A number of witnesses took the stand for Dr. Craig Wright in London’s COPA v Wright trial this week, telling the court in various ways that their experience with Dr. Wright before the public release of the Bitcoin White Paper makes him a likely candidate to be Satoshi Nakamoto.
The most dramatic of these came from Rob Jenkins, a former business associate and later friend of Dr. Wright appearing via video link. Jenkins told the court that while he hadn’t been sent any pre-release draft of the Bitcoin White Paper, he does remember being shown a document by Dr. Wright which included ‘Timecoin’ in the header.
When Dr. Wright’s testimony earlier in the trial led us through a series of pre-release Bitcoin documents he has in his possession, ‘Timecoin’ featured heavily in both early iterations of Dr. Wright’s work on Bitcoin and in handwritten notes he made during the years leading up to Bitcoin’s release.
The revelation was so significant that it left COPA’s barrister—Jonathan Moss of Hogarth Chambers—with no choice but to accuse Jenkins of being ‘prepped’ for his testimony, at one point demanding that Jenkins hold his notes up to the camera (Jenkins had already told the court he had scribbled ‘Timecoin’ down).
Earlier in the trial, Dr. Wright was goaded by Jonathan Hough KC for COPA that of the many people Dr. Wright has said he gave early drafts of the Bitcoin White Paper to, only two (alleged financial backer Stefan Matthews and Dr. Wright’s uncle Don Lynam) have been willing to go on record. As of this week, COPA can add another name to the list.
Jenkins’ also gave testimony that lined up with that of a witness on Friday— Mark Archbold, who was IT Manager at Lasseters Casino when Dr. Wright was implementing their security system. Both Jenkins and Archbold describe proto-Bitcoin type security systems Dr. Wright was setting up, noting it involved complex firewalls and most importantly, a sequential logging system that was encrypted. As Jenkins described:
“It was being described to me as we were disappearing down a rabbit hole of how you could protect a log file from being tampered with. We were going through a minutiae of scenarios and Craig described things like hashing the serials and talking about ‘how do you differentiate between an operational log file and a new log file,’ and when Craig was describing this he referenced the ‘genesis’ log file.”
Sound familiar?
Similarly, Archbold describes a logging system developed by Dr. Wright for the security network at Lasseters. He says he saw firsthand that Dr. Wright had a large server room where he was storing the logs from his IT Security work, and that the logs were compressed and encrypted. The development and use of this system, Archbold testified, was being done in the hope of getting Lasseter’s accreditation and approval from the New South Wales government.
Archbold also noted that Lasseters contracted with Dr. Wright after the company had already tried to use consulting powerhouse Deloitte. Deloitte had tried and failed to get the accreditation twice, and by that time Archbold said Lasseters were ready to try something else. This led Archbold to Dr. Wright.
In other words, two witnesses testified this week that Dr. Wright’s security work for them involved encrypted sequential databases providing the kind of security that Deloitte couldn’t offer after multiple failed attempts.
A similarly revealing story came from Dr. Ignatius Pang. Pang is a bioinformatician in Australia who worked with Dr. Wright at BDO Kendalls. Pang said that during their time together at BDO between 2007 and 2009, Dr. Wright’s office banter including telling Pang to use his Lego set to build a blockchain. Pang says he remembered this as a strange interaction, because using Lego to build a blockchain is trivial (it’s the core philosophy of Lego building) so Pang felt Dr. Wright was talking about something else. Dr. Wright would elaborate later, inviting Pang to make a recursive Chines chain puzzle, which involves nine linked rings interlocking through a central loop.
Pang also said that he and BDO colleagues remember Dr. Wright pacing up and down the BDO cafeteria asking people whether or not they’d heard of a Japanese person. Pang said he believes that name was Satoshi Nakamoto. He also made reference to Dr. Wright having used the word ‘Bitcoin’ with him before the release of the white paper.
Importantly, Pang was also asked about a BDO CV that Hough KC had used to grill Dr. Wright during his testimony. According to Hough KC and COPA, the CV only includes references to IT security services and therefore none of what Dr. Wright is saying about his highly specialized services at BDO could be true. When Dr. Wright was asked about this, he said that this CV was one of many prepared by BDO for different purposes, which Hough KC implied was part of Dr. Wright’s ‘tissue of lies’ at the heart of his case.
But when Pang was asked about this document on Thursday, he said that the CV is not inaccurate but does not tell the full story:
“It’s an overall bird’s eye view of his responsibilities, of which there were many,” Pang said, going on to say that “there are a lot of details that are not captured, such as the digital forensic services which are very complicated.”
Hough KC, trying his luck once more, asked Pang whether it’s fair to say based on this CV that Dr. Wright’s BDO work focused on IT Security, IT Audit and Review and Digital Forensics work.
“I would say this is only part of it,” said Pang. “He also does very advanced data analytics for clients.”
Though naturally not as explosive as Dr. Wright’s marathon testimony, these are the witnesses who might leave the largest impression on the court. They are individuals with reputations of their own entirely external to the digital asset industry who both attest to Dr. Wright’s skills and work history, which they say was unique and of a high enough level that when they heard he had been outed as Satoshi Nakamoto in 2015, it didn’t come as too much of a surprise.
What’s next?
COPA will be cross-examining Dr. Wright’s remaining fact witnesses until Tuesday. After that, it will be time for Dr. Wright’s team to grill the fact witnesses presented by COPA. The expert evidence is not set to be heard until the following week.
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