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The Takeaway

No, Craig Wright Did Not Prove He's Satoshi in Court

Hi, David Z. Morris here. A verdict arrived Monday in the civil trial between Craig Wright and the estate of former collaborator Dave Kleiman. A jury found Wright guilty of intellectual property theft and has ordered him to pay $100m in damages to an entity he founded with Kleiman, W&K Info Defense. At the same time, the jury found Wright not guilty of stealing half of the proceeds of a Bitcoin mining business which plaintiffs claimed was a partnership with Kleiman.

 

But some publications are offering a much different interpretation of the jury's decision.

 

That headline is courtesy, as some of you will guess, of a website called CoinGeek, As evidence for its startling claim, the article quotes a statement made by Wright's lawyer Andres Rivero after the trial: "The decision reached by the jury today reinforces what we already knew to be the truth: Dr. Craig Wright is Satoshi Nakamoto, the sole creator of Bitcoin and block chain technology."

 

This statement, made outside of court proceedings by Wright's own attorney, obviously has nothing to do with the jury's ruling. The case did not consider the question of Satoshi's real identity.

 

CoinGeek has relentlessly engaged in similar distortions of the essence of the trial, stretching back to its pretrial stage years ago. This has turned out to be a masterful strategy, in part because the odd nature of the case meant any verdict could have been spun to Wright's benefit. Today, a disturbing number of mainstream news outlets are echoing CoinGeek's version of events, knowingly or not.

 

CoinGeek has clear financial motives for its campaign. The website is an Ayre Group company, one of several owned by (federally indicted) gambling entrepreneur Calvin Ayre. The Ayre Group is also an investor in nChain, the company that employs Wright as Chief Scientist. The Ayre Group has also invested in several projects, including HandCash and Taal, built on BSV, the fork of Bitcoin that Wright has pitched as designed according to "Satoshi's Vision."

 

Strictly on formal financial grounds, then, CoinGeek is not a news site, but an "owned media" branch of Ayre Group's nChain/BSV efforts. As a business operation, it serves the same function as, say, the Taco Bell Blog – promoting its parent entity's services, products, and agenda.

 

To be fair, the Taco Bell Blog appears to have much higher production values and commitment to accuracy than CoinGeek. Take, as a random example that popped up while I was researching this piece, a CoinGeek headline that claims FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried will appear "in court" tomorrow. The event in question is testimony before the House Financial Services Committee, which is absolutely not a "court."

 

Read the full column here

 

David Z. Morris

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