The Craig Wright May 2016 Signing
Sessions Debacle, In Full Context
There’s a story that has never been told before in the
Faketoshi saga…
MyLegacyKit (Link to original medium.com post)
Photo credits: Mark Harrison, The Economist
Written by Arthur van Pelt
ABOUT EDITS to this article: as more material might become available
after publication of this article, it will have edits and updates every now
and then. In that sense, this article can be considered a work in progress,
to become a reference piece for years to come.
EDIT JULY 1, 2021
The highly reputable and respected WizSec Bitcoin Security Specialists
outlet, well known for their Mt Gox research and Kleiman v Wright lawsuit
coverage, just released an article that can be found here. It is highly
recommended to pick it up also, either first, or after reading “The Craig
Wright May 2016 Signing Sessions Debacle, In Full Context”.
Intro
In Bitcoin, signing a message is a cryptographical way to prove control and
ownership of a public bitcoin address (using the associated private key) via
a feature in the Bitcoin wallet. The procedure of signing takes less than a
minute to perform, and the output -a so called digital signature, a lengthy
string of letters and numbers- can be used by others to verify said
ownership and control.
For example, Craig Wright has been using the Bitcoin public address starting
with 16cou, that once contained over 160,000 BTC, in numerous forgeries
over the years since April 2013 when his Bitcoin fraud, quickly followed by a
Satoshi Nakamoto cosplay, started. In these forgeries, Craig pretended to
own and control the 16cou address.
Forgery from the early days of Craig’s Bitcoin fraud
However, on May 16, 2019 the real owner of the 16cou Bitcoin address had
enough of this abuse of his property when he or she became aware of it,
and left the following information on social media for the general public to
verify.
On a related sidenote, while talking about or examining Craig Wright’s
forgeries, a list that has grown into the hundreds if not thousands by
now, there is a rule of thumb that never fails so far.
This rule of thumb is:
Everything Craig Wright and Bitcoin dated before April 2013 is a
forgery created after April 2013 (except for a handful of public
comments online in July/August 2011 when Craig apparently had just
learned about Bitcoin).
With that said, no doubt most of you will have heard, or read, bits and pieces
of the story that will unfold now. But here it is, Craig Wright’s full diary of
what most now (correctly) perceive as the failed signing sessions in May
2016, as told by the insiders, the journalists and other witnesses.
With a lot of quotes from articles, many snippets from lawsuit depositions
and intertwined with notes from the undersigned (always in italics), we will
learn the full context of Craig Wright “signing” in his Faketoshi career with
the 2016 sessions as a centerpiece. So brace yourself, and join me for a
deep dive into this remarkable piece of Craig Wright’s history.
And remember, after these disastrous events 5 years ago in May 2016, Craig
Wright’s reputation as a lying and forging Satoshi Nakamoto cosplayer was
set in stone — forever.
Did Craig Wright ever sign anything Bitcoin before May 2016?
We can be brief here: never in public, as far as we know. We know, of
course, of those few times that Craig has been transacting with a few
handful of Bitcoin bought on the Mt Gox exchange from April 2013 onward
(until Mt Gox collapsed in February 2014), so Craig must have had access to
a few private keys at some point in that period. But there is no evidence
known that Craig Wright ever used these private keys for a signing.
Way more telling in this context, however, is how Craig dealt with the ATO in
the 2013–2015 era, as he ducked numerous requests from the ATO to show
signing proof, and purported financial transactions were always done by
“assigning rights to Bitcoin” or “providing private keys”. In the ATO reports
about Craig’s tax fraud from that period, we find several hilarious
descriptions of these events.
For example, have a look at this somewhat creative way to offer, and duck, a
Bitcoin message signing at the same time. ATO however quickly figured out
it was another email forgery created by Craig Wright:
Source ATO report: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/6309656/547/7/kleiman-v-wright/
Another example is where Craig Wright was asked to sign messages on no
less than 9 Bitcoin addresses, and none of them happened. None. Nada.
Source ATO report: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/6309656/547/7/kleiman-v-wright/
And, as said, Craig Wright is always executing Bitcoin “transactions” by
either “assigning rights”, in this case by “instructing to put Bitcoin in a trust”
for Professor Rees, followed by the excuse that “private keys were provided”
to Professor Rees, followed by a mixture of these excuses. And again, the
ATO didn’t buy it.
Source ATO report: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/6309656/547/7/kleiman-v-wright/
The Prelude
June 2015 — November 2015
Knowing the background of how Craig Wright approaches Bitcoin “signing”
and “transacting” by never doing anything, let’s move to the meat of this
article. Due to the ATO troubles building since 2013, Craig needed a bailout
which was provided in June 2015 by Calvin Ayre. The people fronting Calvin
were Stefan Matthews and Robert McGregor, who will play important
supportive roles in the upcoming period.
On June 29, 2015 a contract was signed with Craig Wright, Ramona Watts
(Craig’s wife) and Stefan Matthews that contains the following paragraph
about “the exclusive rights to Craig’s life story for subsequent publication or
release (suggest NewCo retain a researcher and ghost writer to begin
background research and preparation, as precautionary measure).”.
Source: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/6309656/550/45/kleiman-v-wright/
We will also find an early appearance of Jimmy Nguyen, (who, after being
employed by a lawyer firm, moved from CEO of nChain in the early days to
Founding President of Bitcoin Association for BSV in his current
employment) as we learn from The Satoshi Affair.
“A few weeks before the raid on Craig Wright’s house, when his name still
hadn’t ever been publicly associated with Satoshi Nakamoto, I got an email
from a Los Angeles lawyer called Jimmy Nguyen, from the firm Davis Wright
Tremaine (self-described as ‘a one-stop shop for companies in
entertainment, technology, advertising, sports and other industries’).
Nguyen told me that they were looking to contract me to write the life of
Satoshi Nakamoto. ‘My client has acquired life story rights … from the true
person behind the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto — the creator of the
bitcoin protocol,’ the lawyer wrote. ‘The story will be [of] great interest to the
public and we expect the book project will generate significant publicity and
media coverage once Satoshi’s true identity is revealed.’” — Andrew
O’Hagan (1)
This makes it clear that the ghost writer from the June 29, 2015 contract will
become Andrew O’Hagan. It is, of course, also perfectly clear that the
financial stakes are high for camp Craig Wright.
“The plan was always clear to the men behind nCrypt. They would bring
Wright to London and set up a research and development centre for him,
with around thirty staff working under him. They would complete the work on
his inventions and patent applications — he appeared to have hundreds of
them — and the whole lot would be sold as the work of Satoshi
Nakamoto, who would be unmasked as part of the project. Once
packaged, Matthews and MacGregor planned to sell the intellectual
property for upwards of a billion dollars. MacGregor later told me he was
speaking to Google and Uber, as well as to a number of Swiss banks. ‘The
plan was to package it all up and sell it,’ Matthews told me. ‘The plan was
never to operate it.’” — Andrew O’Hagan (1)
February 3, 2016
At first, the next happening appears unrelated to the upcomings events in
May 2016. A copy of the siliconANGLE [the voice of enterprise and emerging
tech] news website is set up under almost the same domain name, note the
double “l” used in silicon. But knowing what is going to happen in the
upcoming 3 months, there is hardly any doubt (with me at least) that the
setup of the forgery described is executed by Craig Wright himself.
“It appears that Craig Wright planned this exit-strategy for the May 2016
signing sessions 3 months in advance, as on February 3, 2016 the
registration of silliconangle dot com took place.
Then, a full copy of the Silicon ANGLE website was created under the newly
bought domain. Would that have been a hard task for our #Faketoshi?
Nah.” — Arthur van Pelt (2)
February 16, 2016
The domain drcraigwright dot net is obtained by camp Craig Wright, and
from this place Craig (and/or Robert MacGregor as we will learn from The
Satoshi Affair) will publish a few blog posts in early May later this year,
before taking it offline altogether after less than two weeks later. As we
speak this domain is forwarded to his current blog on craigwright dot net.
The Signings
March 2016
“As Andresen tells it, a firm representing Wright [Outside Organisation,
according The Satoshi Affair] contacted him in March and invited him to
London for a private, in-person demonstration designed to prove Wright
created Bitcoin.” — Andy Greenberg (3)
“To add, in the recent court filings we learned that Craig’s media training
before the failed 2016 signing sessions was provided by Milk Publicity