COPA Challenges Authenticity of Craig Wright’s Tominaga Nakamoto Document

19. Tominaka Nakamoto: Monumenta Nipponica {ID_004019} / {L2/245/1}

355. The document presents as a printout of a journal article concerning a historical figure called “Nakamoto”, purportedly downloaded on 5 January 2008, and annotated by Dr Wright by hand in his own handwriting in terms associating himself with that historical figure “Nakamoto”.

(a) COPA’s Reasons for Alleging Forgery

356. The document has been backdated. [PM6 [55]. The timestamp at the top of the document has been altered, with the digits of the hour and of the year entered in different font to the rest of the timestamp. [PM6 [3]].

357. The document is a hand-annotated printout of a digital document [PM6 [5]]. The underlying digital document has not been disclosed.

358. The original source of the document was discovered by searching on the internet. [PM6 [27-30]].

359. The genuine date of the source document is not 2008, but 2015. The document remains available online now. [PM6 [27-32]].

360. The original document was downloaded from the academic repository website JSTOR. By inspection of the footer against a comparator data set of over 180 other documents downloaded from JSTOR, it is possible to identify 7 epochs during which the design of the footer of JSTOR documents changed in the decade between January 2007 and December 2016. The dates of changes of design can be pinpointed to six specific days in that decade. By comparison of the footer of {ID_004019} to that data set, it is possible to establish that the footer is contemporary to the period between 19 March 2013 and 22 March 2016. [PM6 [33-47]].

361. Further, by comparison with 10 other independently-downloaded documents dated 5 Jan 2008 within that dataset, it can be established that the footer of the {ID_004019} is notably different from those on documents from 2008, and therefore is not contemporaneous with such documents from 2008. [PM6 [48-51]].

(b) COPA’s Reasons for Inferring Dr Wright’s Knowledge / Responsibility

362. The underlying digital document has not been disclosed.

363. The effect of the tampering is to make the document appear to be supportive of Dr Wright’s claim to be Satoshi Nakamoto (i.e. by suggesting that he had read a paper about Tominaga Nakamoto before he coined the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto), contrary to fact.

364. In his evidence in these proceedings, Dr Wright claims that the name “Satoshi Nakamoto” was chosen due to his ‘admiration for the philosopher Tominaga Nakamoto’. It is to be inferred that this forgery was done to support that aspect of his claim. [Wright1 [66]].

365. Dr Wright has publicly asserted this document to be supportive of his claim.

366. Dr Wright has publicly maintained the authenticity of this document in social media posts.

367. This document was photographed by Dr Wright for transmission via WhatsApp [PM6 [7]]. The photograph was taken around 1 week before this document was scanned into PDF form. This is consistent with other examples within disclosure where Dr Wright has photographed other documents bearing indicia of tampering, for sending via WhatsApp, before they were scanned and disclosed.

(c) Dr Wright’s Explanations and COPA’s Rebuttal

368. In Appendix B to Wright11, Dr Wright claimed that the document dating from 2015 which Mr Madden downloaded from the internet and identified as the source document was copied from his document and then edited. He claims that this was done after he had mentioned the document as his inspiration. See {CSW/2/68}. In his oral evidence, Dr Wright added that this had been done by the person operating the gwern.net website, who he claimed had been working together with Ira Kleiman to discredit him: {Day2/21:13} to {Day2/22:16}. Thus, Dr Wright’s claim is that his document, with an “accessed” date from 2008 is genuine and that a false version was produced by his enemies to reflect an “accessed” date from 2015 and uploaded to the internet in order to undermine his claim to be Satoshi Nakamoto.

369. COPA submitted that Dr Wright’s explanation should be rejected as dishonest, for the following reasons:

369.1. It is inherently implausible that Dr Wright’s version should be authentic and the version accessed from the internet should have been doctored, since the numerals in the “accessed” date are misaligned in Dr Wright’s version (suggesting manipulation) but the numerals in that date are perfectly aligned in the version on the internet.

369.2. There is a second powerful reason why Dr Wright’s version is inauthentic, namely that the footer design corresponds to JSTOR documents dating from 2015 and not to such documents dating from 2008. Mr Madden has reviewed a large sample of JSTOR documents and established that the footer design was updated at set points in time, so that he can be confident from the footer design that Dr Wright’s document does not date to 2008. He was unshaken in that position on crossexamination: {Day16/66:7} to {Day16/68:7}.

369.3. Although Dr Wright asserted that different JSTOR repositories had footer designs updating at different times and that he had documents to make good that proposition ({Day2/20:13} to {Day2/21:6}), there is no documentary support for that assertion (which is at odds with Mr Madden’s findings). It is reasonably to be inferred that, if that assertion could be made good, Dr Wright’s well-resourced legal team would have done so.

369.4. Dr Wright’s essential conspiracy theory does not work as a matter of the dates. He gave the interview in which he publicly cited this document as his inspiration for the Nakamoto name in December 2019 (see {L16/86/1}; {L16/47/1}). The document which he now says was doctored and released to discredit him has been available online in precisely the same form since 2016: see PM6, [30].

369.5. There is not a shred of evidence for Dr Wright’s conspiracy theory. It is also an odd story, even on its own terms, since Ira Kleiman’s claim depended on saying that Dr Wright was part of “Satoshi Nakamoto”.

(d) Conclusion

370. I can only agree with COPA’s submissions. The document was plainly forged by Dr Wright.