Craig Wright pulls mystery box, calls Satoshi ‘he’ during COPA trial

Summary:

• Craig Wright claimed his wife found a box of old papers over the weekend. He might attempt to submit the papers as last-minute evidence, although his suspiciously belated discovery is likely to be denied inclusion by the judge.
• When asked about his work on the original Bitcoin code, Wright accused Craig Maxwell of hacking his servers, and Adam Back of violating laws related to financial services. Wright said Back failed to submit emails from 2009 in which he apparently disparaged Bitcoin.
• Wright claimed he chose to retire the Satoshi Nakamoto pseudonym due to difficulties with the Australian Tax Office, a pending divorce, and his attempts to rebuild his other companies.

The trial of COPA v. Craig Wright continued on Monday for its sixth day in the UK High Court of Justice. The Crypto Open Patent Alliance (COPA) is a pro-BTC group seeking an injunction against Wright, a contentious pro-BSV advocate who believes himself to be Bitcoin’s creator. COPA wants to ban Wright from claiming ownership of Bitcoin’s original code and whitepaper in over 180 countries.

Proceedings have moved to a room that is more air-conditioned than the one used last week, which earned descriptors like “sweltering,” “suffocating,” and “insufferable.” Attendees seemed more at ease on Monday, at least physically.

Monday mayhem: A box of brand new evidence

The drama began almost immediately on Monday. Apparently, over the weekend, Wright’s wife found a box of important papers that Wright wants to immediately introduce as legal evidence.

To call the request belated would be an understatement — the discovery deadline for reviewing evidence expired months ago.

BitMEX Research opined that the judge will likely reject the attempted submission due to the lateness of the ‘find.’

Even if inclusion is denied, his wife’s dramatic discovery might parlay into a pro-Wright media story. Even if Wright were to lose the lawsuit later this month, he can always point to that secret box and conveniently complain that he lost because the judge obstinately refused his belated request.

Perhaps the strategy over this supposed new evidence is as follows:

1. Judge won’t allow it in court because it’s too late

2. CSW loses the case

3. CSW’s narrative is that he lost because the new evidence was not allowed in court and the new evidence proves he is Satoshi

— BitMEX Research (@BitMEXResearch) February 12, 2024

Otherwise, on Monday, Wright went off on one of his usual tangents, accusing Bitcoin developer Craig Maxwell of hacking his server years ago and planting evidence that would, in Wright’s opinion, frame him as a liar many years later.

Wright also accused Adam Back of failing to send over all the emails between the pair as evidence for this month’s trial. Wright said Back, during their early interactions, did not try the Bitcoin ‘system’ nor read the whitepaper. Furthermore, he claimed that Back violated financial service regulations by encouraging people to sell their houses to buy bitcoin, irresponsibly claiming investors could “get rich.”

C: Back says in his witness statement that he provided his communication with Satoshi, you [made up extra communication]W: No [missed]. Adam didn’t try out any of the system, didn’t read read the Bitcoin wp despite me giving it to him.
C: So when Back says he provided a complete…

— Norbert ⚡️ (@bitnorbert) February 12, 2024

Craig Wright answers questions about Bitcoin.org

During testimony, Wright claimed that he chose to hand keys to the Bitcoin code repository to Gavin Andresen for several reasons, including difficulties with an official from the Australian Tax Office allegedly attempting to bankrupt him. He also complained of a pending divorce at the time when he gave Andresen those repository keys, plus distracting time commitments to rebuild his various companies.

Wright said the Australian Tax Office was trying to seize his assets, so he put them in the Tulip Trust. He also claimed this explained why he dropped the Satoshi Nakamoto moniker, reasoning that he’d “moved on to other projects.”

COPA’s attorney and Wright had some back-and-forth about emails between Andresen and Satoshi, including one in which Andresen floated the idea of adding the Bitcoin source code repository to GitHub. (At the time, SourceForge hosted the repository.)

Perhaps tellingly, at this point in proceedings, Wright referred to Satoshi as ‘he,’ quickly correcting himself to say, “He’s resp… I’m responding to the bug tracking. GitHub was better for bug tracking.”

C: You said you gave Gavin access to the source code on SouceForge. That’s in the public domain.
W: It wasn’t when I did it. I had a phone call with Gavin, and he came to London because he understood I knew about all the things we did together.
C: The real Satoshi, when he…

— Norbert ⚡️ (@bitnorbert) February 12, 2024

Read more: Jury sides with Craig Wright in $200B Bitcoin case but he still owes $100M

COPA asked about Satoshi turning over control of the bitcoin.org domain and website to Martti Malmi. Wright said he did that in keeping with his belief of being Satoshi.

Interestingly, this means that Malmi is a top suspect for being the elusive and pseudonymous Cobra against whom Wright won a default judgment. Cobra has not complied with that court order to delete the Bitcoin whitepaper from bitcoin.org. According to Malmi’s X account, he stopped being a Bitcoin developer in 2011.

Craig Wright’s mysterious box of papers

Tomorrow, Wright’s testimony will continue. Wednesday is probably his final day before attention turns to expert witnesses.

Unfortunately, the new air-conditioned courtroom hasn’t prevented Wright from becoming agitated at times, although he hasn’t requested to remove his suit jacket as often as on previous days. After some odd outfits, some spectators have been taking notes on Wright’s fashion choices. On Monday, he wore a relatively modest dark blue suit with pink stripes. No more clown shoes.

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