Whitepaper recreation proof package

In my previous post I described how I recreated the Bitcoin whitepaper as an exercise and an experiment to help contextualize and properly interpret potential claims by fraudsters. Specifically, since the whitepaper can be manually reverse-engineered from the PDF to a matching OpenOffice source document, possession of such source documents is not proof of being or having any relation to Satoshi Nakamoto.

In this post I'll disclose (part of) the recreated source document itself, along with instructions for independent verification of its validity. I realize that by calling it a "proof package" I'm evoking the notorious "Sartre blog post" which Craig Wright tried to pass off as proof he had signed a message with the block 9 key, but you'll find this proof package actually does what it says on the label; no deception involved.

Recreating the Bitcoin whitepaper (competently)

If you're not familiar with Craig Wright, the notorious Australian who for many years has claimed to be Bitcoin inventor Satoshi Nakamoto (a claim which has been widely and thoroughly debunked and discredited), first of all: congratulations. Consider skipping this article and happily moving on with your life.

If you're still here, you probably also know that a recurring part of Wright's claims is that he authored the Bitcoin whitepaper, and to corroborate this claim he has presented various supposed "drafts" of it. These "drafts" are usually just the whitepaper itself but edited to say Wright's name instead of Satoshi, usually with backdated metadata, and sometimes even printed out with coffee stains on them to look older. But they all have in common that they were rather incompetently created and the deception was quickly uncovered whenever subjected to forensic analysis.

This all raises a somewhat more important question though: what if a competent Faketoshi appeared, with forged documents that were much harder to debunk? How hard would it be to take the Bitcoin whitepaper and create credible precursors and/or source documents in support of some narrative?

Private Presentations Aren't Proof, part 2: Explaining the fake key signing video

As a follow-up to the previous article about Craig Wright's supposed key signings, last year I produced a short proof-of-concept video showing a similar seemingly legitimate key signing with Satoshi's genesis block key. It was fake of course, which most people immediately understood, but it might be informative to go through exactly how it was faked, so as to highlight the kinds of tricks used and what to watch out for when scrutinizing this kind of evidence.

Private Presentations Aren't Proof

Sometimes we're not comfortable drawing conclusions until all the dots have been sufficiently connected. Let's see if we can do that for one of the more annoying open "mysteries" surrounding Craig Wright: how did he pull off the private key signings?

MtGox payout guide and calculator

As there is a lot of confusion surrounding how the MtGox civil rehabilitation distribution will happen, here is an attempt to share my understanding of things, and an interactive calculator for estimating your possible payouts.

Earlier MtGox payouts? No thanks to CoinLab

The MtGox civil rehabilitation trustee recently submitted a draft rehabilitation plan for distributing the assets of MtGox. The plan is not final and is currently being reviewed by the Japanese court, following which it will also need to be voted on by all creditors, and after that the practical matters of registering for payouts needs to happen, so this does not mean payouts are imminent or that the trustee is about to dump coins on the market. This always has to be explicitly pointed out as some so-called journalists love spreading FUD about this for clicks.

The 80,000 stolen MtGox bitcoins

I've recently been repeatedly asked about the theft of 80,000 BTC from MtGox in early 2011, as initially reported in a 2016 The Daily Beast article, and specifically how it relates to the address 1FeexV6bAHb8ybZjqQMjJrcCrHGW9sb6uF. Rather than address every question individually, I will briefly summarize what's known about this in a blog post.

Kleiman v Wright, part 5

With a decisive ruling by Judge Reinhart during the August 26 hearing into contempt of court by Craig Wright in the lawsuit brought by Dave Kleiman's estate, the case is more or less over after the judge imposed significant sanctions against Wright. Let's dig into what went down during this hearing.

Kleiman v Craig Wright, part 4

It's getting hard to keep up with all the developments around Craig Wright, though thankfully more and more people are investigating and reporting on Twitter and elsewhere, freeing up just enough time for a few deep dives. Let's dig into the August 5 evidentiary hearing in the Kleiman v Wright lawsuit in Florida, with testimony from Steve Shadders, CTO of nChain, and Matthew Edman, expert witness for the plaintiff.

Kleiman v Craig Wright, part 3

There has been much reporting on the recent June 28th hearing in the case of Ira Kleiman v. Craig Wright, where the latter testified in person for the first time. Several reporters attended the hearing and relayed baffling events, but those of us who have been following the case were anxious to get a direct look at exactly how things played out. With the court transcript and exhibits in hand, let's go on that journey together.

Kleiman v Craig Wright, part 2

As part of the ongoing lawsuit against Craig Wright by the relatives of Dave Kleiman and in response to a court order to reveal details of Wright's supposed bitcoin holdings (including a long hinted-at blind trust), a filing about Wright's supposed bitcoin holdings was recently unsealed. While the bitcoin addresses contained within are redacted, it turns out they're not hard to guess.

CoinLab v MtGox: The imaginarium of Peter Vessenes

Recently the MtGox civil rehabilitation trustee, Nobuaki Kobayashi, announced a six month delay in proceedings due to disapproved claims still being disputed. The trustee doesn't refer to it directly, but the elephant in the room causing this delay is Peter Vessenes' CoinLab, who after a failed partnership attempt with MtGox in 2012/2013 is now demanding an outrageous $16B USD from the MtGox civil rehabilitation estate.

There have been various theories floating around how CoinLab could possibly be justifying this number, with little insight into their actual arguments, a problem not helped by CoinLab's attempts to seal official Japanese creditor records in order to conceal their actions. Recently though I acquired a copy of the last round of petitions to the Tokyo District Court, and have spent the last week dredging through the legal Japanese to get to the bottom of the situation.

Kleiman v Craig Wright: The bitcoins that never were

Today some news landed about a $10B lawsuit against Craig Wright (the Australian man who claimed to be Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous inventor of Bitcoin), and it is an interesting read, but unfortunately for anyone involved, its claims have little basis in reality. The lawsuit purports that Wright fraudulently acquired large number of bitcoins owned by Dave Kleiman through forging various documents, but the very existence of those bitcoins in the first place is just another fantasy.

I had previously seen some of the material included as exhibits in the lawsuit, and my opinion was that all the documents that made specific testable claims as to owning bitcoins were relatively easy to debunk as simple backdated forgeries (possibly for use in Wright's alleged tax fraud schemes). I Am Not A Lawyer, but it seems somewhat fitting that Wright now finds himself sued by someone taking many of those claims at face value, as Wright's seemingly only defense would be to allow those prior claims to be proven false.

Breaking open the MtGox case, part 1

Earlier today news broke of an arrest in Greece of a Russian national suspected of running a large-scale money laundering operation focused on Bitcoin. The man has since been publicly identified as Alexander Vinnik, 38, and over $4 billion USD is said to have been trafficked through the operation since 2011.

We won't beat around the bush with it: Vinnik is our chief suspect for involvement in the MtGox theft (or the laundering of the proceeds thereof). This is the result of years of patient work, and these findings were surely independently uncovered by other investigators as well. Everyone who worked on the case have patiently kept quiet while forwarding findings to law enforcement, so as not to tip suspects off and to maximize the chances of arrests.

With such an arrest actually happening, we think today might — finally — be the day when we can begin talking about what we've actually been doing all this time and what we found. Thank you for your patience.

Comments on the Mark Karpelès trial

July 11 was the first day of proceedings for the anticipated trial of Mark Karpelès, CEO of the bankrupt MtGox bitcoin exchange. Karpelès was charged with creation and manipulation of private electronic records, as well as embezzlement of customer funds, or embezzlement of company funds, or breach of trust, in that order.

I was present in the courtroom for the entire first day, and I expect there will be a lot of interpretations and extrapolations based on the limited early information that will no doubt circulate online and in the media, so I will attempt to flesh out and explain what is actually going on through some brief commentary.

The missing MtGox bitcoins

We received a lot of positive feedback on our release of our preliminary investigation into the Willy bot, even though it was already quite old (written circa August 2014). We also said we hoped to release more of our information over time, even though we have to take some care doing so. But while we have good relations to responsibly acquire and exchange information and share efforts, and reception from people online has been very encouraging, official interest has been pretty low.

In recent weeks, there has been a lot of news surrounding the U.S. agents accused of large bitcoin thefts in early 2013, and their interactions with Silk Road as well as MtGox. In the wake of this, there has been intense speculation that what happened at MtGox may have been related to these agents.

With the next creditors' meeting also on the horizon, this seems like a pretty good time for me to step in and share a bit more of what we know. First of all: no, we don't think these agents are main characters in the story of the missing MtGox bitcoins, and the story doesn't begin in 2013 either.

MtGox investigation update and preliminary release

WizSec has been investigating the MtGox crash since soon after it occurred, making us probably the longest running non-official investigation. In this time, as we slowly discover more things, it has become more and more important to be careful in what we disclose, both in order not to jeopardize other investigations and also not to needlessly get any of our sources into trouble. In line with our intent to investigate responsibly, we have also signed several non-disclosure agreements.

However, it has now been a full year since MtGox, and the then customers, now creditors still don't have much to go on. There was the release of The Willy Report last May, then there was the encouraging news that Kraken was appointed as an additional official investigator in November (but as such they will also have to work mostly in silence), and later we heard speculations of MtGox involvement being tossed around in the Silk Road trial.

We wanted to share at least something publicly to help keep attention on MtGox alive, and after some consideration we think the following information is "safe" without betraying any trust or causing any trouble. This is an adaptation of a report we prepared last summer, documenting one of the things we focused on early in the investigation: a deeper look into the activities of the Willy trading bot. This is information we've already shared with official investigators and is not too sensitive, as it represents an early stage of our investigation.