Craig Wright’s appeal application in his case against the Crypto Open Patent Alliance (COPA) was rejected by a UK court today, described as a baseless argument with “no prospect of success.”

Court of Appeal judge Lord Justice Arnold wrote that the motion was refused “as being totally without merit.”

Wright filed multiple appeals after he was found to undoubtedly not be Bitcoin’s creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, during legal proceedings against COPA earlier this year. 

As reported by BitMex Research, Craig Wright’s appeal attempted to paint the judge as biased. However, today the court ruled “no credible allegation of either actual basis or apparent bias is made by Dr Wright, but only a series of disagreements with the judge’s reasoning.”

“In fact the judge leant over backwards to ensure that Dr Wright received a fair trial,” the ruling said.

Read more: Craig Wright ordered back to UK for COPA contempt of court hearing

Wright’s reliance on ChatGPT was also noted. It said that instances of his appeal and argument contained, “multiple falsehoods, including reliance upon fictitious authorities […] which appear to be AI-generated hallucinations.”

Craig Wright is scheduled to face a contempt of court hearing on December 18 after COPA countered his £900 billion ($1.14 trillion) claim against Jack Dorsey’s Square and BTC Core. If found guilty, Wright may be arrested and sentenced to up to two years in prison.  

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The post Craig Wright COPA appeal rejected by UK court as meritless appeared first on Protos.

An amended appeal notice submitted by Craig Wright and released last Friday by lawyers working for the Crypto Open Patent Alliance (COPA) allegedly contains ChatGPT “hallucinations” and fake AI-generated Bitcoin code.

The documents were shared by Bird & Bird on behalf of COPA, which has accused Wright of contempt of court. In a claim filed last week, the alliance said that Wright breached an injunction when he removed an online notice and launched his lawsuit against Jack Dorsey’s Square Up and BTC Core.

According to the affidavit, “Since Dr. Wright began corresponding on his own behalf, it struck us early on that his documents appeared to be written in the style of ChatGPT.”

“On one occasion when corresponding with the Court, he appeared to accidentally copy and paste not only the output from ChatGPT, but also the prompt that he had submitted,” Bird & Bird added.

Mark Hunter, co-presenter of the Dr Bitcoin podcast, has shared a screenshot showcasing one such email with ChatGPT text included.

Read more: Craig Wright says autism and Christmas plans should keep him out of court

Additionally, 16 links to various CoinDesk, The Block, Bitmex research, and other articles that have been cited as evidence within Wright’s appeal were broken and apparently made up.

Reddit user StealthyExcellent claims to have assessed Wright’s appeal, noting, “These are not just broken links. They appear to be made up completely by Craig, or most likely hallucinated by Craig’s ChatGPT bot.”

Wright also seemingly used ChatGPT to write fake Bitcoin code and make up extra lines of code within his appeal.

Lawyers representing COPA previously claimed that Wright had used ChatGPT to forge documents during his high court case “due to the pressure of time.” They also found evidence of ChatGPT’s use in documents that were dated before the creation of the AI software. 

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Craig Wright argued that his high-level autism and Christmas schedule should prevent him from attending a December court session after he was accused of contempt of court in a legal application filed today by COPA. 

BitMEX Research covered the hearing where Bird and Bird filed its claim on behalf of the Crypto Open Patent Alliance (COPA). The law firm argued that Wright has breached his injunction after he removed an online notice and launched his lawsuit against Jack Dorsey’s Square Up and BTC Core. 

On top of this, COPA wants to stay Wright’s lawsuit, halting the relevant court proceedings until the contempt of court filing is settled. 

Read more: Craig Wright files lawsuit against BTC Core and Square without barrister

COPA lawyer Jonathan Hough claimed, “It’s wrong in principle to hide behind a keyboard from a closet in Thailand. [Wright] says he is a UK resident and should be expected to return to the UK for the hearing.”

He added, “[Wright] is seeking to evade the consequences of his actions. He may want to avoid the police or avoid detention.” 

Craig claims autism prevents court appearance

COPA wants Wright to attend the contempt of court hearing in person but Wright argues that his high-level autism won’t allow it. “Look at me now,” he said while streaming from Singapore. “The lighting is set in a certain way. Being able to sit in a courtroom is a different issue, I might have a meltdown and I might not be cognitively able.” 

He also claims that he rarely sees his children and that it will be difficult for him to attend the hearing while his family is in Singapore in December. 

The judge ruled to stay Wright’s lawsuit against Square Up and scheduled a court session to determine if he was in contempt of court for December 18. A November 26 hearing will decide if Wright should attend this hearing in person or not.

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The post Craig Wright says autism and Christmas plans should keep him out of court appeared first on Protos.

Craig Wright has ditched his main X (formerly Twitter) account and redirected users to another profile with 32,600 fewer followers five months after he lost his UK Bitcoin court case.

The post was shared by someone named ‘LB’ on Wright’s behalf. They told followers of @Dr_CSWright that the account was no longer in use and to follow the @CsTominaga account for “blockchain and Bitcoin information.” 

This new account mostly posts vague content about the creation of Bitcoin and its technology. It also includes a pinned tweet that reads, “Legal notice: Dr Craig Steven Wright is not Satoshi Nakamoto.”

Wright is legally bound to disclose this statement after he lost his Bitcoin case last March and was subjected to a court injunction on July 16.

The account claimed, “Today, for the first time, I am truly free,” and noted that, “Going forward, I am establishing my own websites and other platforms to publish my papers and link the documents I am writing.”

Craig Wright is attempting to submit two appeals

Over the weekend, the UK appeals case tracker was also updated to include not one, but two appeal applications from Wright. 

It lists a request for appeal against Peter McCormack and a $1.9 million freezing order McCormack successfully applied for against Wright. Judge Justice Mellor approved this order on July 5. This request for appeal states it is, “Awaiting bundles and/or documents from applicant/applicant’s solicitors.”

Read more: COPA confirms Craig Wright is desperately trying to appeal

His request to appeal the decision in the Crypto Open Patent Alliance (COPA) case is now also visible and also states that it’s awaiting documents from relevant parties. 

Protos reported that the law firm representing COPA, Bird & Bird, said it’s “confident that there is no proper basis for the appeal.” The podcast Dr Bitcoin reported that his appeal request is over 500 pages long and equivalent to a four-inch stack of paper.  

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The post Craig Wright’s new X account still makes it clear he’s not Satoshi appeared first on Protos.

Craig Wright might be on the run from the UK legal system and behind on his payment obligations, but he still can’t control his desire to post bizarre content to the internet.

In a new video published to YouTube, the man famous for lying about writing Bitcoin’s whitepaper and who owes massive sums of money to victims talks from inside a wardrobe about the “philosophy of law” to a small gathering of e-course students.

For over an hour, Wright talks about legal issues unrelated to Bitcoin and at the end promises to publish even more videos, saying he is working on additional content for “a Kindle or something like that.”

Earlier this year, the highest copyright court in the world ruled that Wright lied about writing Bitcoin’s whitepaper, including submitting doctored evidence and perjuring himself in court to support his false claim.

Furthermore, on July 4, the UK High Court of Justice issued a worldwide freezing order worth $1.9 million against Wright — adding to many other financial burdens.

In that order, the court noted that Wright’s whereabouts are unknown, despite his many obligations to respond to court orders. “Wright appears to have left his previous residence in Wimbledon some weeks ago now… I have not been given any further information as to his whereabouts or whether he has left the UK for good,” the judge explained.

Read more: Calvin Ayre leaves X after court finds Craig Wright is not Satoshi

Recently, Wright attempted to appeal that ruling in a desperate, 600-page filing. The court is reviewing and isn’t obligated to accept his appeal. The Crypto Open Patent Alliance (COPA), which prevailed in its lawsuit against Wright, is “confident that there is no proper basis for the appeal.”

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The post Craig Wright posts video from bare closet as he dodges payments appeared first on Protos.

Craig Wright has filed a request to launch an appeal with the UK courts according to the legal counsel of the Cryptocurrency Open Patent Alliance (COPA).

Law firm Bird & Bird, representing COPA, confirmed to Protos that Wright filed the appeal request and said it would respond in due course. The firm added that it’s “confident that there is no proper basis for the appeal.”

The UK Court of Appeal also confirmed that the appeal was issued on August 14.

According to the UK’s Courts and Tribunal Service, a request for appeal may not be accepted on the basis that those filing it believe the judge ‘got it wrong.’ In order for the request to be accepted it must be shown that the decision was wrong due to a serious mistake or improper procedure.

Wright’s appeal was revealed this morning

There was speculation surrounding Wright’s appeal after an X (formerly Twitter) account, believed to be under his control, shared a snippet detailing part of his filed appeal this morning.

Read more: Swiss MoneyMuseum deletes ‘outdated’ Craig Wright Bitcoin claims

This account has also shared the notices Wright is legally obliged to post following injunctions from the court, suggesting it may indeed be his.

It’s unclear exactly what the dates 05-08-2024 and 09-08-2024 mean in relation to the filing. Some X users believe it means he filed the appeal on time by August 5, 21 days after the July 16 judgment, while others think the later date implied it was filed too late.

Protos previously reported that Wright, based on confirmation from the Judicial Office and UK appeals tracker, had not filed an appeal by August 5.

‘Craig Wright’ X account says he isn’t using ChatGPT in filings

One X account, claiming to be a UK and Europe patent attorney, said that his appeal submission may have been written using ChatGPT.

The supposed Craig Wright account then refuted these claims, claiming “COPA keeps pushing the false narrative that I relied on AI to write my work.”

“They can’t accept that my work stands on its own merit, so they’re left with weak and unfounded accusations,” it said.

Now we have to wait and see if Wright’s request for an appeal will be accepted.

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London’s High Court of Justice, arguably the world’s most powerful copyright court, has reconvened to sentence Craig Wright for his false, perjurious claims to have written Bitcoin’s whitepaper as its creator, Satoshi Nakamoto.

The courtroom was packed to hear final arguments from lawyers representing the Crypto Open Patent Alliance (COPA), which represents Bitcoin developers and companies.

Today’s arguments aren’t about whether Wright lied — he did — but merely the punishment Wright should receive.

COPA lead attorney Jonathan Hough is obviously asking for a court injunction barring Wright from making any claim in a public forum about being Satoshi Nakamoto.

The alliance also wants the court to categorically deny any remaining legal avenues for Wright to appeal the ruling.

Read more: Judge says Craig Wright ‘not as clever as he thinks he is’

Moreover, COPA wants to escalate the ruling within the UK judiciary from what was essentially a copyright suit to a criminal proceeding. COPA has also asked to include Wright’s once-colleague at nChain, Stefan Matthews, as a criminal defendant for his own perjury.

COPA reminded the judge that Matthews supported Wright with false evidence, even after the court found Matthews’ evidence to be fake.

During today’s hearing, the judge voiced agreement that the court has a responsibility to impose an ‘extraordinary’ sentence on Wright due to his extensive, multi-year campaign to mislead the world about his identity. At a maximum, the court has the ability to put Wright behind bars for years.

Wright’s sentencing hearing has concluded for today, with proceedings due to continue next week.

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The post Court to sentence Craig Wright for lying about being Satoshi appeared first on Protos.

A UK judge has branded litigious computer scientist Craig Wright an arrogant liar who frequently uses ‘technobabble’ and isn’t ‘nearly as clever as he thinks he is.’

The damning comments were made by Mr. Justice Mellor in a written judgment to accompany the March verdict in the civil lawsuit brought by the non-profit Crypto Open Patent Alliance (COPA) that asked the court to rule that Wright didn’t create the world’s most famous cryptocurrency.

Wright has been attempting to convince the world that he is Bitcoin’s creator ever since he claimed to the Australian Tax Office in 2013 that he controlled in excess of 1 million bitcoins. He has subsequently sought on multiple occasions to shut down anybody who challenges this view.

It was hoped that such a ruling would prevent the famously litigious Wright from continuing with separate lawsuits against a number of Bitcoin developers and prominent crypto companies, including Coinbase, Block, and Kraken.

In the judgment, Mellor confirms his view that Wright is not Satoshi Nakamoto, did not author Bitcoin’s whitepaper in 2009, and did not create the ‘Bitcoin system.’

However, he will likely find it far more difficult to take that approach in the future following the outcome of this high-profile case and its accompanying no-holds-barred judgment. Mellor also stated that:

• “In both his written evidence and in days of oral evidence under cross-examination, I am entirely satisfied that Dr. Wright lied to the Court extensively and repeatedly.”
• “Dr. Wright resorted to further lies and evasions. The final  destination frequently turned out to be either Dr. Wright blaming some other (often unidentified) person for his predicament or what can only be described as technobabble delivered by him in the witness box.”
• “I do not believe that Satoshi would ever have resorted to forgery in his attempt to prove he was Satoshi. He would not have backdated documents or altered the clock on his computer(s), for the simple reason that there was and is no need for him to do so.”
• “The arrogance he [Wright] displayed was at odds with what comes through from Satoshi’s writing. In short, in his writing and attitude Dr. Wright just doesn’t sound or act like Satoshi.”

Read more: Craig Wright hits COPA trial with 164,000 pages of evidence

Wright’s cross-examination in court threw up a number of bizarre moments. These include Qudos Bank CIO David Bridges claiming that Wright had become “very annoying” but was probably Satoshi because he was interested in “Japanese stuff,” Wright attempting to submit a box of old papers that his wife had apparently found, and his claims to have destroyed the hard drive containing Satoshi’s private keys while high on sedatives.

Wright also didn’t do his case any favors when he mistakenly referred to Satoshi in the third-person.

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The biggest trial of Craig Wright’s life, the self-proclaimed creator of Bitcoin, is less than two weeks from its conclusion. On Friday, the eccentric computer scientist testified for the final time in an attempt to convince a judge that he wrote Bitcoin’s whitepaper as Satoshi Nakamoto.

Wright is defending against well-capitalized plaintiffs, the Crypto Open Patent Alliance (COPA), and is fighting for his right to sue Bitcoin developers and influencers for using what he believes to be his intellectual property.

Wright and his ultrawealthy colleague Calvin Ayre are a litigious duo whose careers have focused on intellectual property. In courts across the globe, they believe that they are defending the real bitcoin, a hard fork called BSV, against the far more valuable and widely adopted BTC.

Unfortunately, the trial, which is taking place in London’s High Court of Justice, the most powerful copyright court in the world, hasn’t improved investors’ sentiment toward BSV. Since the trial began at the beginning of February, BSV is mostly unchanged in value relative to BTC.

Indeed, over the past five years, BSV has lost 90% of its value in BTC terms, and today the market capitalization of BSV is 99.8% lower than BTC’s dominant $1.2 trillion.

The Rolls Royce building trial has been underway since the beginning of February. This week, most of the courtroom is adjourned on an intermission of sorts. With four weeks of court proceedings to digest, there are few events on this week’s docket. Final oral closing submissions are slated for March 12-15 and a final ruling could arrive as early as this month.

If COPA wins, Wright will be enjoined by the supreme court of 180 Berne Convention countries from asserting copyright and authorship claims over Bitcoin’s whitepaper, which describes the technology underpinning a now-$1.2 trillion crypto. In the eyes of the public, the ruling will be one of the most definitive statements from a court on whether Wright is or is not Satoshi.

So far, Wright’s overarching story is that he was framed. For years, he claims, his enemies planted evidence that would fool or be used against him. Difficult-to-explain evidence is, he claims, the act of hackers, incompetent cypherpunks and cryptographers, and his enemies who sabotaged his computers, servers, and personal possessions over the years.

Wright takes the stand for his final testimony

Friday was the nineteenth day of the trial and Wright rounded off the fourth week of proceedings with his final day of testimony. COPA’s expert witness Patrick Madden also took the stand to discuss his Madden Report regarding the facts of the case.

On Friday, Wright’s testimony started with a revisit of MYOB, a file service used by Wright and, importantly, to which his former attorneys at Ontier LLP had access. Wright fired Ontier after alleging that they were incompetent at best and, at worst, in cahoots with his enemies.

In response to questions, Wright confirmed an email chain between himself and Simon Cohen was genuine, though he said it wasn’t the full chain. That chain also discussed some matters related to MYOB.

Wright answers questions from the Madden Report

Next, Wright responded to questions about an email from Wright’s wife sent to Shoosmiths that was mentioned in the Madden Report. Wright denied COPA attorney Jonathan Hough’s assertion that the email had been sent on February 18, 2024 and contained nChain’s logo. Again, he questioned whether Patrick Madden had analyzed it properly.

Wright claimed an email from Ontier to Shoosmith after last Friday’s testimony had been ‘spoofed,’ citing headers he said were missing. It seemed nearly identical to an email sent in 2019, with only a few text edits. Wright also claimed there were visual differences between the two emails, though he called them irrelevant.

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

He also mentioned that some of his messages could have contained irregularities that sent them to Ontier’s spam folder. Abandoned there, they could have been automatically deleted after 30 days if not found.

When Judge Mellor asked who would have spoofed those emails, Wright reverted to his previous talking point that parties had framed him, specifically mentioning former associates like former nChain CEO Christen Ager-Hannsen and Arthur van Pelt. He accused van Pelt, for instance, of obtaining screenshots by accessing things to which he shouldn’t have had access.

Arthur van Pelt argued adamantly that Wright isn’t Satoshi. He also made a sarcastic comment about being framed as “Wright’s arch-nemesis” which he considered ludicrous. Although he didn’t make an official appearance as a witness in this month’s trial, participants discussed some of his actions. For his part, van Pelt says that he merely grabbed material from a publicly available Dropbox created by COPA.

Patrick Madden himself answers questions

After a break, Madden took the stand to discuss his reporting. First, he denied that a February 18 email showed signs of being “spoofed.” He sighted headers that looked normal, given “standard infrastructure.”

Attorneys presented and discussed the Sender Policy Framework (SPF), an email-related standard that provides an additional layer of security to prevent spoofing. Hough had access to SPF settings that would have been relevant to the period in question. Someone added an SBF verification record between February 24 and February 28. Wright’s legal team argued that the email had been sent without an SPF check, which could indicate that it had been spoofed.

Madden counterargued that Google and its SMTP servers wouldn’t allow a ‘spoofed’ email. Therefore, in Madden’s view, Wright had very likely sent the email.

Read more: Craig Wright hits COPA trial with 164,000 pages of evidence

When asked what effect two-factor authentication (2FA) would have on Google authentication, Madden said, “Two-factor authentication would be needed to sign in. A pre-authenticated session would not need a sign-in and not need two-factor authentication.”

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The post COPA v. Craig Wright nears final ruling on Bitcoin’s whitepaper appeared first on Protos.

Day 18 of the Crypto Open Patent Alliance (COPA) v. Craig Wright trial saw, for the first time, an entire day’s worth of questions focused on Satoshi’s private keys. Wright claims that they’re his but COPA says he’s not Satoshi.

As Bitcoin’s creator and first miner, Satoshi earned over 1 million bitcoin via Bitcoin’s coinbase mining reward. 

Those wallets hold over $60 billion worth of bitcoin today meaning that, unless Satoshi destroyed, gave away, or died with those private keys, they might be the 25th richest person on Forbes’ billionaire leaderboard.

The court welcomes two cryptographers

Two witnesses took the stand in London’s High Court of Justice on Wednesday to discuss exactly who owns Satoshi’s private keys.

First up was Zeming Gao, who describes himself as a ‘student of truth’ and an intellectual property attorney-turned ‘company-as-a-product” consultant. He also authored Bit & Coin: Merging Digitality and Physicality: Volume I.

Gao also previously commented on a loophole-filled settlement offer that Wright offered to COPA and Bitcoin Core developers before the trial began. Gao hinted that BSV — a hard fork of Bitcoin that Wright supports —  could “make centralized exchanges obsolete.” However, he didn’t fully explain that argument.

Next to take the stand was Sarah Meiklejohn, professor of cryptography and security at University College London and a staff research scientist at Google. She’s taught or worked with Ph.D. students who later took positions at Chainalysis, Protocol Labs, and the Ethereum Foundation.

Read more: COPA v. Craig Wright trial analyzes newly published Satoshi emails

Just sign a transaction as Satoshi

Much of Gao’s and Meiklejohn’s testimonies discussed the technical feasibility of Wright proving himself Bitcoin’s creator simply by signing a message using one of Satoshi Nakamoto’s private keys.

Indeed, these two witnesses finally addressed the elephant in the room: Could Wright simply sign a Satoshi wallet transaction?

Their testimonies primarily focused on Wright’s one-on-one meeting with Gavin Andresen, the second person to ever hold the keys to Bitcoin’s code repository.

Wright claims that he, as Satoshi, gave those code repository keys to Andresen. When they met face-to-face years ago, Wright supposedly signed a message using one of Satoshi’s private keys.

Andresen initially believed Wright and publicly pronounced Wright as Satoshi. He later recanted.

Witness #1: Zeming Gao

Gao started by requesting to delete a paragraph in a joint statement submitted by himself and Professor Meiklejohn. He confirmed his disagreement with a point made in that joint statement.

He agreed with COPA attorney Jonathan Hough’s description of Bitcoin’s verification of transactions, which uses an elliptic curve digital signature algorithm (ECDSA). However, he disagreed with Hough’s statement that anyone could prove that they controlled a private key by using it to sign an agreed-upon message.

Hough referenced the possibility that Andressen brought a USB stick containing public keys to the meeting where Wright had offered to prove he was Satoshi Nakamoto. However, Gao confirmed that Bitocin’s cryptography made it “practically not possible” to derive private keys from those public keys.

Wright briefly convinced Andressen that he was Satoshi Nakamoto, but Andresen soon backtracked, saying that he “could have been fooled.”

Gao admitted that he had enough expertise to discuss the feasibility of Wright signing a Satoshi transaction during that face-to-face meeting with Andresen, but his expertise didn’t reach a higher level.

Craig Wright’s curious signing ceremony

Next, Gao went over concerns about Wright’s attempt to sign such a message during his meeting with Andresen. 

For example, Gao confirmed Meiklejohn’s statement that Andresen’s laptop hadn’t been present during the meeting.

Read more: Craig Wright hits COPA trial with 164,000 pages of evidence

It was also unclear who installed the Bitcoin software used for the signing ceremony. It could have been either Craig Wright or Gavin Andresen or someone else. Wright said he could have done it but apparently didn’t accurately recall whether he used Electrum or another download from GitHub. Professor Meiklejohn, for example, mentioned in her statement that it was Electrum.

The statement also mentioned a concern about a ‘man-in-the-middle’ attack since steps were not taken to prevent that type of vulnerability. 

Man-in-the-middle attacks occur when an attacker injects a device between two devices on a network to intercept and possibly modify traffic traveling between the target devices. This happens most often when one of the target devices is on a public Wi-Fi connection, like the one in the hotel where Wright and Andresen held their meeting.

Encrypted connections using protocols like HTTPS can help reduce the risk of a man-in-the-middle attack by making the data more difficult to decode. However, an encrypted connection doesn’t entirely remove the risk that an attacker could relay false data, which introduces the possibility that Andressen could have been fooled by a remote third party.

Another unresolved question is why only Wright’s laptop was used for the meeting. Andresen could have checked using any other computer but — for unknown reasons — didn’t bring extra laptops. Hough mentioned that the whole thing could have been staged using executable files on Wright’s laptop, including man-in-the-middle attacks, malware, or emulators.

Read more: COPA witness says LEGO was ‘an inspiration’ for Craig Wright

Zeming Gao gives final remarks in Day 18 testimony

Gao seemed to conclude that Wright just wanted to mess with people. Hough held up a blog post in which Gao described Wright as “the most misunderstood person in the world for the past 100 years.” The blog post is apparently now behind a paywall in the form of Gao’s book.

According to Hough, Gao claimed Wright had created a valid signature from a known Satoshi wallet, but “only privately.”

Gao’s final words of testimony went into some semantics about Wright’s apparent refusal to create a valid signature publicly. In another blog post, Gao alleged that COPA would use the lack of a signature to trick the court into thinking Wright wasn’t Satoshi Nakamoto.

Wright had previously complained that he wasn’t aware of journalists familiar with the matter reporting on such a signing event. Gao seemed to echo the sentiment by saying that the lack of Wright’s valid public signature was getting too much attention.

Witness #2: Sarah Meiklejohn

Sarah Meiklejohn began her testimony by going over some ‘errata points’ and confirming the accuracy, for her part, of the joint statement she made with Gao. 

Wright’s legal team then asked about the sources for a report she had submitted. These sources included an unspecified ‘instruction section,’ witness statements from Craig Wright, and statements from Stefan Matthews and Gavin Andressen. Meiklejohn confirmed having used all of these as sources and clarified the unspecified sections.

Meiklejohn denied recalling whether she had seen additional requests for information about signing early blocks presumably mined by Satoshi. 

Wright’s attorney opined that she was being “overly technical,” especially considering Wright’s supposed interactions with so-called non-technical journalists. She retorted that she was “a very technical person.” 

In general, other witnesses during the trial have been so technical that Judge Mellor has made jokes about it. A considerable amount of each side’s case does involve technicalities.

Meiklejohn acknowledged that there had been “disagreements in terminology” between herself and Gao. She also said that Gao had edited part of his contribution to the joint statement after she had submitted Annexe B.

Meiklejohn analyzes signing ceremony

Like Gao, Meiklejohn closely studied Andresen’s face-to-face meeting with Wright, acknowledging that she was going off Andresen’s witness statements about that meeting. According to Meiklejohn, Andresen had obtained a laptop that “seemed new,” although she didn’t consider its unboxing important.

Like Gao, Meiklejohn admitted that it was unfortunate that Andresen didn’t bring extra laptops to that all-important signing ceremony.

On the topic of a possible man-in-the-middle attack, she called one possible attack vector in which someone could mistype a URL and be directed to an infected website “crude but surprisingly effective.” When asked whether she had found possibly infected spoof websites for Electrum.org, for example, she admitted, “Yes.” 

The potential for ‘crude but effective’ man-in-the-middle attacks like ‘typosquatting’ could have affected the Wright-Andresen meeting.

Meiklejohn maintained that Andresen could have been fooled if he wasn’t alert enough to notice the lack of a web browser indicator that a security certificate was being used on the website, for example. Andresen had previously admitted to being jet-lagged during the meeting, which likely impacted his attentiveness.

During a separate Kleiman lawsuit, for example, Andresen admitted that “I have my doubts” about the truthfulness of Wright’s statements during that meeting.

An unconvincing proof-of-keys day

In short, the 18th day of the COPA v. Craig Wright case revolved around the meeting between Gavin Andressen and Craig Wright. It was supposed to be the day that Wright proved he was Satoshi by signing a Satoshi wallet transaction. Instead, it left most people confused.

In particular, the High Court of Justice spent nearly an entire day focusing on the possibility that Wright possessed Satoshi Nakamoto’s keys that day and signed a transaction from a known Satoshi wallet during that meeting.

There were several questions about the software used for the test, including the odd choice to use just one computer, not to mention risks of man-in-the-middle or typosquatting attacks. In addition to other abnormalities and unfortunate blunders of cybersecurity best practices, the entire signing ceremony is now under judicial review during this month’s most important lawsuit of Wright’s life.

Proceedings continue tomorrow, including a return of Wright himself to answer additional questions before the business week closes.

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The post Did Craig Wright use ‘staged laptop’ at Satoshi key signing ceremony? appeared first on Protos.