Why is Craig Wright Satoshi?
Satoshi Nakamoto’s identity was a mystery until 2015, when news outlets published the outcome of a months’ long investigation into the inventor of Bitcoin: Satoshi Nakamoto was Australian computer scientist Dr. Craig Wright.
Soon after, individuals who had worked with Satoshi Nakamoto in the early days of Bitcoin as well as subject matter experts began to come out in recognition of Dr. Wright as Satoshi. These include Gavin Andresen, the man who assumed control of Bitcoin after Satoshi’s disappearance; renowned cryptographer Ian Grigg; economist and tech visionary George Gilder; and more.
Beyond this, Dr. Wright has been reluctant to answer to any calls for proof, other than via the legal system. In the years since his involuntary outing, Dr. Wright has entered into a series of litigation relating to various aspects of his identity as Satoshi Nakamoto. Via the evidence filed in these cases, key pieces of evidence have filtered into the public domain which show that Dr. Wright is the only sensible candidate for the invention of Bitcoin.
These include meeting minutes from Dr. Wright’s time working at BDO in 2007 show the discussion of a project involving peer-to-peer e-cash and a white paper due to be released in 2008 and testimony from Royal Australian Air Force Wing Commander (and Uncle to Dr. Wright) Don Lynam confirming that he was given a draft copy of the white paper before its release.
In 2021, the UK High Court recognized Dr. Wright’s authorship copyright in the white paper. Later that year, he successfully defended a hundred-billion-dollar lawsuit in Florida which was launched on the basis that Dr. Wright is Satoshi Nakamoto.
Bitcoin White Paper
The Bitcoin white paper is available here.
The Bitcoin white paper was published on October 31, 2008, under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto. It described a peer-to-peer system of electronic cash that is suit for daily use including for ‘small casual transactions’, as noted on page 1 of the white paper. This is distinct from the vision of cryptocurrency manifest in BTC and others, where the focus is on digital assets as a store of value.
Professional consultancy firm MNP found that BSV is the digital asset project which most accurately represents the vision set out in the white paper.
Testimonials
A large number of Bitcoin experts, including those who worked closely with Satoshi Nakamoto during Bitcoin’s early development, have given personal testimony regarding Dr. Wright’s status as Bitcoin’s inventor.
Jon Matonis: “For cryptographic proof in my presence, Craig signed and verified a message using the private key from block #1 newly-generated coins and from block #9 newly-generated coins (the first transaction to Hal Finney). The social evidence, including his unique personality, early emails that I received, and early drafts of the Bitcoin white paper, points to Craig as the creator. I also received satisfactory explanations to my questions about registering the bitcoin.org domain and the various time-of-day postings to the BitcoinTalk forum. Additionally, Craig’s technical working knowledge of public key cryptography, Bitcoin’s addressing system, and proof-of-work consensus in a distributed peer-to-peer environment is very strong.
Ryan X Charles: How I know Craig Wright is Satoshi Nakamoto
Conor Murray:Identity and Bitcoin: How I know Craig Wright is Satoshi Nakamoto
Joshua Henslee: How I know Craig Wright is Satoshi Nakamoto
Jerry Chan: Why I believe that Craig Wright is Satoshi Nakamoto
Kevin Healy: Why I believe Craig Wright is Satoshi
Publications
A polymath, Dr. Craig Wright has written papers on a broad number of topics and in a variety of outlets. These topics range from highly technical, novel analyses of Bitcoin, to cryptography and information security, and even to subjects as esoteric as the ancient Seleukid Empire.
Of particular note is Dr. Wright’s early writings demonstrating that Bitcoin is Turing complete, a first at the time.
Books
- Wright C (2008) “The IT Regulatory and Standards Compliance Handbook: How to Survive Information Systems Audit and Assessments” Syngress USA
- Litchko, J; Lang, D; Hennell , C; Wright, C & Linden, M V (2011) ““Official (ISC)2 Guide to the CISSP(R)-ISSMP(R) CBK” CRC Press, ISC2 USA
- Kleiman, D; Wright, C; Varsalone, V& Clinton, T (2007) “The Official CHFI Study Guide” (Exam 312-49) (Paperback)” Syngress, USA 2007
- Multiple Authors (2009) “Cisco Router and Switch Forensics: Investigating and Analyzing Malicious Network Activity”, Syngress Press
- Multiple Authors (2009) “Mobile Malware Attacks and Defense”, Syngress Press
- Multiple Authors (2008) “Check Point NGX R65 Security” Syngress, USA
- Multiple Authors (2008) “Mobile Malicious Code” Syngress, USA
- Multiple Authors (2008) “Best Forensic Book” Syngress, USA
Papers
A full list of Dr. Wright’s academic and research papers, including links, can be found here. The list is reproduced below:
- Wright, Craig S (2008) Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System
- Wright, Craig S (2011) Starting to Write Your Own Shellcode
- Wright, Craig S (2017) The Illusion of Scale in Segregated Witness
- Wright, Craig S (2017) Testing Homogeneity of Variance
- Wright, Craig S, Savanah, S (2017) The Fallacy of the Selfish Miner in Bitcoin: An Economic Critique
- Wright, Craig S (2017) Proof of Work as it Relates to the Theory of the Firm
- Wright, Craig S (2017) The Impact of Internet Intermediary Liability
- Wright, Craig S (2017) Investigation of the Potential for Using the Bitcoin Blockchain as the World’s Primary Infrastructure for Internet Commerce
- Wright, Craig S (2017) Electronic Contracting, New Wine in Old Bottles Wright, Craig S (2018) Turing Complete Bitcoin Script White Paper
- Wright, Craig S (2017) Requirements for Record Keeping and Document Destruction in a Digital World
- Wright, Craig S (2017) The Irrationality Defense of Paternalism
- Wright, Craig S (2018) A Distribution Protocol for Dealerless Secret Distribution
- Wright, Craig S (2018) The Fallacy of Selfish Mining in Bitcoin: A Mathematical Critique
- Wright, Craig S (2018) Beyond Godel
- Wright, Craig S (2018) Searching for Exploits, SCAPY Fuzzing
- Wright, Craig S (2018) Bitcoin and Quantum Computing
- Wright, Craig S (2018) Bitcoin: SEIR-C Propagation Models of Block and Transaction Dissemination
- Wright, Craig S (2018) Understanding Conditionals in Shellcode
- Wright, Craig S (2018) Starting to Write Your Own Linux Shellcode
- Wright, Craig S (2018) Extending Control, API Hooking
- Wright, Craig S (2018) Beyond Automated Tools and Frameworks: The Shellcode Injection Process
- Wright, Craig S (2018) Taking Control, Functions to DLL Injection
- Wright, Craig S (2018) A Proof of Turing Completeness in Bitcoin Script
- Wright, Craig S (2018) Bitcoin: A Total Turing Machine
- Wright, Craig S (2019) Payments Providers and Intermediaries as Defined in the Law of the Internet
- Wright, Craig S (2019) Exploiting Format Strings With Python
- Wright, Craig S (2019) There’s Nothing but Data out There
- Wright, Craig S., Zia, T. A. (2019) Modeling System Audit as a Sequential test with Discovery as a Failure Time Endpoint
- Wright, Craig S (2019) Live Capture Procedures
- Wright, Craig S (2019) Decentralized Autonomous Corporation
- Wright, Craig S (2019) Group Selection and Cyber Terror
- Wright, Craig S (2019) A Preamble Into Aligning Systems Engineering and Information Security Risk Measures
- Wright, Craig S (2019) DPA Exploitation and GOTs With Python
- Wright, Craig S (2019) Criminal Specialization as a Corollary of Rational Choice
- Wright, Craig S (2020) Communism, Envy, and the Desire to Promote Toxic Equality
- Wright, Craig S (2020) Liberty or death
- Wright, Craig S (2021) Those Who Are Left Behind
- Wright, Craig S (2021) A critical review of De Callatay, 2005. The Graeco-Roman economy in the super long-run: lead, copper and shipwrecks
- Wright, Craig S (2021) Establishing Meaning in the First Amendment
- Wright, Craig S (2021) The Banality of the Monsterous
- Wright, Craig S (2021) Are Credences a Measure of Belief or Rather Subjective Guess at the Probablity the Belief Exists?
- Wright, Craig S (2021) Rome and the Road to the Distant East
- Wright, Craig S (2021) The Scene and the Unseen
- Wright, Craig S (2021) Blake and Milton Reactionary and Revolutionary
- Wright, Craig S (2021) Anecdote and Hearsay in Science: The Need To Validate Source Material
- Wright, Craig S (2021) An exploration of ingroup behaviour and social psychology in developing socially abhorrent behaviours in social media and financial systems
- Wright, Craig S (2022) Philosophy of Cognitive Science and Classical Computation
- Wright, Craig S (2022) Choosing Your Turtle
- Wright, Craig S (2022) Kim: The Revolution Devours Its Own, Over and Over
- Wright, Craig S (2022) Neoliberalism and Doublespeak
- Wright, Craig S (2022) Decentralisation
- Wright, Craig S (2022) Contextualising Information about Aesthetics
- Wright, Craig S (2022) The Changes to Cultural Identity in a Global World
- Wright, Craig S (2022) Prometheus: Choosing to be Bound
- Wright, Craig S (2022) The Great Gatsby: Limits on Social Mobility
- Wright, Craig S (2022) Madison and Federalist 10: Why Extrinsic Information Matters in Defining a System
- Wright, Craig S (2022) The Evolution of Meaning: The Foundation of the American State Papers
- Wright, Craig S (2022) Simmering Conflicts and War by other means: The Seleukid Empire of Antiochus III
- Wright, Craig S (2022) An Analysis of Psych9metric Testing for the COO Role
- Wright, Craig S (2022) The Odyssey: An Endless Story of Reaching Home
- Wright, Craig S (2022) Arab Colonialism and the Roots of the Golden Age of Islam
- Wright, Craig S (2022) Forensic Profiling of ‘Cryptocurrency’ Criminals
Degrees
Doctorate
- Doctor of Philosophy – Charles Sturt University (2017)
- Doctor of Business Administration (Bridge DBA Program) - Grand Canyon University (2021)
Masters
- Master of Networking and Systems Administration – Charles Sturt University (2005)
- Master of Management (Information Technology) - Charles Sturt University (2006)
- Master of Laws (International Commercial Law) – University of Northumbria (2008)
- Master of Information Systems Security – Charles Sturt University (2009)
- Master of Statistics – University of Newcastle Australia (2012)
- Master of Science (Information Security Engineering) – Sans Technology Institute (2012)
- Master of Science (Information Security Engineering) - Sans Technology Institute (2012)
- Master of Science (Information Security Management) - Sans Technology Institute (2012)
- Master of Science in Finance (Quantitive Finance) - University of London (2020)
- Master of Science (Political Science) - Liberty University (2021)
Patents
Dr. Craig Wright has been awarded more blockchain patents than any other person on earth. Here is a link to view all his awarded patents.
Timeline
Satoshi Nakamoto took great care to maintain OPSEC when building and releasing Bitcoin, meaning much of Bitcoin’s history has been purposefully obfuscated. Below is a timeline of Bitcoin and Dr. Wright’s involvement based on available evidence, primarily from court filings.
- 2005: Joseph Vaughn Perling meets Satoshi Nakamoto at Amsterdam conference
- July 2006: Public email thread between Dave and Craig about cybercrime forensics
- 2007: Dr. Wright is working on a token system for Lasseters Casino, said to be the precursor to Bitcoin
- May 2007: According to Satoshi Nakamoto’s posts on bitcointalk.org, he first began the design for Bitcoin sometime in 2007.\
- August 2007: Meeting minutes from Dr. Wright’s time working at BDO in 2007 show the discussion of a project involving peer-to-peer e-cash and a white paper due to be released in 2008
- March 2008: Dr. Craig Wright e-mails a friend in March 2008, telling him that he is working on a ‘new form of electronic money’ called ‘Bit coin’ and asking for help editing a paper
- Mid-2008: Dr. Craig Wright sends an early copy of the white paper to RAAF Wing Commander Don Lynam, his uncle, for review (p26)
- August 2008: Craig Wright gives Stefan Matthews a USB stick containing a draft copy of the Bitcoin white paper (source 2)
- August 2008: Someone registers the Bitcoin.org domain
- October 2008: ‘Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System’ is released Original Post here
- July 2010: Satoshi scolds community saying “We don't want to lead with "anonymous". (I've been meaning to edit the homepage)”
- August 2011: CSW gets into argument about why people should accept “Bit Coin” instead of PayPal
- October 2013: Dr. Craig Wright negotiates with the Australian Tax Office over AUD$100,000,000 in Bitcoin held by him, reiterating the need for secrecy and offering to teach ATO agents how Bitcoin works and how to regulate it (p2)
- 2014: Satoshi’s GMX email hacked, identity compromised, and blackmail/drama ensues.
- November 2015: Gizmodo is contacted by an anonymous hacker who apparently once worked for Dr. Wright and shares hacked documents corroborating that Dr. Wright is Satoshi Nakamoto
- 21 November 2015: In private e-mails, Dr. Wright expresses anxiety about Wired journalists getting too close in the weeks before the story was made public
- 2 December 2015: Andy Cush from Wired tells Dr. Wright in a private e-mail that he discovered Dr. Wright’s identity as a result of information from a ‘independent investigator’ who ‘has been working on this for quite a long time’.
- 8 December 2015: Wired/Gizmodo reveal Dr. Craig Wright as Satoshi Nakamoto
- 9 December 2015: Dr. Craig Wright has his Sydney home raided by the Australian Tax Office