Bitcoin Royalty Descends on the Satoshi Nakamoto Trial

Bitcoin was invented by Satoshi Nakamoto, an enigmatic figure about whom almost nothing is known. Fifteen years ago, Satoshi brought the idea of an electronic cash system into being with the help of a small cast of oddballs. This week, some of those early collaborators—now crypto-celebrities in their own right—took to the witness box of a London courtroom. They had come to testify against an alleged imposter.

Since 2016, Australian computer scientist Craig Wright has claimed to be Satoshi. The claim is widely disputed, yet Wright has wielded it in a series of lawsuits against developers and others in pursuit of establishing intellectual property rights over Bitcoin. The stakes are high: If Wright succeeds, he could prevent developers from working on the Bitcoin codebase and dictate the terms of use for the system.

Earlier this month, a trial began in the UK High Court, the purpose of which is to challenge Wright’s claim to being the creator of Bitcoin. The case was filed by a consortium of crypto firms called the Crypto Open Patent Alliance, which is asking the court to declare that Wright is not Satoshi, thereby limiting his ability to found further litigation on the claim. COPA claims that Wright has fabricated his evidence and repeatedly changed his story as new inconsistencies come to light. It called on the early bitcoiners to help prove it.

Among those who testified were Adam Back, Mike Hearn, Martti Malmi, and Zooko Wilcox-O’Hearn, each of whom contributed to the early development of Bitcoin in their own way. With the exception of Hearn, who had a polished manner and dressed sharply, the witnesses had the air of technologists: softly spoken and somewhat awkward, but quietly authoritative. Earlier in the trial, Wright had faced a grueling seven-day cross-examination, in which he rejected hundreds of claims of forgery and misrepresentation. The evidence supplied by the bitcoiners, COPA hoped, would help dismantle his story.

In 2008, when Satoshi was finalizing the design of the Bitcoin system, they pitched the concept to a niche online community of cryptographers. Discussions about Bitcoin spilled into fringes of the web occupied by anarchists and libertarians, who relished the idea of a monetary system divorced from the state.

From these two realms, a misfit band of supporters came together to assist Satoshi. They shared a belief, as Back described it in court, in technology as a “tool for positive change.” Some volunteered their advice, others their code, and others their labor. After Satoshi disappeared, in 2011, they carried Bitcoin forward.

The figures called upon by COPA to testify each made a distinct mark on Bitcoin. Back created a precursor technology called Hashcash (although Wright disputes its relevance) and corresponded with Satoshi as the Bitcoin creator drafted the white paper. Satoshi tasked Malmi with curating Bitcoin.org, which hosted educational materials. Hearn was one of the earliest contributors to the Bitcoin codebase. And Wilcox-O’Hearn was among the first to blog about Bitcoin, spreading the gospel. As Bitcoin grew, these early collaborators became themselves revered in crypto circles for their place in Bitcoin lore.

In witness statements submitted to the court ahead of the trial, the bitcoiners provided accounts in support of COPA’s case. Back detailed a 2008 email exchange in which Satoshi appeared to be unfamiliar with a proposal by cryptographer Wei Dai. In his own written evidence, Wright had described Dei’s work as an inspiration for Bitcoin. Malmi contested Wright’s timeline of the correspondence between him and Satoshi and Wright’s description of technical arrangements relating to the Bitcoin.org forum. Separately, he asserted that Satoshi embraced the term “cryptocurrency,” contrary to Wright’s account. In his statement, Hearn recounted a dinner in 2016 at which he posed questions to Wright that he believed Satoshi would be able to answer. Some of Wright’s responses were “in the general area, but garbled;” others were “only slightly better than Star Trek-style technobabble.” Wilcox-O’Hearn simply testified Satoshi never sent him any bitcoin, as Wright has claimed he did.

In the course of Wednesday and Thursday, the bitcoiners took to the witness box to be cross-examined on the contents of their statements by Wright’s legal counsel, Lord Anthony Grabiner and Craig Orr.

Grabiner pressed Hearn on the quality of his recall with respect to the dinner, about which the court had received a contradictory account from one of Wright’s witnesses. Hearn acknowledged a level of haziness, but insisted he remembered “the important parts” in which he asked about Bitcoin. Grabiner proposed that Wright’s responses had been stilted because he was wary of the possibility Hearn had an ulterior motive for his questioning. At the time Hearn worked for a company, R3, that Grabiner claimed could be considered a competitor to nChain, a firm with which Wright was associated. Hearn rejected the claim: “I didn’t know anything about Wright’s work,” he said. “I still don’t.”

Orr similarly leaned on conflict of interest in his examination of Back, pointing to his position as CEO of Blockstream, which is part of COPA. Orr cast the work of Blockstream, which develops services atop Bitcoin technology, as fundamentally misaligned with the future for Bitcoin envisioned by Satoshi, giving Back a “vested interest in Wright being defeated.” Back said he had no part in COPA filing its case against Wright and denied the verdict would affect his business. The technical architecture of Bitcoin, he argued, means that changes to the codebase only take effect if adopted by the majority of users. Even if Wright were to succeed in the COPA proceeding, and in establishing IP rights over Bitcoin thereafter, he could not make unilateral changes to the code. “It’s like trying to modify the rules of chess,” said Back. Wright is among those that found it difficult, he suggested, to “accept they couldn’t change the rules.”

To rebut the email Back had provided to the court, in which Satoshi appeared to be unfamiliar with a proposal that Wright had said was a primary influence, Orr focused on ambiguities in the language. Satoshi’s message suggested they were unaware of a website summarizing the proposal, Orr contended, not necessarily the proposal itself. Back pointed to public emails from Satoshi to Wei Dai that appeared to support his interpretation.

The cross-examination of the bitcoiners yielded few explosive moments. The focus was on incremental point-scoring—entering into the record items of dispute for the judge to consider—not on undermining the witnesses’ evidence in totality.

In the closing stages of the trial, which is set to hear final oral arguments by March 15, Wright will return briefly to the stand to answer questions about further documents he submitted to the court at the start of the trial. The examination of experts in document forensic analysis and crypto technology will follow. The judge will then retire to consider a ruling.

There is a degree to which a ruling in Wright’s favor, separate from its implications for the future development of Bitcoin, would recolor and reframe its past too. The Satoshi mystery, the centerpiece of the Bitcoin mythology, created an empty space into which people could insert their own personal renderings of the figure and their work. “Satoshi was totally my hero—still is,” said Wilcox-O’Hearn. “I love what Satoshi means to me and other people.”

Back lost interest in discovering the real identity of Satoshi long ago. “Over the years, I have received many emails claiming to be from Satoshi,” he told the courtroom. “I stopped reading them.”