The cross-examination of Craig Wright, a computer scientist defending his claims to be the inventor of Bitcoin in court, proceeded fitfully over the course of seven days. In the UK High Court, opposing counsel Jonathan Hough bombarded Wright with examples of what he argued were anomalies that showed Wright had forged or manipulated evidence on which his claim to being the elusive Satoshi Nakamoto depends. He contested them all, weaving a patchwork of justifications whose thread became increasingly difficult to follow.
“This is just another fairy story, isn’t it,” said Hough on Wednesday, losing patience with Wright, from whom he stood opposite in a packed London courtroom. “No, it is not,” Wright replied. It was the ninth hour of a cross-examination that would last more than 30. This type of exchange would repeat over and again: “We’re going round in circles,” said Hough in one instance. “You are simply saying that black is white,” he told Wright, in another.
Wright was being cross-examined as part of a case brought against him by the Crypto Open Patent Alliance, a nonprofit consortium of crypto and tech firms. Since 2016, Wright has claimed to be Nakamoto, the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin, and filed a raft of intellectual property lawsuits on that basis. To prevent Wright from pursuing further litigation that could intimidate developers into retreating from Bitcoin, COPA is asking the court to declare that he is not Nakamoto.
The ruling will spill over into three related cases, brought by Wright against Bitcoin developers and other parties, the outcome of which will shape the future development of Bitcoin. If the court rules in Wright’s favor, and he subsequently wins his own cases, he would be free to dictate who can work on the Bitcoin codebase and under what terms the system can be used. “In the eyes of the law, [Wright] is asking for ultimate control over the Bitcoin network,” claims a representative of the Bitcoin Legal Defense Fund, a nonprofit that is funding the defense of Bitcoin developers in a separate lawsuit filed by Wright, who asked to remain nameless for fear of legal retaliation.
On the second day of the trial, Wright’s cross-examination began. The exchange was Kafkaesque in its mazy rate of progress, technical complexity, and disorienting tendency toward digression. Hough and Wright sparred at length over practically every exhibit, contesting the characterization of their contents, relevance to Wright’s claim to Satoshi-hood, signs of tampering, or way they had been introduced into evidence. There was talk of schema files, virtual environments, plug-ins, hex editing, and other technical arcana. It was an attritional dance wherein Hough sought to impress upon the judge the full scope of Wright’s alleged campaign of forgery, and Wright to show that even the most improbable set of coincidences have a reasonable explanation.
The strategy of COPA’s legal team was clear: force Wright to account for each of the hundreds of indications of alleged forgery or inauthenticity claimed by its forensic document analysis expert, who submitted multiple reports to the court ahead of the trial. “The more instances of forgery or fraud that COPA can pin on Dr. Wright, the greater the impact on his overall defense,” says James Marsden, a senior associate at the law firm Dentons.