Courts and Consensus, Satoshi and Salome

Dateline: San Francisco, 8th March 2024.There’s a massive crypto case being tried in London’s Royal Courts of Justice right now. The case centres on whether the Australian cryptographer Craig Wright is, as he claims, the famous and elusive Satoshi Nakamoto, inventor of Bitcoin. I am not a lawyer, nor am I a cryptographer, but from the outside his defence seems to be creaking. In witness statements submitted to the court ahead of the trial, people who Wired magazine dubbed “Bitcoin Royalty” (including Adam Back, Mike Hearn, Martti Malmi and Zooko Wilcox-O’Hearn) provided testimony to support the view that Mr. Wright is wrong to claim to be the originator of the cryptocurrency.ShareNew York NewsMy good friend Rory Cellan-Jones writes entertaingly about his part in this story. Rory explains that in 2016 he was contacted as the BBC’s Technology Correspondent, one of three journalists called by a PR agency and given the irresistible scoop of lifetime: the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto.Subscribe nowAs it happens, I had a bit part in this, because Rory called me (at 4am, he didn’t know I was in New York) to ask for my opinion on Wright’s claims. I told him that I read up on the claims and get back to him. I set about googling and trying to understand what exactly had or had not been demonstrated in Rory’s presence.Now, the reason that I was in New York was that I was attending Consensus 2016, a major cryptocurrency conference. I went to learn from leaders in the field…Courts and Consensus, Satoshi and Salome