there was no determination by the Jury of who is Satoshi and what are his assets, there has been no determination let alone a decision about anything $100 billion. Sorry ZeMing, your “fact” is “no fact” at all.

It is irresponsible for anyone to fail to see the distinction between Bitcoin creation and post-creation activities (prior to David Kleiman’s death in April 2013), as indicated by the difference between the $100 billion and $100 million valuations.

Wrong approach again, ZeMing. There has been no determination of Bitcoin creation, let alone of if Craig is Satoshi. Therefore, there has also been no determination of post creation activities prior to Dave Kleiman’s death in April 2013. There has been determination of “Conversion” of 2011 IT/cybersecurity assets to 2013 (non-existing) Bitcoin assets that Craig Wright pulled from his behind.

The former is a thousand times greater than the latter. Only the $100 billion question is directly related to the Satoshi identity. With that respect, Dr. Wright won a complete victory in the Kleiman case.

No. Again, he did not win “a complete victory”. There was explicitly no determination of is Craig Satoshi or not, and there was no determination if and to what extend Craig had been mining. Please digest the screenshot of this order properly.

Then realize that “Judgment is entered in favor of Plaintiff W&K Info Defense Research LLC”, as Judge Bloom explains once more on March 9, 2022 when she adds the pre-judgment interest that Ira Kleiman on behalf of W&K won. In other words: Craig Wright lost from all angles. And his Conversion fraud was firmly penalized by the Jury.

The $100 million question is about post-creation activities Dr. Wright had with David Kleiman in the name of W&K (see more below in the next section).

Again, there have never (read my lips: NEVER) been any determination of any Bitcoin creation activities let alone post-Bitcoin creation activities. There has been determination of (honest) 2011 W&K activities with Dave and Craig involved, and there has been determination of in 2013 totally made up and rewritten 2011 W&K activities that Craig Wright had pulled from his behind. That’s all, and that fact costed Craig Wright $143,000,000.

Some people quickly come up with another argument: It is because the jury decided that there were no Bitcoin-creation activities! But this is frivolous reasoning because it totally disregards the facts in the case. The entire case from its pleadings, evidence and arguments presented from both sides, the jury instructions, and the verdict, all indicate the opposite. The jury had not only recognized but in fact deliberated over the Bitcoin-creation activities. They just found that David Kleiman had no part of it.

Again, totally wrong assessment again. THE JURY DECIDED NOTHING, BECAUSE THEY WERE EXPLICITLY ORDERED NOT TO. In that sense it is even more fair to say that Craig Wright — based on all the fraudulent evidence, the forgeries, the false declarations and the numerous cases of perjury and the total lack of genuine Satoshi evidence — was considered NOT Satoshi first, and therefore there couldn’t have been a partnership with Dave Kleiman anyway, despite the overwhelming “evidence” (which, as said, the Jury considered to be lies) that Ira Kleiman brought in the case:

The verdict of the case with regard to the post-creation activities, however, may also have an indirect relationship with the Satoshi identity. This is because once the case is finalized at the appellate court level, Dr. Wright will need to make a payment of about $140 million ($100 million plus interest) to W&K. There is a possibility that the payment may be made in the form of transferring assets from the Tulip Trust, which may confirm Dr. Wright’s claims made in the past with regard to his Satoshi identity. But it’s also possible that Dr. Wright may choose to make the payment from an alternative venue. It is up to him. But even if he chooses to do the latter, one may still wonder how he would be able to finance the payment if he didn’t own the Satoshi coins, because Dr. Wright does not seem to have another substantial business outside of Bitcoin.

Again, there are no post-creation activities. There has been no determination of any Satoshi identity. And indeed, Craig Wright has no other activities besides desperately trying to prolong the Faketoshi scam.

However, because the Kleiman case was about property, not about identity (even though the latter is the basis of the former), the court did not write in its verdict that Dr. Wright was Satoshi. The court had no duty to make that decision.

No, the latter (identity) was not the basis of the former (property). W&K 2011 had nothing to do with anything Bitcoin but only with 4 (failed) IT/cybersecurity project proposals, and W&K 2013 also had nothing to do with anything Bitcoin again, as that was completely made up, created from thin air, by Craig Wright.

The media has not truthfully reported the decision. Most reports aimed to create an impression such as these: “Craig Wright loses the court case in which he self-claims to be Satoshi.” “Craig Wright stole $100 million and was ordered by the court to return the money.” These are not merely inaccurate interpretations of the court judgment but total lies.

Actually they are not lies, but rather accurate interpretations of the Jury judgment. The confusion about all this is all yours, and only yours, dear ZeMing.

That’s him also.

2. Wright v. McCormack

The court decided that Peter McCormack committed defamation against Dr. Wright by calling him a liar for claiming himself to be Satoshi. But the court awarded a symbolic £1 (1 pound) to Dr. Wright as damages.

Because Mr. McCormack prudently maneuvered the case to avoid a trial, the court did not have a trial to test the evidence. But Mr. McCormack’s own decision to avoid trial was based on the quality of the evidence presented to him before the trial.

Again a totally wrong representation of what happened in real life. Every hearing and trial, if you like, went through and Peter McCormack showed up for every one of these events. He avoided nothing. However, what ZeMing is probably referring to, is that Peter dropped the so-called ‘truth defense’, meaning that he couldn’t afford the possibly millions in GBP that were needed to unravel, pick apart and expose all the dozens if not hundreds of forgeries that Craig Wright had thrown at him in the case. Dropping the truth defense had its consequences for Peter though: Craig was automatically awarded the libel claim.

If anything, the court judgment itself had nothing negative against Dr. Wright. The court’s decision about the amount of damages Mr. McCormack owed to Dr. Wright was a separate issue. It only had to do with Dr. Wright’s failure to show economic damages the defamation had caused to him (see more below in the next section), not the defamation verdict itself.

Wrong. Craig Wright lost the case. Craig had requested GBP 100,000.00 in damages for the alleged libel. Judge Chamberlain awarded only GBP 1.00 however, because of the totally false case that Craig Wright had brought in front of him:

“143. In a libel action brought by an individual, compensation is awarded for injury to reputation (objectively assessed) and for injury to feelings. Had it not been for Dr Wright’s deliberately false case as to serious harm, a more than minimal award of damages would have been appropriate, though the quantum
would have been reduced to reflect the fact that Mr McCormack was goaded into making the statements he did and, having found Dr Wright not to be a witness of truth, I would have rejected in its entirety his case as to the distress he claims to have suffered.

144. But the deliberately false case on serious harm advanced by Dr Wright until days before trial in my judgment requires more Judgment Approved by the court for handing down. Wright v McCormack than a mere reduction in the award of damages. In my judgment, it makes it unconscionable that Dr Wright should receive any more than nominal damages.”

3. Magnus v. Wright

The court declared that Mr. Magnus’ written statements did not constitute defamation under Norwegian law.

The court heard evidence presented by both sides. The presentation from Dr. Wright focused on evidence to prove that Dr. Wright created Bitcoin, while the presentation from Magnus’ side focused on incidences where they believed Dr. Wright lied or presented false evidence.

But strangely, the court did not decide on the question of ‘truth’ (that is, whether Dr. Wright is Satoshi or not), but declared that, as a matter of law, Mr. Magnus’ statements did not constitute defamation under Norwegian law, whether the statements are true or not. (Many jurisdictions, including Norway, do not require a statement to be true as a defense to a defamation charge. In other words, just because what one says is not true does not necessarily constitute defamation.)

Actually, 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.”

The lower court decision is clearly a negative to Dr. Wright’s defamation claim against Magnus.

The case is on appeal. But the final outcome may be more important to Mr. Magnus than to Dr. Wright and the public because several other cases pending in the UK High Court supersede this one in their general significance.

It was unfortunate that the Norwegian court did not decide on the truth but only on legality. As a result, even if Dr. Wright wins the case on appeal, the outcome is likely to be still on legality and will not change many people’s views of the truth.

However, the legality does not stop the media from reporting the case as if the court ruled that Dr. Wright was not Satoshi.

You probably missed the fact that 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.”

4. COPA v. Wright

This case is ongoing, and the trial is set for January 2024. COPA wants the court to declare that Dr. Wright is not Satoshi. COPA focuses on negative evidence showing incidences where they believe Dr. Wright failed to prove he is Satoshi. Dr. Wright is expected to present positive evidence showing that he is indeed Satoshi.

The trial has not started, so one should not reach any conclusion about this case.

This case is uniquely important. I wrote a separate analysis of the case: The key issue in COPA v. Wright.

“COPA wants the court to declare that Dr. Wright is not Satoshi.” Indeed, and as said before, they want the court to declare that Craig Wright doesn’t have any copyright, and that Craig Wright is a Fraud, Dishonest and a Forger. So to recap, the COPA v Wright lawsuit is now about 3 distinct rulings (the inevitable ruling is between ()):

• Is Craig Wright Satoshi Nakamoto (no)
• Is Craig Wright a Fraud/Dishonest and a Forger (yes)
• Does Craig Wright own any Bitcoin related copyright (no)

You guessed it. That’s him also.

Specific pieces of evidence

Let’s then look at the second level: specific pieces of evidence.

Literally thousands of pieces of evidence have been presented in court proceedings. But the media so far only focused on about five pieces among the thousands where the authenticity of the evidence was called into question by the court.

1. The perjury allegations

On one occasion, the judge even explicitly said that Dr. Wright was not a trustworthy witness because he had submitted false evidence. This was widely used by the media and influencers against Dr. Wright.

Make no mistake, ZeMing. Not one but several judges (and a Jury) have come to the conclusion that Craig Wright is not a trustworthy witness. Let’s pick some examples from a few rulings over the years (note that this overview is incomplete, but shows that Craig’s digital forgeries were already exposed 20 years ago):

• Ryan v Wright 2003–2006: “On 31 August 2004 Gzell J found the appellant guilty of contempt of Court by breaching undertakings given to the Court on 4 September 2003. The breaches involved carrying on business in competition with DeMorgan Information Security Systems Pty Ltd (the company) and directly or indirectly approaching “any company, business, entity or person who is or was, as at 8 August 2003 a customer of [the company]”. On 15 November Gzell J sentenced him to imprisonment for 28 days suspended on condition that he perform 250 hours of community service, and he was ordered to pay the costs of the proceedings. […] The disputed email was found on a computer at the appellant’s home during the Anton Pillar raid on 16 September 2003. It was found on a temporary Internet file opened and viewed during the raid when a copy to self folder used to store email messages online was accessed. It had not originated on that computer, but had been sent from a remote location. However its presence in a “copy to self” file supported an inference that it had been sent by the appellant. […] It would have been extremely difficult for an outsider to fabricate the disputed email containing the details it did. Mr Spencer and the appellant communicated with each other many times on 9, 10 and 11 September by email, telephone, and in person. Somehow this email managed to make sense and fit in with these other communications. The fabrication of such an email by an outsider without this being immediately detected by the recipient is glaringly improbable.”
• Ang v Reliantco 2017–2020: “Dr Wright gave evidence. He was an unsatisfactory witness in many respects. He was belligerent, argumentative and deliberately provocative. He evaded questions to which he did not wish to give a straight answer. On occasion he refused to accept what documents plainly indicated. He was prepared to make grave and unsustainable allegations, for example in relation to the supposed fabrication by or on behalf of Reliantco of an email from him of 3 September 2017. He sought on occasion to blind with (computer) science. I came to the conclusion that I could not rely on Dr Wright’s evidence as to whether and how particular events had happened unless it was supported by documentation, other evidence I could accept or by the inherent probabilities.”
• Kleiman v Wright 2018–2022: “Unfortunately, the record is replete with instances in which the Defendant has proffered conflicting sworn testimony before this Court. In weighing the evidence, the Court simply does not find the Defendant’s testimony to be credible. […] There is a strong, and unrebutted, circumstantial inference that Dr. Wright willfully created the fraudulent documents. […] The totality of the evidence in the record does not substantiate that the Tulip Trust exists. Combining these facts with my observations of Dr. Wright’s demeanor during his testimony, I find that Dr. Wright’s testimony that this Trust exists was intentionally false. […] Nevertheless, I give no weight to sworn statements of Dr. Wright that advance his interests but that have not been challenged by cross-examination and for which I cannot make a credibility determination. I have previously found that Dr. Wright gave perjured testimony in my presence. […] Judgment is entered in favor of Plaintiff W&K Info Defense Research, LLC, as to its claim against Defendant Craig Wright for Conversion in the amount of $100,000,000.00, for which sum let execution issue. Consistent with the Court’s Order, ECF No. [888], prejudgment interest shall be awarded in the amount of $43,132,492.48.”
• Wright v McCormack 2019–2023: “The explanation given by Dr Wright for abandoning this part of his case was that the damage to reputation arising from the disinvitations occurred outside England and Wales. This does not withstand scrutiny. The timing suggests, as Ms Evans submitted, that its abandonment was occasioned by its exposure as factually false. […] I have borne in mind what Dr Wright said about his autism and its effects on the way he explains things to others. But the evidence in para. 41 of Dr Wright’s first witness statement was not merely inadequately or infelicitously explained. The vice was not that it omitted explanatory background, but rather that what it did say was straightforwardly false in almost every material respect. […] I therefore conclude that Dr Wright’s original case on serious harm, and the evidence supporting it, both of which were maintained until days before trial, were deliberately false. […] Had it not been for Dr Wright’s deliberately false case as to serious harm, a more than minimal award of damages would have been appropriate, though the quantum would have been reduced to reflect the fact that Mr McCormack was goaded into making the statements he did and, having found Dr Wright not to be a witness of truth, I would have rejected in its entirety his case as to the distress he claims to have suffered.”
• hodlonaut v Wright 2019–2023: “The court believes that hodlonaut had sufficient factual grounds to claim that Wright had lied and cheated in his attempt to prove that he is Satoshi Nakamoto. […] The court points out that the evidence brought in the case is not suitable to change its prevailing opinion that Craig Wright is not Satoshi Nakamoto. […] KPMG has concluded that it is “probable that several of the files in the data material have been changed so that they appear to have been created earlier than they actually are”. Although BDO and Cyfor, both of whom are engaged by Wright, have individual discrepant findings compared to KPMG’s report, the court perceives their reports and explanations to mean that they have essentially found the same conditions that KPMG points to, and which are the basis of KPMG’s conclusion. […] Wright has brought a number of witnesses to court. However, statements from these witnesses relating to whether or not he is Satoshi Nakamoto are not supported by contemporary evidence. […] Against this background, the court believes that hodlonaut had sufficient factual grounds to claim that Craig Wright is not Satoshi Nakamoto in March 2019. Wright has come out with a controversial claim, and must withstand criticism from dissenters. Overall, the court believes that the wording and claims made by hodlonaut do not exceed the threshold for defamation and infringement of privacy. The statements are not unlawful. […] Overall, the court believes that Wright should cover hodlonaut’s legal costs as follows:
• Lawyer’s fees NOK 2,500,000
  Value added tax fee NOK 625,000
  Expenses incl. VAT NOK 900,000
  Court fee NOK 28,750
  Sum NOK 4,053,750”

Meme by Peter Scott-Morgan

Let’s go back to ZeMing’s article.

That was in the Kleiman case. But the reporters and readers pay no attention to the basic facts. It happened during the pretrial stage when Judge Reinhart decided to deny Wright’s plea for summary judgment. Whatever the judge said in that pretrial opinion is both moot and nulled in fact.

It is moot because the judge’s decision to deny a summary judgment in favor of Dr. Wright was that a trial on the facts was necessary, which trial, of course, eventually did happen, making the pretrial decisions irrelevant.

No, ZeMing, wrong on all counts. Judge Reinhart did several credibility findings during the course of the Kleiman v Wright lawsuit, not only in relationship to a summary judgment. You just read a few of them. Second, pretrial rulings by judges do not magically disappear because you want them to. On the contrary, they remain valid till the end of times, and a Jury verdict only adds to these judge’s rulings. And that’s why you will see these judge’s rulings being quoted heavily in other lawsuits where Craig Wright is either claimant or defendant.

But perhaps more importantly, the specific issue that the judge had with Dr. Wright concerned the assets held by Tulip Trust. The judge had ordered Dr. Wright to make a comprehensive list of all bitcoins held by Tulip Trust, but Dr. Wright seemed to be reluctant and at least was slow in complying with the judge’s order. That in itself should not be surprising, considering that Dr. Wright was sued by Kleiman who claimed part of his property. He didn’t go to the court to declare his property and demand recognition of it (but the world obsessed with Satoshi seems always to assume that is the case).

The following was what triggered the judge’s pretrial opinion: Dr. Wright gave a ‘strange’ explanation as to why his compliance was slow. He said it depended on a forthcoming missing piece of ‘key slices’ held by some other individual because he used the so-called ‘Shamir’s Secret Sharing Scheme‘. The judge was deeply skeptical of that explanation. The judge probably thought the scheme involving ‘multiple slices of a key distributed among various individuals’ was laughably fictional and therefore Wright must be lying to him. Thus it’s understandable that the judge became vindictive when the missing piece failed to arrive on time.

No ZeMing, again totally wrong. It wasn’t the Shamir key slices story alone. It was the total package of Craig lying about everything Tulip Trust related, his Declarations about the Tulip Trust were found to be false, and on top of that he also produced quite a few Tulip Trust forgeries (emails, Deeds, contracts) that were called by Dr Edman the forensic expert. Last but not least, it became known by undisputed evidence that the Tulip Trust was not set up in 2011 and 2012 as Craig Wright claimed, but only in October 2014 with backdated false documents. Hence the ruling by judge Reinhart that Craig Wright did not appeal: “The totality of the evidence in the record does not substantiate that the Tulip Trust exists.”

That was the factual background of the judge’s pretrial opinion. Dr. Wright’s opponents were all excited seeing that. They had all presumed that Dr. Wright was lying, so the events surrounding that were highly satisfying to them.

But they all conveniently ignore or forget one thing: shortly after the judge’s scornful pretrial opinion, the missing piece did arrive, and Dr. Wright was able to completely satisfy the court order of disclosing the bitcoins held in Tulip Trust. This is not an opinion but a fact. Without that compliance in fact, the subsequent trial could not have happened the way it did.

You simply don’t hear Dr. Wright’s opponents ever mentioning any of that. In fact, they don’t seem to be aware of such basic facts at all.

The way people selectively filter out factual information is nothing short of amazing.

It’s you, ZeMing, who is conveniently forgetting several basic facts and who is selectively filtering out factual information. For example, the Tulip Trust list ‘disclosing the bitcoins’ as you call it, was found a complete forgery shortly after filing in January 2020. Among more findings of being forged in recent days, it contains the so-called ‘Shadders Bug’ (please go look that one up in the Kleiman v Wright CourtListener court docket). To add, in May 2020 the Tulip Trust list became public in the court docket, and within a few days, no less than 145 different addresses on the Tulip Trust list were signed “Craig Steven Wright is a liar and a fraud” by the rightful owners, not being Craig Wright.

Another occasion occurred in the case of Wright v. McCormack. The judge ruled that Dr. Wright’s original claims of serious reputational damage suffered due to Peter McCormack’s defamation were false. The court found that some evidence put forth in an attempt to show serious harm by Dr. Wright was not supported. This was about the rescission of several accepted invitations to speak at conferences due to McCormack’s tweets. Dr. Wright could not provide evidence. Consequently, the judge awarded Wright only a nominal award of £1 for the damages.

A victim of defamation may have indeed suffered damages but is unable to produce concrete evidence for that. In Dr. Wright’s case, the fact that he suffered reputation damage is a plain fact to observers outside of the courtroom. In fact, it is something that his opponents widely celebrate. But still, he could not produce a concrete piece of evidence to show the mental state of others with regard to his reputation. This amounted to the judge’s decision against him because the judge wanted to see an actual document showing a rescission caused by his damaged reputation.

Regardless of whether and how the rescission of speaking invitations in certain conference events has happened, the crypto community looks away from the defamation itself and focuses on the victim’s failure to prove ‘serious harm’. They then tell themselves and the world that Dr. Wright committed perjury.

Get your facts straight, ZeMing. Craig Wright filed a list of ten conferences in the Wright v McCormack case. Ten conferences of which Craig said he was invited to speak onstage, but all those ten conferences allegedly cancelled his speaking slots last minute, as Craig claimed because of Peter’s libelous tweets.

But when Peter’s counsel went the extra mile and contacted all the people organizing these conferences, it turned out that either (1) the organizers had never heard of Craig Wright in the first place or (2) they had rejected Craig Wright’s speaking slots because they found his papers of very low quality — some mentioned 1 on a scale of 1 to 5 — and in some cases his papers even turned out to be plagiarized, which is a sin punished with the death penalty if it was allowed in academic circles. Not any conference organizer mentioned Peter McCormack as being the reason that Craig Wright was rejected.

In other words, as judge Chamberlain penned it down in his ruling:

“The evidence in para. 41 of Dr Wright’s first witness statement was not merely inadequately or infelicitously explained. The vice was not that it omitted explanatory background, but rather that what it did say was straightforwardly false in almost every material respect.”

Here he’s talking with another BSV fan: Joshua Henslee.

2. The stealing allegation

Many have been misled to believe that Dr. Wright was convicted of stealing $100 million and was ordered to return the money. This comes from the $100 million conversion verdict from the Kleiman case.

It is important to note that it wasn’t like W&K had $100 million cash or hard assets in its account, and Dr. Wright took it after David Kleiman died. W&K had nothing in its account, except for some intangible intellectual property that was pledged by Dr. Wright himself alone.

W&K was a company started by Dr. Wright and David Kleiman as a vehicle to expand the reach of Dr. Wright’s inventions to the US. Especially, the two founders hoped that through W&K they might receive sponsorship or contract business from the US government. The company had no employees. It was only Dr. Wright’s ideas and David Kleiman’s experience and connections in the US.

At the time, David was already too ill to do much. After David died, Dr. Wright decided to consolidate the business. He was in Australia, but W&K was registered in the US, and nobody else had authorized access to the company’s legal status. There were no bank accounts or other assets involved. Just the company as a legal entity and its registrations. So he performed some heavy-handed actions to take W&K into his hands to move forward. At the same time, he contacted David’s father to inform him of his relationship with David.

That was the circumstance of the alleged ‘conversion’ of W&K’s property. After rejecting Kleiman’s claim of partnership in inventing Bitcoin, the jury agreed that the conversion did happen. The jury then kind of magically decided the W&K assets to be worth $100 million in total (I can’t help but speculate that the jury, after considering and rejecting the claim on $100 billion, thought that $100 million was a very small amount — such is human psychology and I can’t blame them, as we are all susceptible to such psychological influences). For that, Dr. Wright decided not to contend.

Again it shows that you, ZeMing, have no idea what you are talking about. Let me help you one more time, in even greater detail, with the W&K story how it really went.

• W&K Info Defense Research LLC (W&K) was raised in February 2011 by US citizen Dave Kleiman. It was raised by him to have a professional vehicle to try land 4 IT/cybersecurity projects at Homeland Security (DHS) with shared IP from him and Craig Wright, his helper from Australia who only brought in his expertise. Craig nor anyone from his family or his related entities were ever member/shareholder of W&K.
• Within a few months, DHS rejected all 4 IT/cybersecurity proposals, and W&K dissolved in 2012 without ever making any revenues. All it was used for in its short existence were the 4 DHS proposals early 2011. And to be perfectly clear: there was also nothing going on related to Bitcoin, because both Craig Wright and Dave Kleiman had no idea that Bitcoin even existed at this point in time.
• In April 2013, Dave Kleiman died. As it happened, Craig Wright bought his first few handfuls of bitcoin on Mt Gox a few days before Dave passed away. This was the first time in his life that Craig Wright touched actual Bitcoin.
• In July and August 2013, Craig filed 2 claims against — still dissolved — W&K at NSW Supreme Court for almost $60,000,000. These 2 claims contained several elements of the 4 DHS project proposals (like their 2011 project codes), but Craig added several Bitcoin elements supported by a bunch of backdated forgeries: Bitcoin source code, Bitcoin mining and Bitcoin IP. Again, these Bitcoin elements had never existed in real life, Craig pulled them from his behind, or created them from thin air as some might say.
• However, Craig Wright got away with these false, empty, claims as — still dissolved — W&K had no representative in court (Dave was dead, remember) so Craig was allowed to play both sides of the false claims, and to top it off in Craig’s advantage, the court did not perform any truth finding whatsoever.
• The result was that in November 2013 Craig was awarded almost $60,000,000 in paper-only value of Bitcoin IP that he had started to use in his Australian tax fraud to try obtain fraudulent GST (= Australian VAT) refunds.
• Australian Taxation Office (ATO), their department Refund Integrity, was not completely stupid however, and already in 2013 they started asking questions. They even halted some tax refunds late 2013, and scheduled several hearings with Craig Wright in February 2014.
• Under this growing pressure of ATO, Craig felt the urge to contact Kleiman estate early February 2014 because he needed their help in confirming to ATO what he had lied about, supported with several forgeries, in NSW Supreme Court in the second half of 2013 about Dave Kleiman and Bitcoin.

• Starting February 2014, Kleiman estate was initially impressed by Craig and his false stories, but after several years of empty promises and having found many inconsistencies and Craig Wright made forgeries (for example several false Dave Kleiman signatures under backdated contract forgeries), they decided to sue Craig Wright in February 2018.
• Ultimately, plaintiff W&K won this lawsuit as the case Jury wrapped up the July 2013 — November 2013 W&K fraud and IP theft under the most suitable label ‘Conversion’, and W&K was awarded $100,000,000 in December 2021. In March 2022 another $43,132,492.48 was added in pre-judgment interest.
• It is probably fair to say that the $100,000,000 penalty is related to the almost $60,000,000 that Craig was ‘awarded’ by NSW Supreme Court in November 2013.

Some people in the BSV camp make a rather hilarious mistake, I noticed. They think that because neither Ira Kleiman nor W&K was awarded half the Satoshi mined bitcoin, that Craig Wright can be considered the sole inventor of Bitcoin and that he was cleared from all charges and accusations. The only minor thing that Craig had to do is pay “a small amount compared to his $10s of billions in wealth to basically himself and/or his ex-wife”. Overall, these people think, Craig Wright has factually ‘won’ the Kleiman v Wright lawsuit.

No. That’s of course not how it works. Craig Wright had tried several times to squeeze other members/shareholders into W&K, however, all these efforts failed as his spoken and written evidence was always found by the court not to be credible and where it came to documents, was found, again, to be forged. So the court had always ruled over the years to the likes of “none of the evidence demonstrates additional membership in W&K other than Dave Kleiman”.

To add, Ira Kleiman used all the evidence available (which was all obtained from Craig Wright, of course) where Craig claimed that, basically, Satoshi was him, Dave Kleiman and a 3rd person called David Rees. Handfuls of such evidence was thrown in the case, as it was important for Ira Kleiman to make a ‘partnership’ between Craig Wright and Dave Kleiman believable to get the highest possible payout: half, or at least a very substantial part, of the Satoshi stash. However, that failed. Why did the partnership claim fail while there was so much evidence provided by Craig Wright?

You saw this image before, yes.

There is only one reason why the partnership claim failed. It was not because they found Ira Kleiman lying about it. That was technically impossible anyway, as the only thing that Ira Kleiman did was filing the evidence obtained from Craig Wright. And it was Craig Wright who claimed and hinted numerous times there was a Satoshi partnership with Dave Kleiman.

So it was actually Craig Wright who was found lying by the case Jury of Kleiman v Wright. He was found lying about being Satoshi, and as a consequence of that finding, he was also found lying about having a Bitcoin related partnership with Dave Kleiman. In other words, it is technically impossible to find that Craig Wright is Satoshi Nakamoto the inventor of Bitcoin, and at the same time finding there is no partnership with Dave Kleiman. To add, what the Jury no doubt had noticed too, is that between the dozens and dozens of forgeries (my estimation is 200+) exposed in this lawsuit, it was both the partnership evidence *and* the Satoshi evidence that was found false, forged, deceptive and backdated. At the same time, there was no genuine, untampered Satoshi evidence to be found in the case material.

Case closed.

3. The forgery allegations

There are widespread allegations that Dr. Wright forged documents in lawsuits. These questions will be answered in the upcoming COPA case. I will not comment on them until that case is over.

Craig Wright created quite a few forgeries, ZeMing.

• Ryan v Wright: 1 (email)
• ATO: estimated 100–250 (emails, deeds and contracts, bookkeeping entries, invoices, letters, screenshots, “super”computer output etc)
• Kleiman v Wright: 200+ (emails, contracts, deeds, screenshots etc)
• hodlonaut v Wrigt: 71 (emails, source code, whitepaper drafts, scans)
• Wright v Bitcoin devs (Pineapple hack): 10–25 (bookkeeping source documents and entries, purchase order Excel sheet)
• COPA v Wright: 431 (almost everything mentioned above, and more)

This makes a total of some 750 to 1,000 forgeries found in several cases. I would like to advise you, ZeMing, go read “Faketoshi And The Madden50”. It contains the Top 50 forgeries in every painful detail from the Madden Report that they are going to discuss during the COPA v Wright trial, starting January 15, 2024.

4. The ‘faketoshi’ fraud allegations

All the above allegations center on Dr. Wright’s Satoshi identity. The majority of the crypto community is convinced that Dr. Wright is not Satoshi. But more than that, they also believe that he is committing fraud claiming that he is Satoshi.

The upcoming COPA case trial will decide on the identity issue. Much of the evidence already presented in the past, and new evidence, will be presented. COPA will focus on Incidences seemed to have shown inconsistencies of Dr. Wright because that is all COPA could rely upon.

COPA must focus on the negatives because too much positive evidence points to Dr. Wright’s Satoshi identity. We shall wait and see what happens in the COPA trial.

“too much positive evidence points to Dr. Wright’s Satoshi identity”

This ‘positive evidence’ might exist in a parallel universe where you live part-time, or it might exist in your wildest dreams activated by copious amounts of some illegal substance, ZeMing, but down on this earth this evidence does not exist. Craig Wright never signed a public Bitcoin address and had its signature publicly verified. He never used a genuine Satoshi PGP key. He never logged on to SourceForge or P2PFoundation to post on their forums. There are no genuine, untampered documents dated July 2011 or earlier that make perfectly clear that Craig Wright knew about Bitcoin and was involved with its inception. There is no stylometry match between Craig Wright and Satoshi Nakamoto. There is no adequate explanation for the hundreds of forgeries that Craig Wright created to advance his (false) position. There are no eye witnesses with any physical evidence.

But at the same time, even if assuming the worst case against Dr. Wright, that the court finds Dr. Wright has committed forgery with regard to several pieces of evidence, one should remember that this is about only several specific pieces of evidence, not all evidence which literally has thousands of pieces, and further not the overall case (which is the first level discussed above).

See more analysis of the COPA case: The key issue in COPA v. Wright, and an introduction on cases co-pending with COPA v. Wright.

Implications

These cases, especially COPA v. Wright, are important to watch because the final result not only concerns the identity of the person who started a new technology that may bring profound transformations to the whole world, but may also determine which vision and version of implementation of the technology works and is good for the world.

Anyone who takes Satoshi’s identity seriously should give it a deeper and more careful look into the matter. That requires going beyond the dominating media noises.

[For more reading… recommend my two-volume book:
BIT & COIN: Merging Digitality and Physicality]

“all evidence which literally has thousands of pieces”

If only you could show us one piece of them, ZeMing. Just one…

But you can’t, I’m afraid.

The End. Thanks for reading again!