Craig Wright is one of the most controversial characters in the crypto world. This due to the repeated assertions of being the identity behind the creator of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto. However, his story and the evidence he has shown to support his words have earned him the wide distrust of the community and the title of "Faketoshi".
UNot of the most striking characters in the crypto world is Craig Steven Wright, an Australian computer scientist and businessman who claims nothing more and nothing less, to be the person behind the pseudonym of Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of Bitcoin, without clearly demonstrating that it is.
However, Craig Wright's life is full of events with the aim of taking center stage wherever he wants. In this Bit2Me Academy post, you will learn a little about one of the most controversial people in the crypto world: Craig Wright.
The Beginnings of Craig Wright
The life of Craig Wright begins in October 1970, in the city of Brisbane, Australia. Little is known of his first years of life. What you do know is that Wright graduated from high school in 1987 at Padua College in Brisbane.
From that time until later, little is known of Wright's life. However, in 2003, at Charles Sturt University (UCS), Wright began working as an adjunct scholar and researcher at this university. It was there that Wright gets two runs. The first in 2006 in "Technology of the information and communication" and the second in 2009, on "Computer Systems Security".
In parallel, Craig Wright attended Northumbria University from 2005 to 2008. There, he obtained a degree in "International Trade Law" with compliments. She also studied at Newcastle University from 2006 to 2009, where she graduated from "Statistics".
His first works
From what is publicly known, Wright worked in information technology for several companies, including Oz Email, K-mart and Australian Stock Exchange. He also worked as a security consultant for Mahindra & Mahindra. He was also an information systems manager for the accounting firm BDO Kendall's.
However, in 2004, Wright was convicted of contempt by the court by the Supreme Court of New South Wales, for a labor problem. The sentence was 28 days in jail for violating a court order that prevented him from approaching clients of DeMorgan Information Security Systems, of which he resigned in 2003. This is because Wright de-stalked these clients by presenting parallel and dishonest business proposals. However, the sentence was suspended on the condition of 250 hours of community service. After appealing the decision, the decision was upheld in 2005, and reconfirmed in another appeal to the Australian High Court in 2006.
Wright later became the CEO of the technology firm. Hotwire Preemptive Intelligence Group (Hotwire PE). This company planned to launch Denariz Bank, the world's first bitcoin bank, although it encountered regulatory difficulties with the Australian Tax Office and failed in 2014. Wright is the founder of the cryptocurrency company DeMorgan Ltd., which claimed to receive AUD $ 54 million in tax incentives through AusIndustry.
2015, the year he announced to be Satoshi Nakamoto
Shortly after his failure to create the first Bitcoin bank, Wright's life takes a turn. In 2015, after several investigations seeking the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto, teams of Wired y Gizmodo, suggest that Craig Wright would be the identity behind this pseudonym. However, the information was later denied by these means.
Later, on May 2, 2016, the with the BBC y The Economist, published articles claiming that Wright had digitally signed messages using cryptographic keys created during the early days of Bitcoin's development. In the articles it was said that “the keys are inexplicably linked to blocks of bitcoins that Satoshi Nakamoto has created or mined”. Strangely that same day, a blog post on the website www.drcraigwright.net He associated Wright with Satoshi and posted a message with an attached cryptographic signature.
Later, security researcher Dan Kaminsky, bitcoin developer Jeff Garzik, Jordan Pearson, and Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai testify that Wright was a mere setup. In the complaint they clarify that Craig Wright has simply reused an old signature of a bitcoin transaction made in 2009 by Satoshi.
Following these events, Wright's promises of "Show extraordinary evidence" they fell into oblivion. On all subsequent occasions, Wright refused (and still refuses) to clearly prove that he really is Satoshi Nakamoto. And to achieve its mission, it would create the largest circle of lies known to the crypto world.
At this point, the fight between the real facts and the fictional ones created by Craig Wright would begin. A fight that would clearly leave him in the community's view, for what he is, a fraud. However, Craig Wright would write in his story other events that would mark the crypto world.
Craig Wright and his role in creating Bitcoin Cash
Craig Wright's presence in Bitcoin is frowned upon. His attempts to proclaim himself the creator of Bitcoin were not and are not well received by the community. This generated aversion to their presence in many spaces. However, a small group of people believed the story. This allowed Wright to build a small army of people who followed him with fidelity and activism.
There were not a few events that created friction between the Bitcoin community against Wright and his followers. But the most important were the consultation events for finding scalability solutions in Bitcoin. Between the idea of increasing the block size of Bitcoin or not, a dispute was generated in Bitcoin that Wright and his entourage handled in their favor.
As a result of those disputes among which were the application of followed, the block size change and the Replace-by-Fee (RBF), the Bitcoin community was divided. Projects like Bitcoin Unlimited and Bitcoin XT, they were the reflection of that separation, which in the end ended with the hard fork Bitcoin and the creation of Bitcoin Cash (BCH).
Quickly, Craig Wright sided with Bitcoin Cash and began attracting masses by making the same unproven claim. "Craig Wright is Satoshi Nakamoto, and Satoshi Nakamoto uses Bitcoin Cash, the real Bitcoin". Along with him, important people in the sector such as Roger Ver, Calvin Ayre, Jihan Wu, computer programmer John McAfee, and even himself Gavin Andresen they joined this thought.
The birth of Bitcoin Cash
With the birth of Bitcoin Cash the objective was clear, to destroy the development of Bitcoin. To do this, they would make it look like Satoshi Nakamoto (claiming that Craig Wright was Satoshi) rejected the path that Bitcoin had taken. Thus, on August 1, Bitcoin was divided, Bitcoin Cash was born, a new cryptocurrency with its own blockchain.
The strategy proved to be functional and Wright could see the enormous power his words had at the time. So, alongside Calvin Ayre, he kept the idea that he was really Satoshi Nakamoto, something that characters like Roger Ver quickly wanted to disengage from. The germ of separation that led Wright to his other impact event in the crypto world would then be born.
The creation of Bitcoin Cash Satoshi Vision (BSV)
Shortly after the creation of Bitcoin Cash the internal problems begin. Craig Wright tried to take over the project by imposing that he, being Satoshi Nakamoto was best suited to direct it. This, however, did not please characters like Roger Ver, who quickly called him "fraud".
The internal fight continued in Bitcoin Cash and it didn't take long for Wright to apply the same strategy he used in Bitcoin, dividing Bitcoin Cash in two. By November 15, 2018, Bitcoin Cash is split, with Bitcoin Cash ABC (BCH) and Bitcoin Cash SV (BSV) being born. The birth of Bitcoin Cash SV was an effort by figures such as Calvin Ayre, Craig Wright, Ryan X Charles, who put all their efforts into carrying out the project that Wright had been screaming for almost a year.
Since then, Craig Wright has accomplished his first goal, to have a cryptocurrency under his control. However, that does not overshadow the rest of his story, on the contrary, he has become an objective public figure.
Early indications of fraud and evidence emerging that Craig Wright is not Satoshi Nakamoto
Saying that Craig Wright is not Satoshi Nakamoto is not something to be taken lightly. In fact, affirming that is done based on the extensive research that the community has done on this character.
Facts that come to light due to the fame acquired by Craig Wright, which brought the attention of private and community investigators. It was then that the first signs of fraud began to appear throughout Wright's career. In this sense, we will give you a fairly complete view of the things that Craig Wright has done, and that destroy everything he says.
Adulteration of his blog to make believe that he invented Bitcoin
One of the tests that Craig Wright maintains to defend his authorship on Bitcoin, is supported by his publications on his personal blog. However, it has been shown that Wright has manipulated his personal blog to make people believe this.
A visit to the Web Archive shows us that Craig Wright modified the content of his blog on May 25th 2015. More specifically, it modified an article dated August 26, 2008, called Tonight. The Web Archive itself has a screenshot of June 2 2014, where the modifications in which Wright attributes a work "on cryptocurrencies" are not shown. This shows that Wright at that time did not work in this type of technology and the information it offers is false.
Forging and manipulating digital signatures
Many may think that falsifying a digital signature is impossible, and to some extent it is. Taking this into account, Craig Wright wanted to take advantage of the known weaknesses in digital signatures to falsify digital signatures on two occasions and thus make believe that it was Satoshi Nakamoto.
Both times he used a rather poor method to do it. This method consists of changing the date and time of your computer to generate a valid digital signature dating back to 2008, when Satoshi Nakamoto was developing his work. It's simple, if you change the date of your computer to the year 2008, and you generate a PGP (or GPG) digital signature, the signature will take the false date and use it to generate a valid signature for that false date. When Craig presented his fake signatures to BBC reporters, Wired and Gizmodo were stunned. However, there are always traces left, as well as parts that simply cannot be faked due to their cryptographic relationship.
A computer scientist under the pseudonym Milburn unmasked all this. Milburn took the signature presented by Craig Wright, sliced his data and found something very curious. The version of PGP that was embedded in the signature data was a version that did not exist in 2008, but was more recent. But not only that, there was irrefutable evidence of binary manipulation in the signatures. Additionally, the signatures that Craig Wright assure are from 2008, use algorithms that did not exist in the OpenPGP software for that date. This clearly shows that Craig Wright manipulated the digital signatures on those occasions by falsifying the data.
In addition to this, there is a step-by-step replicable guide was made by hoaxchain, in order to unmask this fact.
False emails, many false emails
Another point that Craig Wright uses to support his claim are the emails where he allegedly communicates with Hal Finney, Dave Kleiman and other personalities working on Bitcoin.
However, all those emails have been reviewed and many of them are false. From emails sent to the past, emails sent to non-existent domains, temporary alterations and various emails with other signs of data manipulation. You will surely wonder How can they manipulate an email? Well, the truth is quite simple, hence the email is not a secure means of sharing information since it is easily manipulated, and therefore they suggest using emails with systems like PGP.
Bitcoin transactions that are not yours
Craig Wright argues that how Satoshi Nakamoto is, he has under his control about 1 million Bitcoins. To prove that he has stated that addresses like:
- 1933phfhK3ZgFQNLGSDXvqCn32k2buXY8a (~ 110 BTC)
- 12hRmmSda9qSSEH656zBaKEbeisH6ZhdTm (~ 335 thousand BTC)
- 12C9c9VQLMrLi4Ffzq2wDvwrKnUPaAaNFp (250 thousand BTC)
they are really directions under your control.
All of that was denied by WizSec, a blockchain cybersecurity team specialized in Bitcoin. The team's investigation debunked all of those claims by showing that those addresses, and others you've mentioned, are not Craig Wright's. Rather, these addresses are from Mt Gox, from its founder Jed McCaleb and its last owner, Mark Karpeles.
Given the investigation and the data provided, Craig Wright avoided continuing to speak in those directions. Another more recent example was denounced in this Tweet:
https://twitter.com/Excellion/status/1271468034931036160
Strangely, the new story of Craig Wright's lawyers breaks the story that Craig Wright's funds, like Satoshi, are locked in the Tulip Trust, and not under his control. But not only that, the document presented by his lawyers puts him in the crosshairs of the theft of Mt Gox, since the claimed address is the address used by the hacker to carry out this action.
No technical skills
The crypto community is aware that Satoshi Nakamoto, if he is a single person, is someone with a lot of knowledge. If it's a group, then they are a very well-prepared group in both crypto, economics, and game theory. However, Craig Wright has never displayed such talents. In fact, not even the one who Craig Wright points to as Bitcoin's executing hand Dave Kleiman meets all of that profile.
Among Craig Wright's main shortcomings are:
- He has never been seen coding. At no point has Craig Wright made any code notes, and in the moments in which he has talked about it, he has not been able to explain very basic things in programming (such as the difference between unsigned / signed integer). This can be seen in a video that nChain (Wright's company) posted on the Internet and where their little knowledge in the area is shown.
- In addition to this, Craig Wright does not have a Github, nor has he ever made a single contribution to the Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash or Bitcoin Cash SV code. Another demonstration is given by the modifications that “orders” to be made in BSV, where even some put the operation of the blockchain at risk, and are closed for it.
- Craig Wright claims to have programmed Bitcoin on a Mac, but Satoshi Nakamoto has been known to use Windows for programming. In fact, Satoshi Nakamoto himself asked Lazlo Hanyecz (the man we thank for the Pizza Day) to be programmed by the client for MacOS. This is because he (Satoshi) did not have a Mac and did not know how to program for that system. Hence the answer that the original Bitcoin programming libraries were for Windows and its client supported this system from the beginning. Yes, Bitcoin was born in the bowels of a proprietary operating system, ironic to say the least.
- Craig Wright has never explained how he was able to accomplish the feat of mining the Genesis block. Neither has he explained why it took six days to mine the second block, nor has he explained the "Patoshi Pattern" of all its mined blocks together with the special marks of the nonces in those blocks. This is important because the puzzle of those blocks has not been explained by anyone in over 10 years. I mean, it's something that Satoshi and only Satoshi can explain.
- Craig Wright has affirmed on several occasions that Bitcoin script It is Complete Turing, when it is not. In fact, the document has several basic coding errors.
- The nChain developments in Bitcoin Cash were made by a contracted company, called floweethehub. In fact, the same nChain team has said Wright lacks basic knowledge of blockchain technology and mathematics.
- Craig Wright has shown that he has a very poor level of mathematics. This was evident in an analysis of a paper on SegWit, which was torn to pieces by Paul Sztorc, in messages still available in Twitter. This is relevant because the livelihood of tokenomics and cryptography that sustains Bitcoin since its inception is based on mathematics at this level.
- Wright has shown little understanding of the Bitcoin code, which he said he wrote himself. This was evident in a question and answer event on Slack, where the conversation log was shared on Pastebin.
- Just as you don't understand the Bitcoin code, you also don't know how digital signatures work, asymmetric cryptography. This was evident in a confrontation on Reddit, where he simply refused to answer or simply acknowledge his mistake.
- He has been caught red-handed in the plagiarism of various technical documents. One of those documents is from the creator of the wallet or purse Exodus, who denounced done publicly. Has even plagiarized to do his thesis and other documents.
Case against Ira Kleiman
The most likely event against Craig Wright and his claim to be Satoshi Nakamoto, is the legal case against Ira Kleiman, brother of the now deceased Dave Kleiman, and who, according to Craig Wright, helped him to some extent to create Bitcoin. With this case, Ira Kleiman seeks to claim the fortune of about 500 thousand BTC and the intellectual rights of his brother, which are supposedly in the hands of Craig Wright.
This case, which is now two years old (started in February 2018), has put Craig Wright against the wall several times. At first, Wright has been unable to prove to the judge that he really is Satoshi Nakamoto. Additionally, the investigation of Ira Kleiman's attorneys has revealed that Craig Wright has forged practically all of the documents he has presented.
In principle, Craig Wright had forged a supposed contract that Dave Kleiman signed in which he gave everything to Craig Wright. Investigations by the court and the attorneys made it clear that the documents were forged in their entirety, mostly because the known signatures of Dave Kleiman were nothing like the signatures shown on the Wright documents. This offense led the Judge to decide that Craig Wright should deliver the 500 thousand BTC to Ira Kleiman, if they were in his possession.
The birth and death of the Tulip Trust
Craig Wright claimed before the judge's order that that would be impossible, because the private keys for that were not under his control. Instead it was all in a crypto trust called Tulip Trust. This trust is protected under a multi-signature scheme of the Shamir scheme type, and because Dave Kleiman lost his keys upon death, “his part of the money could not be recovered”. This shows Wright's deep ignorance of how the Shamir scheme works, since if any of the keys is lost, the scheme can never be opened, with the total loss of information within it.
Before his new creation, Craig Wright presented countless documents about the Tulip Trust, the trust protected by a Shamir key scheme, with three shared keys. Initially, Craig Wright defended and affirmed the existence of this trust, even affirming the existence of three of them, along with documents that he presented in court. However, Craig Wright himself commented that all this was false, and that the Tulip Trust had never existed and that the keys to the Bitcoins would be in his possession in January 2020.
However, none of that happened and Craig Wright has not yet been able to demonstrate if he is in control of the private keys, while Ira Kleiman continues to press for the delivery of his brother's 500 BTC and that they are supposedly in control of Wright. .
The reverse of Satoshi Nakamoto's directions
Recently Craig Wright has submitted a series of 20 thousand Bitcoin addresses that he claims as his own, addresses ranging from the first to receive the first coinbase of Bitcoin, until the last time Craig Wright claimed to have mined Bitcoin as Satoshi Nakamoto.
However, several of those addresses are not actually under your control (such as Mt Gox). And things are getting worse for Wright, since recently one of the addresses that claims as its own has moved the 50 BTC it had withheld. After this, Wright assured that this address is not his, thus denying the documents he had sent to the court in the case against Ira Kleiman, documents where he and his lawyers added said address as their property. Another new and epic zasca that, for the community, is just another reason to call it a fraud.
Things got even worse, when a total of 145 Bitcoin addresses digitally signed a joint message using 145 addresses that Craig Wright claims as his own. The message is still active in a Paste from the Debian platform, and which can be freely verified.
This is arguably the strongest proof that Craig Wright is falsifying data and making unsupported claims. The end of this case is not near, but its end will surely show us all who Craig Wright really is.
Other accusations
Guilty of plagiarism for his doctoral work
Something that Craig never expected is that his life would be analyzed in detail. Because of this, frauds from his past have been discovered. This is the case of the event that revolves around his PhD work "The quantification of information systems risk" o "The Quantification of risks in the information system". Further investigation of this work found that Craig had plagiarized it.
The event led the University to ignore the work. The highlighted link for the publication on the University website was removed. However, an archived link still remains within Web Archive.
The complainant of these claims was the user @Paintedfrog, who published his findings and irrefutable evidence on Twitter and his blog on Medium. Medium, being a space known for censoring information, has left this topic free due to the quality of the investigation and the amount of evidence shown against Craig Wright.
All this makes something very clear, Craig Wright is not a reliable person at all. On multiple and repeated occasions, he has shown that he has plainly sought the attention of the crypto world for his own interests no matter what else.