Will the Real Satoshi Please Stand Up?
A comprehensive outline of Craig Wright’s claim of being Satoshi Nakaomoto
On May 2nd, 2016, Craig Wright (CW) made public claims of being the main person behind Satoshi Nakamoto through several prominent media outlets such as the Economist and BBC.
The Economist states that CW demonstrated the verification of controlling the keys for some of bitcoin’s earliest blocks to them in person. This assessment was confirmed by prominent Bitcoin figures Gavin Andresen and Jon Matonis. However, it is interesting to note that CW did not want to make the proof public.
Shortly after the articles were published, Gavin posted on his blog, supporting CW’s claim to being Satoshi.
I believe Craig Steven Wright is the person who invented Bitcoin. I was flown to London to meet Dr. Wright a couple of weeks ago, after an initial email conversation convinced me that there was a very good chance he was the same person I’d communicated with in 2010 and early 2011. After spending time with him I am convinced beyond a reasonable doubt: Craig Wright is Satoshi…
Later, Gavin Andrsen (through reddit) gave details of this verification process for CW
Craig signed a message that I chose (“Gavin’s favorite number is eleven. CSW” if I recall correctly) using the private key from block number 1.
That signature was copied on to a clean usb stick I brought with me to London, and then validated on a brand-new laptop with a freshly downloaded copy of electrum.
I was not allowed to keep the message or laptop (fear it would leak before Official Announcement).
I don’t have an explanation for the funky OpenSSL procedure in his blog post.
Jon Matonis, also posted on his blog, supporting CW’s claim of being Satoshi.
During the London proof sessions, I had the opportunity to review the relevant data along three distinct lines: cryptographic, social, and technical. Based on what I witnessed, it is my firm belief that Craig Steven Wright satisfies all three categories. For cryptographic proof in my presence, Craig signed and verified a message using the private key from block #1 newly-generated coins and from block #9 newly-generated coins (the first transaction to Hal Finney). The social evidence, including his unique personality, early emails that I received, and early drafts of the Bitcoin white paper, points to Craig as the creator. I also received satisfactory explanations to my questions about registering the bitcoin.org domain and the various time-of-day postings to the BitcoinTalk forum. Additionally, Craig’s technical working knowledge of public key cryptography, Bitcoin’s addressing system, and proof-of-work consensus in a distributed peer-to-peer environment is very strong…
In a post titled Jean-Paul Sartre, Signing and Significance (his first blog post after his claim, which is now removed), CW posted what appeared to be the signature from the text of Jean-Peal Sartre which is associated to an early Bitcoin block owned by Satoshi. Reddit was able to debunk this claim and found that the signature was of the transaction, not of the text. CW’s misleading post raised further suspicion and doubts about his claim.
What Craig Wright basically did was take Satoshi Nakamoto’s publically available signature on the blockchain, copy it, and present it to everyone.
Cryptographically verifying ownership of the first few bitcoin blocks is not a difficult process as was demonstrated by Charlie Lee, the developer of Litecoin.
A more detailed technical analysis of CW’s blog post can be found here and here.
A day after, CW made another post (now deleted) titled Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Proof in an effort to acknowledge the widespread backlash and skepticism. In his post CW stated:
So, over the coming days, I will be posting a series of pieces that will lay the foundations for this extraordinary claim, which will include posting independently-verifiable documents and evidence addressing some of the false allegations that have been levelled, and transferring bitcoin from an early blocks
As everyone eagerly waited for some of Satoshi’s Bitcoins to move, Craig Wright shocked the public once again…
On May 5th, 2016, CW posted a farewell statement apologizing for his lack of courage and that he could not go through with the verification process.
According to the BBC, Craig Wright’s PR Firm sent a draft form outlining a scheme for Matonis, Andresen, and the BBC to send a small amount of Bitcoin to an address associated with the first Bitcoin transaction. The Bitcoin would be then sent back to their original owners, resulting in outgoing transactions from the Bitcoin address and thereby proving ownership. However, Craig Wright did not have the “courage” to see it through.
Taking a look at the evidence…
CW claimed to be involved with high performance computing firm SGI which was later proven to be false.
In December 2015, there were “leaked” documents that pointed to CW being Satoshi Nakamoto. The “leak” contained the original PGP keys associated with Satoshi but upon further investigation, it was found that they were most likely backdated (created using technology that was not yet available at the time of creation).
CW faked receiving credentials such as a PhD in computer science with Charles Surt University.
CW tax fraud investigation by the Australian Taxation Office (ATO).
Further support from Ian Griggs and JVP that CW is Satoshi Nakamoto.
“Leaked” document of Tulip Trust addressed to CW detailing ownership of Satoshi Nakamoto’s 1,000,000+ Bitcoin
Why?
What remains most unclear to me is that, surely CW must have anticipated the backlash and skepticism that he was faced with. Knowing this, why did he choose to reveal himself as Satoshi Nakamoto and why did he choose such an obscure method of convincing everyone?
Currently, these seem like the more possible and likely reasons…
- Laying the groundwork in order to claim 1,000,000+ Bitcoin
2. Avoid legal troubles with ATO
3. Publicity purposes
4. CW genuinely thought his attempt would successfully deceive everyone
Despite Craig Wright’s farewell, I am sure that this is not the last we will be hearing from him or about Satoshi Nakamoto and the Tulip Trust. With Bitcoin’s continued momentum and block reward reduction just around the corner, things are only about to get more interesting for Bitcoin.
Don’t be surprised by what comes next.
