Satoshi Trial: Craig Wright confronted on fake evidence, ‘I am better at code than words’

Bitcoin’s origin story took center stage on day two as Dr. Craig Wright, who claims to be Satoshi Nakamoto, took the witness stand under oath. Wright faces allegations of presenting forged documents to support his identity claim by the Crypto Open Patent Alliance (COPA).

In the initial morning session, Justice Mellor explicitly stated the difficulty managing Wright’s “rambling” evidence. Wright was sworn in around 11 am GMT.

Dr. Craig Wright examinations – mid-morning session.

Wright was under the intense scrutiny of COPA lawyers, making remarkable statements from the stand.  Accusations were made of the alleged manipulation of digital evidence throughout the day as the prosecution repeatedly reviewed documents and videos claimed to be forged by Wright. The first was using the WayBackMachine to fabricate historical website access, a charge Wright vehemently denied.

The prosecution argued that videos containing Satoshi-owned web pages were shot separately because Wright could not access the websites but used cached versions of static pages. In a peculiar admission, Wright said the reason for creating multiple separate videos was due to the technical limitations of filming and navigating simultaneously. Therefore, despite claiming to have created Bitcoin, Wright admitted to being unable to operate a computer mouse and a mobile phone simultaneously, adding a layer of irony to the proceedings.

Wright engaged in a verbal skirmish with the prosecution over the specifics of the credit card used to acquire the bitcoin.org domain name. Amidst these exchanges, Wright frequently invoked legal privilege, doing so several times within the first hour of testimony, a tactic that stressed the contentious atmosphere of the trial. However, Wright made a point of stating that he was being as helpful as possible.

Adding to the drama, Wright posited that further allegations of submitting fake documents stemmed from internal sabotage within his company and were supposed to be protected under client privilege. Wright stated that the fabricated documents were not intended to be submitted under evidence.

A detailed examination of a 2008 document, described by Wright as proof of his early involvement in Bitcoin’s conceptualization, revolved around discrepancies in font sizes and alignments. Wright defended the document’s integrity, attributing anomalies to print quality rather than manipulation. He believes printing a PDF file will cause fonts to become altered, while…