So, here’s what went down in the craziest courtroom drama featuring Craig Wright, the dude who continues to claim he made Bitcoin. This whole shebang has been unfolding in London, where the big question is: Is Craig Wright really Satoshi Nakamoto, aka the Bitcoin boss? Grab your popcorn, ’cause this story’s got more twists than a pretzel.
First off, Wright’s own former legal eagles at Ontier are calling BS on some emails his wife tried to play as evidence. These emails were supposed to be the smoking gun proving Wright had his hands in the Bitcoin cookie jar way back when. But nope, turns out those emails might as well have been written in invisible ink because Ontier says they’re as fake as a three-dollar bill.
This bomb dropped when Wright’s current squad from Shoosmiths, another fancy law firm, shared these emails in court, thinking they’d struck gold. They even checked in with Ontier, like, “Hey, you remember these?” And Ontier was like, “Uh, nope. Never seen those before.”
And get this: the whole email circus came out because Wright, under the heat of questioning, mentioned them last week. His wife, Ramona, then passed them to Shoosmiths, who must’ve felt like they hit the jackpot until Ontier rained on their parade.
Now, everyone’s eyes are on these emails, with lawyers from both sides, Wright and the Crypto Open Patent Alliance (COPA), gearing up to play detective. Meanwhile, this digital forensics expert, Patrick Madden, took the stand, and let’s just say he wasn’t Wright’s biggest fan. He’s been poking holes in Wright’s story, suggesting the guy might’ve been cooking up documents to make it look like he’s Bitcoin’s daddy.
But when Shoosmiths’ Craig Orr got a crack at Madden, he tried to shake the expert’s confidence, questioning how sure Madden was about his findings. Madden kinda wobbled, admitting he wasn’t 100% on some stuff, which Orr jumped on like a cat on a laser pointer. Orr even grilled Madden for cozying up too much with COPA’s lawyers while prepping his report, hinting Madden might’ve lost his neutral expert badge somewhere along the way.
Then, there’s this whole drama with animations showing how someone could’ve messed with the Bitcoin whitepaper, making edits that looked shady. Obviously, Wright did that. He then admitted that, yeah, if you were going to fake it, that’s how you’d do it. But he insists that the edit was all just a show-and-tell for his lawyers.
I’m like … huh?
The courtroom turned into a bit of a tech tutorial, too, with talks about this accounting software Wright used, called MYOB. The gist is, some folks think Wright tried to backdate documents with it, which he denies, saying it’s all a big misunderstanding.
Wright kept trying to defend his corner, even when things got heated over some emails and other evidence that experts had already thrown out. He’s sticking to his story, but the folks questioning him are not buying what he’s selling.
And just when you think it can’t get any more interesting, Zooko Wilcox-O’Hearn, the Zcash guy, pops up. He’s all chill, talking about his crypto adventures and how he and Satoshi were just a couple of geeks geeking out over privacy and not being bossed around. To cap it all off, Marrti Malmi, one of Bitcoin’s earliest developers, throws a wrench into Wright’s timeline, saying their chats with Satoshi happened later than Wright claims. And Malmi was so over it, he aired out the emails on social media for all to see. I, personally, had a lot of fun reading them.
