Stefan Matthews, CEO of TAAL Distributed Information Technologies Inc. (CSE:TAAL | FWB:9SQ1 | OTC: TAALF), recently joined SirToshi Talks on Streamanity.
However, instead of talking about TAAL, SirToshi and Matthews take a deep dive into “the Satoshi Affairs,” an investigative long-form article published roughly five years ago that aims to unearth the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto by examining Dr. Craig S. Wright’s life.
Matthews is mentioned multiple times in the article—85 to be exact—and in his chat with SirToshi, the TAAL CEO provides insight into how the events in the article actually unfolded.
Matthews talks about how he first met Dr. Wright in 2005 and how Dr. Wright showed him very early documents that were later revealed to be the Bitcoin whitepaper and the idea for Bitcoin.
“The way we met, was Craig was working for a company called BDO, and he was working in their digital forensics audit division in Sydney,” Matthews said.
“We engaged BDO to do a control system and security audit and when the partner who was based in Melbourne flew up to Sydney to introduce his audit team, I’m sitting in the boardroom and he had three guys with him and one of them was Craig Steven Wright.”
“Over time he started talking to me about things, and talking about ideas, and asking me, ‘What do you think of this, what do you think of that,’ and I couldn’t work out what he was doing, and I wasn’t interested, but with the passage of time, you come to understand what looked at the time like absolutely unrelated ideas, were actually part of a bigger picture.”
“And in 2008, he started showing me more detailed stuff, and writings and pieces of what I recall to be versions of the whitepaper.”
Matthews goes on to talk about his relationship with Dr. Wright and how he got to know him over the years due to business interests.
Matthews also talks about the search warrants the Australian Taxation Office had for Dr. Wright and the raid that subsequently took place because of that warrant.
“The problem was this, Craig had set up like 16 businesses, or thereabout in a group to do research. And I never fully understood why he had to have 16 companies but his idea was that every idea needed a company. And then the Australian government had then announced that they were increasing the R&D investment grant rebate scheme, and to be able to register for that you needed to go through a process of putting your research idea… and getting it approved, and then if you had an approved idea you could make investment for research and then at the end of the year, what you spent on that research you could claim back through the tax office, which was appointed to actually make the payments,” Matthews said.
“So, if you spent $1 on research you got roughly 50 cents on the dollar back,” he added. “The first year that he put in his claim, it wasn’t such a large amount and the payment was made.”
“The second-year he put in his claim and it was a significantly higher amount, they said hang on, who is this bloke? Then they started to want to know what these projects were.”
“And when the Tax Office comes to audit, they send auditors and you sit down with the auditors and you have to answer questions…so he created enemies at a personal level that he didn’t need to, and he should have known better to behave like that because he was an auditor himself… but basically he told them that they were morons and that they didn’t understand what they were looking at.”
Matthews and SirToshi go on to talk about the legal troubles Dr. Wright experienced in the Satoshi Affair era as well as the origins of the Bitcoin whitepaper and how Dr. Wright got associated with nChain.
To learn what happened during the Satoshi Affairs era, watch SirToshi Talks: Stefan Matthews TAAL CEO, available exclusively on Streamanity.
See also: Stefan Matthews talk about blockchain and regulatory compliance on Hashing It Out With Becky Liggero
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