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The Puzzling Testimony of Craig Wright, Self-Styled Inventor of Bitcoin

In a lengthy cross-examination in the UK High Court, Craig Wright rejected all claims he had forged and manipulated evidence that indicate he is Satoshi Nakamoto, creator of Bitcoin.

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 specific discrepancies identified by Hough included anachronistic use of fonts, metadata that implied computer clocks had been manipulated, internal time stamps that contradicted the outward-facing dating of documents, and more. Wright’s tangle of explanations need not necessarily count against him; the judge, says Marsden, will examine each “on its own facts.” But the overall plausibility of his version of events—the likelihood that he suffered an extensive and varied sequence of misfortunes that led to the appearance of rampant forgery—will be taken into consideration.

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