Cryptocurrency: Craig Wright Bashes Cypherpunk, Crypto Love Line, LowFreqTV: 44.6 PhoenixCryptoTV

[grarpamp]

Faketoshi, Self Badged Lawman, Central Banker, Wannabe Lawyer, No-Privacy Shill,
Global Regulator, Freedom Downtime, Tracing and Lockdown Advocate,
etc... Craig Wright... trends insane asshole, goes Full Four Horseman,
bashes everything, including cypherpunks, again, lol... how can this be Satoshi?

Web3TV: I Chased Craig Wright (aka "Faketoshi") 2 Canada 4 an
Interview: Bitcoin, Satoshi & Crypto Community
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TN3f11SNVTA w Craig Wright
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XfvWQfWMSM w Calvin Ayre
https://007nerd.com/dr-craig-wright-interview-for-ccn-part-1/
https://007nerd.com/craig-wright-interview-2-plus-notes-commentary/
https://007nerd.com/i-chased-craig-wright-to-toronto-for-an-interview-full-text-transcription/


https://twitter.com/nrdgrl007
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCqiUMgIOlmyuzoZK5_5wwg/videos web3tv
nrdgrl007 crypto love line

Janice & John McAfee: Anonymity is a Necessary Feature of Privacy!!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u39_YWU88yw


https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWepEio4nWxv82nDrYdY4EQ/videos
LowFreqTV: 44.6 PhoenixCryptoTV
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7NUcCSMlG0 Intro: 44.6 PhoenixCryptoTV
https://phoenixcryptotv.com/
Published on Dec 4, 2019
We are the first and only TV crypto channel. You will find
everything related with cryptocurrencies and more.
You can see us in Phoenix area at 44.6 broadcast TV.




"
Dr. Craig Wright Interview for CCN – Part 1
By nrdgrl007 June 3, 2019

Interviewing Dr. Craig Wright for CCN

A few months ago, I started to notice what I thought was an imbalance
in media coverage of Craig Wright and his blockchain BSV. It’s not
that I was sold on BSV’s value or utility, I just wondered: was it
possible that in all of the talk about “BSV is a cult” and “don’t
drink the Kool-Aid” – that those (like me) who support BTC and
multiple alt-coins could be alternatively brainwashed? I wanted to
give people the opportunity to make up their own minds about Wright
and his coin without injecting my bias. I wanted to ask Wright some
questions and get his answers. Period.

At the same time, I started to realize that Wright – like anyone – is
a human. I thought it was unkind for humans to treat each other in the
way much of the press was treating Wright.  Even though Wright himself
is not innocent, and he typically slams those he disagrees with, two
wrongs do not make a right. I know that in Wright’s shoes, my feelings
would be hurt. I wanted to do something.

I reached out to my editors at CCN and asked: If I could get Wright to
talk to me, could we publish an interview with him? Emphatically, they
responded: yes! So I reached out to Wright’s team on CoinGeek and
quickly Ed Pownall responded, also yes! I sent over some questions.
Unfortunately, before Wright responded, and before I could write the
article, Wright publicly slammed CCN while at Oxford, and I had to
conduct a second interview. You can read the transcript of that
interview here. In both pieces, Wright’s answers are in red. I have
not edited them.
This piece is my first interview with Craig Wright.
Are you Satoshi Nakamoto?

    Are you Satoshi Nakamoto?

Wright: I created Bitcoin and published the Bitcoin white paper under
the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto.

    Can you please tell us exactly what that means? To be clear, does
it mean that you – with some help from people like Hal Finney and Dave
Kleiman – invented the Bitcoin we know today as BTC? Is it a reference
to your assertion that Bitcoin SV is the real Bitcoin? Does the
pseudonym “Satoshi Nakamoto” refer to a team of people who you lead or
worked with? Or is your claim singular?

Wright: As I’ve said before, I had some input and help from other
people.  But I am the creator of Bitcoin.

      Do you have any idea why the media and social media
personalities are so obsessed with saying and “proving” that you are
not Satoshi? Good journalism represents multiple sides of story
without demonstrating inherent bias, why is perspective lacking in
this case?

Wright: Media outlets and social media personalities like controversy
and conflict.  It feeds them traffic.

Also, many powers in the current crypto world have a vested interest
in me not being Satoshi because my vision is for Bitcoin to be the
world’s single electronic cash and single blockchain. When my vision
succeeds, all the other altcoins and supposed other blockchain
projects become moot and will disappear.  That undermines the needs
for many of the crypto media and social media influencers, who thrive
because of a multi-coin world.
Please Explain why This Isn’t Adding Up…

If it’s okay with you, I’d like to address some of the most prevalent
reasons people and the press have provided as “evidence” that you’re
not Satoshi Nakamoto to give you the opportunity to explain and tell
your side of the story…

      A CCN article says that there are certain philosophical
differences between you and Bitcoin’s creator. Namely, the article
says that Satoshi didn’t hate the Liberty Reserve and even floated the
idea of Bitcoin integrating with the Liberty Reserve, but in your 4/24
blog post, you said that Bitcoin was designed to ensure that the
Liberty Reserve – among others – were the real target. Can you please
explain why you changed your mind, if you did? Or can you shed some
light on why this is not a philosophical difference at all?

In 2010, Liberty Reserve was being used legally in Australia, where I
was living at that time. It was linked to the National Australia Bank
and Westpac.  When I (as Satoshi) posted in 2010 about the idea of
Liberty Reserve integrating with Bitcoin, there was nothing
definitively bad known about Liberty Reserve and it had not yet been
found out to be a criminal hub.  It was only later that learned
Liberty Reserve cared more about facilitating criminal use of Bitcoin
than simply being an exchange.

In 2010, we still had no value for bitcoin. Bitcoin was an economic
system and remains secured through the economics of exchange. It
needed something for exchange value.  At the same time, we had managed
to push Second Life (with its Linden dollars) to allow exchange with
Bitcoin, but not many people use Linden dollars. Even now, there is
evidence that Liberty Reserve wasn’t just for criminals; it just
started devolving into criminal usage because its operators did not
care about compliance with anti-money laundering regulations and
thought they were above the law.  If Liberty Reserve had bothered to
protect its customers by following AML laws, they would not have
created the problems which led to their collapse.

I want money to be neutral but also subject to law. If Liberty Reserve
had acted within the law, I would have no problem with them.  I have
the same feeling about today’s crypto exchanges; I have no problem
with them if they start acting within the law.

People wonder why I don’t like bucket shops, such as Binance. Mt. Gox
caused massive damage to the industry.  And when Liberty Reserve
closed, it took billions of dollars away from people.

I was a client and customer of Liberty Reserve.  I used them to pay
for legitimate goods and services, as well as for trading Bitcoin.
David Kleiman and I both lost a lot of money because of the collapse
of the Liberty Reserve. I personally lost millions in US dollar and
Euro value.

So, if you’re wondering why I am a little bitter, I don’t like people
stealing my money and I don’t like people turning it into a joke. More
importantly, Liberty Reserve’s collapse led to many people losing huge
amounts of Bitcoin, and Liberty Reserve’s operators did an exit scam
as they were collapsing.

    Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao and John McAfee, among others – claim
that the real Satoshi “can digitally sign any message to prove it.”
And a 2015 Forbesarticle says, “Until someone signs a statement with
the one PGP key people know is linked to the Satoshi who wrote the
original Bitcoin paper, it’s hard to trust any claims.” Have you
signed any messages with that key? And if not, why? Do you have any
plans to do so in the future? Can you tell us when?

Signing with a PGP key does not definitively prove that you are
Satoshi.  That only proves that someone owns or controls a key.  Proof
of being Satoshi or creating Bitcoin has nothing to do with ownership
or control of keys.  That was never the intention of Bitcoin.  This
narrative about proving identity by signing a message comes from
people who seek to create something that is very different from
bitcoin.

The CEO of the bucket shop you reference is running a money-laundering
operation.  He benefits from getting people to believe that signing
with a PGP key changes the way the law works.  They want to do things
such as saying that Ross Ulbrecht is innocent because keys that were
captured with him have been used later, and therefore he cannot be
responsible for Silk Road crimes.

Proof of identity has nothing to do with signing, and this is a
misunderstanding of how Bitcoin works. Bitcoin is pseudonymous and
requires differentkeys for every use.    In fact, the Bitcoin white
paper documents how you do notre-use keys:  “The receiver generates a
new key pair and gives the public key to the sender shortly before
signing.”

So this entire argument about (proof of Satoshi by signing with a
private key) is from a group of people who seek to change the
narrative, who try to bamboozle people into believing that Bitcoin is
about getting around law and ignoring evidence, who they think all
that matters is a cryptographic key. E-Gold was like that.  But
Bitcoin was never designed to be anything like E-Gold.

    In 2016, the International Business Times (IBT) conducted
stylometry analysis to compare your writings with those of Satoshi.
The chief scientist at Juola said that he doesn’t believe you authored
the bitcoin white paper. Can you explain why there are stylistic
differences between your known writings and those associated with
Nakamoto?

I’m flattered that someone went to all the trouble to try stylometry
analysis.  But the whole idea of it is somewhat absurd.  People write
in different styles all the time for any number of reasons:  subject
matter, audience, purpose, mood, even age.  Do you write your resume
for a job in the same style you text a friend to join you for a drink?
 Interestingly, my law thesis and my statistics thesis have been
“judged” to be written by completely different people. I know that
this is not the case.

    You’ve been very vocal about obtaining and filing for blockchain
and crypto-related patents. Some opponents claim that your
patent-seeking behavior doesn’t reflect Nakamoto’s cypherpunk ethos.
They use this as “proof” that you’re not Satoshi. Is the notion of
intellectual property ownership contrary to cypherpunk ethos? If so,
how has your thinking evolved from the early days of Bitcoin’s
development?

Satoshi Nakamoto did not follow a cyberpunk ethos.  That is a fake
narrative that took hold just because early followers of Bitcoin were
cyperpunks and cryptoanarchists.  In truth, Bitcoin was never designed
to bypass law.  It is exactly the opposite.  Bitcoin was designed to
create an immutable evidence trail that could not be degraded into
something like EGold  I was on the cyberpunk mailing list. But I also
respect the law.

    On April 24th, cypherpunk Jameson Lopp released information
comparing your online activity with Satoshi’s from 2009-2010. Crypto
Insidersays: “Upon clear comparative analysis, it appears that Craig
Wright can’t be Satoshi Nakamoto.” Lopp does say that his study is not
conclusive evidence of anything, but just another piece of the puzzle.
Can you explain the error (if there is one) in Lopp’s analysis?

Lopp seeks to create an anarchist system outside the law.  His
so-called analysis is one of the word I’ve ever seen.  He fails to
even note that blog posts are not written and loaded at the same time
stated.   Blog posts are  often pre-written, and like my current ones,
set to be published at a later time. Consequently, the date and times
of blog publishing has nothing to do with my sleeping activities, and
cannot necessarily be correlated to the dates and times when emails
are being sent.
BSV & Satoshi “Libel” Lawsuits

Next, I’d like to ask a few questions about your pending lawsuits and
your plans to prove your identity. Also, I’m hoping you can help
readers (and myself) understand a little bit more about Bitcoin SV.

    Can you please provide a couple of specific examples of how BSV
aligns with the Bitcoin White Paper and is the real Bitcoin? Please
use as little technical language as possible. This reporter is a
non-tech person, just seeking to understand and explain it as simply
as possible to readers.

Bitcoin is set in stone. It doesn’t change the protocol.  Adding
things like SegWit changes the white paper’s definition of a coin
(which is a “chain of digital signatures.”)  The SegWit fork created
an air drop of a new coin (SegWit coin) that is no longer Bitcoin.
Bitcoin does not fork. There are no protocol changes in Bitcoin. That
is what set in stone means. Miners can vote on rules, not protocol. To
change rules, this alters the way that blocks are discovered but not
transactions. The basic protocol in Bitcoin is one that is set and
remains forever.  This is important to ensure Bitcoin is reliable
money forever.

Bitcoin also must massively scale on-chain, in order to support higher
transaction volumes and more transaction fees for miners.  As block
rewards continue to halve every few years, miners need to earn more in
transaction fees so they remain profitable and continue sustain the
chain.  That is a critical aspect of Bitcoin’s original vision, not
Layer 2/Lightning Network disasters which take the transactions off
the chain.

      Is your current lawsuit against Peter McCormack and Vitalik
Buterin – among others – only a libel/defamation suit? Or will you
prove that you are Satoshi conclusively to a judge?  In an interview
with Bloomberg, you told the reporter that this lawsuit “will give me
the chance to prove my credentials in front of a judge rather than
being judged by Twitter.” What credentials will you be seeking to
prove? And can you tell us anything about the evidence you’ll present
or how you plan to do so?

The cases are for libel.  I will present my evidence to the court, and
not talk about it in advance.

But I will explain why I chose to fight these battles in court rather
than online.  Social media battles never get you anywhere, because
people just make up information and fight with memes.  But evidence
law has been developed over centuries to make decisions based only
upon real evidence that can be authenticated and is reliable.

Also using the court system is a way to reject the “code is law”
movement, which is driven by misguided anarchists who have no true
understanding of Bitcoin.    Bitcoin is designed to work within law
and was never designed as an anarchist system, and was not developed
for people to buy and sell drugs or other illicit material.
Therefore, I choose to win my disputes in court, with real evidence
and real law.

    Until you get your day in court, the court of public opinion is
the only one that matters. Obviously, claims like the ones McCormack,
McAfee, and Vitalik made against you and your integrity cost you
heavily, with Binance, Kraken, and Shapeshift all delisting BSV and
temporarily tanking the coin’s price. I can understand your intense
frustration at influential people in the crypto space slandering your
name and your coin. Can you provide any information, proof, or
evidence now – to all the Twitter and other social media judges out
there – that might help to change the narrative or at least cause some
readers to question their preconceived judgements about you and your
claims?

You’re wrong in saying the court of public opinion is all that
matters.  Truth is what matters, and truth always wins out in the end.

Libel cases are all about truth. It is better to have one source and
that will be the UK court – of course those who don’t really want to
know the truth will stick to their guns but that will become
increasingly irrelevant in the face of that decision.

Binance, Kraken and ShapeShift made a big mistake in ganging up
against BSV.  By delisting BSV because they do not like me personally,
they hurt the public market and investment value of many people around
the world who have nothing to do with me.  That’s market manipulation.

BSV will recover and grow because it is the original Bitcoin.  People
should form their feelings about BSV because of its long term utility
to build real value, not because of speculation and not based on
decisions of some unethical exchanges.

    A CoinGeek article says, “BSV is the only real Bitcoin because it
follows Satoshi’s Vision and as such is the only one that can scale to
meet whatever the future can throw at it. Evidence of this will be
amply available at the upcoming CoinGeek conference in Toronto on May
29-30.” Can you tell us anything about that evidence now?

Bitcoin must massively scale. That is the original vision and only BSV
can accomplish this.  The CoinGeek Toronto conference will be full of
scaling news and businesses explaining why BSV’s massive scaling plan
leads them to build their enterprise applications on BSV.  Come to
Toronto to see.

    You correctly predicted the downfall of Tether, so I have to ask
if you have some predictions about what will happen to other coins
if/when you prove that you are Satoshi Nakamoto. In a recent article,
a Bitcoinist journalist asks the question: “would we all eschew
Bitcoin if we foundout that he had been the inventor?” He concludes
that we – the bitcoin community – would not. Do you have any
predictions about what will happen to Bitcoin (BTC) if/when you, Dr.
Wright, definitively prove that you are Satoshi Nakamoto? (both what
will happen to the community and the price of the coin).Do you
anticipate the price of BSV to increase significantly following the
upcoming CoinGeek conference? How about after your lawsuit against
those who defamed you on social media?In your vision of the future, is
there room for more than one blockchain and more than one
cryptocurrency? Or will one (presumably BSV from your lens) super-cede
all others?

This is the mistake you and everyone else is making – focusing on
price.  We do not focus on the price of other coins or even of BSV.
We focus on building Bitcoin to be the global blockchain and the
world’s new money.   When that comes, everything else follows –
including real price value.  But you have to build real utility.

And yes, Bitcoin [BSV] will be the single global blockchain and the
dominant electronic cash for the world.

    Do you have any plans for the 1.1 million BTC in the Tulip Trust?
Should we expect to see it move on January 1st, 2020?

I don’t ask you about your finances, and people should stop asking me
about mine.
Following UP

Of course, I had to follow up, and I video recorded that interview.
You can read a transcript of that interview, along with a few of my
thoughts on the topic here. I will continue to write about it and
provide a link to my CCN article when it’s published.
"




"
Craig Wright Interview 2 – Plus Notes & Commentary
By nrdgrl007 June 8, 2019

Previously, I posted a transcript of a conversation I had with Dr.
Craig S. Wright. I was interviewing the man who claims to be Satoshi
Nakamoto – inventor of Bitcoin and author of the Bitcoin white paper –
for CCN.

The intent of my interview was to ask Wright some direct questions and
get his direct answers, not to interject my own biases upon him. I
haven’t seen Wright address a lot of the questions I asked him, so I
wanted to give our educated readership the opportunity to make up
their own minds about Wright’s claims… This post is going to be
different though.

This time, I am still providing Wright’s unedited responses (in red),
along with my original questions and statements (in gray), but I’m
also adding my commentary, in pink. I hope you’ll enjoy!

Setting up for the video interview, Ed Pownall tells me to let him
know when my camera guy arrives. I tell him: I’m my camera guy. He’s
disappointed. I’m freelance and working solo. I never misled them and
said otherwise, but I guess it’s not what they were expecting. I feel
bad about that. My confidence starts off low. I set up my tripod, move
some furniture to in front of the CoinGeek screen so we can sit and
have a casual conversation. Ed gets Dr. Wright. Wright comes in, Ed
introduces us. He says, “she’s freelance, but for CCN” – reiterating
that I’m obviously low-budget. Ugh! Craig sits. I’ve forgotten to mic
us. I quickly plug in my mics, and we start recording.
Interview Transcript

Nicole: “I’m Nicole with CCN, and I’m here today with Dr. Craig Wright
in Toronto at the CoinGeek Scaling conference. Dr. Wright, thank you
so much for agreeing to meet with me today”

Wright: “You’re welcome”

Nicole: “And for your invitation to the CoinGeek conference here in Toronto.”

Wright: “Again, you’re welcome.”

Nicole: “And for anyone interested in the questions and answers from
my previous correspondence with Dr. Wright, I will have a link to the
full text of that conversation in the description and a transcription
of this conversation as well. So that being said, I do have some
follow-up questions.”

“And first, shortly after you initially agreed to talk with me –  at
Oxford discussing your detractors and cryptomedia, you singled out
CCN, and uh said CCN is ‘owned by a group of people who are backing
alt-chains, who are backing multiple coins, who are backing
unregulated and uncontrolled exchanges’ ”

Craig: “You mean like most of the exchanges, or sorry, bucket shops.”

Nicole: “okay, Yes, as you said in our previous correspondence, that
was a term that you used. So, my question is…”

Craig: “It’s not just a term. It’s actually a term in law. Um, these
aren’t regulated by definition they’re bucket shops. They do wash
trading, they facilitate illegal trades, in fact, um I think at the
moment 30% of the trade through Binance and Bitfinex actually happens
to be, Islamic Migrab and also Syrian fighters. So basically, 30% of
the current funding in Bitfinex is actually terrorist funding. Doing
the analysis and whatever else and about 17% is in people smuggling.
So basically what that is is taking older women and forcing them into
labor, and younger women and forcing them into sex slavery. And they
wash the money and trade it through that, so what you’re really seeing
is Tether used as a means, now that Liberty Reserve has been gone and
e-Gold is gone – of taking those people’s funds and legitimizing them.
So yes, their bucket shops.”

[We’re only two minutes in and he’s already run away with the
conversation. This is going to be rough.]

Nicole: Okay, okay, well, that is…

Craig: “And I notice you’ve got ‘hardcore cypherpunk’” [he’s referring
to my shirt, which says ‘hardcore cypherpunk’], “but does that mean
you don’t want law at all?”

Nicole: “No, sir…”

Craig: “Good”

Nicole: “It just means I support privacy-enhancing technologies.”

Craig: “So, privacy requires law by definition. Anonymity is
different. So, what these other people want is anonymous. They don’t
want privacy. They don’t want to be traced. Why they want not to be
traced is very simple: because you go to jail for a long time when you
get women addicted to heroin so that you can make them sex slaves, and
that’s where a lot of this money is going. When you’re saying you
support privacy, do you support people forcing sex slavery?”

[Who would say ‘yes’ to this question??]

Nicole: “No, of course not.”

Craig: “So, there’s your question. So, do you support the right for terrorism?”

Nicole: “I suppose that would depend on the definition of terrorism.”

[To be clear, the word ‘terrorism’ refers to politically-motivated
violence. I know this because I’ve studied the subject academically.
But in casual use, ‘terrorism’ often refers to any kind of sensational
violence or action against a governing body or ‘state’. And really,
just about everything is political in one way or another. Under some
understandings, creating a new currency system to undermine the
central banks would absolutely be considered terrorism, and I want to
be very clear: I absolutely support that (ie Bitcoin and other
cryptocurrencies). Also, a lot of ‘terrorism’ charges are trumped-up
drug charges. The state can and has argued that money spent on
purchasing drugs funds cartels and cartels enact political violence.
Therefore, if you’ve ever purchased ‘illegal’ drugs, you’ve funded
terrorism. Since I do support humans’ right to put whatever they want
into their own bodies, I cannot unequivocally say that I don’t support
the right for terrorism.]

Craig: “So, women and children – I spent some time in the Congo where
there were 12-year-olds with guns. Do you support that?”

[12 is pretty young, but kids grow up a lot faster in other parts of
the world. Of course I think kids should be kids and not be given guns
and taught violence from a young age, but some of that is cultural,
and I try not to inject my cultural bias or pass judgement on others.
Hence, me doing this interview in the first place.]

Nicole: “Um, no, but actually my question…”

Craig: “Do you support where people in Rwanda had their arms cut off
because they weren’t the right racial group?”

Nicole: “Of course not.”

Craig: “That’s terrorism. Do you support funding them?”

[All of those examples are ‘terrorism,’ but he’s also leaving some out.]

Nicole: “No”

Craig: “Do you support the terror groups that have come into the US –
for people who have nothing to do with any of this including blowing
up an Islamic mosque because they didn’t agree with the hardcore
radical group?”

[For the record, I never support violence or harming other humans or
beings. Motivation is irrelevant.]

Nicole: “Actually, I’m not wanting to argue with you on the exchanges
or even really discuss it. What I’d like to know is why you
singled-out CCN? If there was a catalyst while you were at Oxford, if
there was a catalyst that sort of led to that…”

Craig: “It’s your own hit-pieces. Look at what your media is. You’re
supporting pumping coins on wash exchanges. That enables – it enables
these people to get things like Tether out. It enables crime. None of
this is about building an ecosystem. It is funded by criminals who
basically want to get their money in and out. So a good percentage of
this comes from Russian State. There’s a reason why the Russian state
loves Ethereum and ICOs. Because there’s a lot of money coming out of
there that is actually tainted. So, let’s see articles, what article
have you said about building an ecosystem – not cryptoshitties or
something like this – real building; real securities, where people are
protected. Not some guy who like in Token2049 sat there and said “I
raised 50 million US dollars. I was able to democratize finance
because I was able to get money from all these people who would never
invest or be able to in a regulated system. They gave me 50 million
dollars, and my project, well, there was no hype for it, but it’s
okay. I can sit here until I have another idea with that 50 million
dollars now.” Do you know that’s called fraud? That guy raised money
on a promise. He actually actively sat there saying how he raised
money in small amounts from pensioners, from the unemployed, from
disabled people, whatever else – who weren’t able to act – who weren’t
actually registered investors and said he’s able to steal from
thousands of people because it’s democratizing finance, and you guys
gave him a big write up – in the past. And said his wonderful idea
about this huge thing he’s building that never got built, never hired
someone. He took all $50 million dollars and is retired. That’s what
you built. Now, where is your thing about someone actually building a
regulated exchange? Where people aren’t ripped off?”

Nicole: “Everyone from CCN is an independent journalist…”

Craig: “Um-Hmm”

Nicole: “and every piece is independent, unique to that person. It’s
not necessarily speaking to CCN’s ownership or CCN as a whole.”

Craig: “But they allow it. It’s an organization. What you’re saying
is: ‘We’re CCN. We don’t care. It’s independent. We let anything go
out there no matter how scammy and fraudy apart from one thing.”…
apart from one thing. Where are the articles on the real exchanges,
the ones that are regulated, the ones that make sure that people don’t
lose their money?”

[CSW doesn’t seem to understand that not all media organizations are
propaganda arms, like CoinGeek. I’m not saying CoinGeek doesn’t put
out some good information. In fact, I’m sure they do. It’s just that
100% of what is printed on that site is immediately discredited
because it’s all part of a machine, designed to make people reading it
want to buy BSV and dump any and all other coins and holdings.
CoinGeek is not a news site. News sites are supposed to be unbiased,
and report only on news, without passing judgment. Journalists from
different political persuasions report op-ed pieces, and as long as
they uphold journalism standards, unbiased outlets publish them. CCN
is an unbiased outlet. Different contributors have different opinions.
That’s allowed.]

Nicole: “Well, perhaps that’s something I should look into. Do you
have some suggestions for exchanges I should consider?”

Craig: “I would love to give you some real ones.”

[I’m dead serious here. I do want to know which exchanges CSW thinks
are not ‘bucket shops.’ I’d like to look into this and do some
reporting on it. There are holes in crypto-media, and I’d like to do
my part to fill them. I’m not placating him. I want his input. No
matter what else he is, he’s a smart person, and it would be unwise to
completely disregard anything he says.]

Nicole: “So, I do want to move to our next question, and that is, in
our email correspondence, you talked about the importance of know your
customer and anti-money laundering laws.”

Craig: “Correct”

Nicole: “So, why didn’t you, why didn’t you build those into Bitcoin?”

Craig: “I did. This is what people are trying to remove. Bitcoin is a
system where the identity is firewalled. Read the whitepaper. That’s
the, there’s a section in there. The core taking out allows all this.
Right now, you’ve seen, if you’d been through any of this yesterday,
dev day, Ryan talked about identity systems that can be built right on
top of bitcoin. Totally private. No one knows who you are, apart from
the KYC entities, apart from the businesses. Allowing you to have full
traceability but privacy at the same time. That was right there in the
beginning. The nature of bitcoin has an immutable evidence trail. You
don’t reuse addresses, but you still have fungibility under the law.”

“Fungibility actually means – it’s a legal term – and it means that
you are able to trace money. Monetary tracing is actually a
requirement of money. It goes right back. So money is legal and
fungible when it’s exchanged for valuable consideration without
knowledge of fraud. To have no knowledge of fraud, you can’t have an
anonymous coin. You need to be able to go to the person and say,
‘Here’s your coffee; here’s my money’ that’s a valuable exchange. If
someone gifts you money right now, if someone walks up, that you know
even, and gives you 50,000 dollars in US dollars, and says it’s a
gift, it’s not fungible. Under law, the police can walk in and say,
give me that back. By law. It’s always been that way.”

[I can tell CSW thinks I’m younger and dumber than I am. He just
defined ‘fungibility’ for me, and I’m a fintech journalist.
Fungibility is one of Aristotle’s principles for ‘sound currency.’ I
know what it means.  Further, he’s kind of splitting hairs here. There
is nothing illegal about cash currently. Cash is anonymous, and the
government certainly knows that people conduct illegal transactions in
cash – heck, even the government conducts illegal transactions using
cash. But he has a larger point about governments that are far more
corrupt even than the US government, so I’ll let him go ahead and make
it…]

Nicole: “So, um, can you tell us about the value proposition of
bitcoin if it cannot be used anonymously the same way that cash is?
Okay, there’s nothing illegal about cash, currently.”

Craig: “The value proposition of bitcoin is exactly the same. What
we’re doing in SC is the value proposition. The reason e-Gold was shut
down was because it became an anonymous crime coin. That goes to zero.
What happens one day when they finally get confidential transactions
and all the rest working? And you’ve already got the money laundering
laws etcetera.”

“In Europe, they’re clarifying so that if by the 20thof January next
year, you don’t have all these things in place, you’re a criminal –
that simple. So if you’re not going to do that, it doesn’t just end in
a slow, decline where you can get out. It ends like [snaps fingers]
that. You’ll have no value. When those dates hit, and the first
exchange is taken down, and it will be – quicker than lightning,
quicker than eighteen months, I guarantee you this. Within the next
eighteen months, the first exchange is going to get taken down, and
when it goes down [snaps fingers lighter this time] that’s BTC.
Whatever it is now, 8000 or whatever US dollars, and mere possession
will be a crime, exchanges will be a crime, ownership will be a crime.
Like e-Gold. E-Gold was worth a lot of money one day, the next day
zero, Liberty reserve, zero. It goes one day valuable, next day,
nothing.”

“Now, Bitcoin on the other hand, has a way of tracing. The Value
proposition is we can distribute money globally to anyone legally,
cheaper, faster, quicker. We can have micropayments. We can enable
people in countries like Africa and India. People who can’t get bank
accounts today. Not this bull from people like Samson Mao saying
people under 2 dollars a day shouldn’t have bitcoin. They’re the
people who should have bitcoin. There are billions of people right now
who cannot get money, who cannot get bank accounts, who cannot
register their ownership and goods, who cannot sell online, who cannot
buy, sell, and trade like we do here in the west and we take for
granted.”

[Maybe I’m naive, but I think the Bitcoin community as a whole is a
little too strong for this. When cryptocurrencies were made illegal in
China, the demand and value went up because the people feared their
government so much that they desperately wanted decentralized
currency. Bitcoin thrives on political unrest. And the value of a
commodity would not go to zero because owning that commodity is
illegal. Think about that. Decreased supply and increased demand does
not equate to lower values of the commodity in question. Take drugs
for example.]

[Drugs are illegal. Owning them is a crime. But because collectively
as a society, anyone who operates in the underground knows that you
exchange currency (or whatever value you and the other party or
parties agree upon) for drugs. Different drugs have different values
depending on physical location and availability of the substance. You
can’t openly trade them in marketplaces like Amazon; that’s true. But
that doesn’t mean their value goes to zero. I have a feeling Bitcoin
will be the same way if the events CSW describes do transpire.]

Nicole: “the unbanked”

[I’ve just let him know that I actually do follow him and at least
have some knowledge of what he’s talking about here. I’m not just a
silly girl, doing a silly piece. If you watch the video, look at his
face. He’s surprised.]

Craig: “The unbanked. All of them who can access on not these old
phones like people think but feature phones will be able to do this
simply. Not because people sit there going that’s unsecure, because
it’s unsecure for large amounts of money, but people who only have a
few dollars don’t want to pay $4 in fees or $40 in fees. They don’t
want to pay a cent.”

[He has a point. Bitcoin was designed with migrant workers who send
money across international borders in mind. They aren’t sending
thousands or tens of thousands of dollars. They send hundreds, maybe,
MAYBE single thousands. They shouldn’t have to pay high fees to the
banks or institutions. That is everything that’s wrong with the world.
The rich continue to get richer on the backs of the poor who continue
to get poorer. I’m glad CSW sees and acknowledges that. He makes some
humanitarian points that I do not disagree with, and I think that’s
worth noting.]

” If you’ve spent any time in Africa or India or whatever else then
what you will see is people, women, children, etc who go into stores
and buy boxes of matches so that they can sell individual matches.
That’s trade in commerce. But they can’t do that unless they have a
way of doing it. People trade, right now, for things like fish and
whatever else in markets. And they can exchange on mobile phones, but
they can’t pay for it and lock it in. With bitcoin they can.”

“The aspect everyone is missing, that you’re forgetting, ‘code is law’
is stupid. It is the dumbest thing you ever want to do because people
matter. Bitcoin was designed with all these escrow contracts and
whatever else, not to get rid of people, to integrate us, to build
society. Someone like you could build a reputation as an arbitrator
and then people can come to you to sort problems. Not fix the code.
Not cold impersonal computers that are set no matter what. People you
can talk to and explain problems. Things happen. What happens if you
set up a contract and something goes wrong? Do you want a way of
negotiating your way out? Do you want to say, I’m sorry I broke my
leg, I couldn’t make it, please give me another day? Is that
reasonable.”

Nicole: “Of course it is.”

[I too think ‘code is law’ is stupid. So do a lot of people who work
in the blockchain space, including Vlad Zamfir and to a lesser extent
even Vitalik Buterin. But it is important to note that while some
people are trying to build smart contracts into everything, not
everyone is. Human mediators will still have to play a huge role in
the world after blockchain is widely implemented. No, we (humans)
won’t operate cash registers or toll booths, but any industry that
does involve human labor will have to include human arbitrators. Few
people are saying otherwise. People do matter, but this argument is a
classic CSW bamboozle.]

Craig: “My child got sick. I couldn’t make it, I’m an hour late,
please don’t close my contract. Is that reasonable?”

Nicole: “Yes, of course I think it is. I’m sorry. I do have to move
on. I have so many questions and such a small amount of time. So I do
have some questions to follow up about Satoshi.”

Craig: “Mm, hmm.”

Nicole: “So you’ve said that signing a message with a PGP key won’t
prove anything, and I can understand that. But, wouldn’t it be more
convincing…”

Craig: “To whom?”

Nicole: “To naysayers”

Craig: “To people who want the idea of ‘code is law,’ yes. To people
who want to say mere possession is ownership, to people who want to
say Ross Ulbricht shouldn’t be in jail because he didn’t break the law
because other people have his keys. And they can sign them proving
that he doesn’t have the keys so therefore it’s not him.”

Nicole: “I understand your argument but I mean for people who argue
that you are not Satoshi…”

[I do completely understand his argument, btw. He’s saying that if YOU
somehow had Satoshi’s private keys and signed a message using
Satoshi’s PGP-key, that only means that you have the keys, not that
you’re Satoshi. I think it’s funny because if Craig Wright ever gets
access to those keys and then signs a message using them, I think the
same people who are saying now that ‘proof is in signing a message
with those keys’ will be saying, ‘signing a message with the keys
doesn’t prove that he’s Satoshi, only that he has the keys.’ And then
CSW is going to say ‘that’s what I said!’ Cryptographic evidence
though would go a long way for persuading the public, and I think if
CSW actually had it, he would provide it. He’s too thin-skinned to be
just tolerating this when he could do something about it.]

Craig: “No, what you’re saying is for people who don’t want me to be
Satoshi because they want anonymity. You know how much funding there
is to make a criminal store? You know Mr. Maxwell used to be an
anti-seg member, and leader of Ulsich and others, and what his really
saying, and I’m happy for you to put this on, and I’m happy to go into
court and libel and we’ll present evidence. What Mr. Maxwell and
others really want is they want ransomware, and extortionware that
cannot be traced, that’s what anonymity is for them. They want to lock
company computers and force people to pay. Right now, bitcoin ends up
in jail for a lot of hackers and criminals. When they do this, they
tried it, Mr. Maxwell helped. He’s got a background in this stuff. So,
unfortunately, he’s also a weasel and when Aaron Schwartz went to
jail, Mr. Maxwell managed to weasel out by coming to Canada and
whatever else. But criminals like this want a system that enables them
to anonymously make money, anonymously steal, corrupt, basically
engage in every dirty thing society has and there’s a lot of money out
there for that.”

Nicole: “So, I understand that’s why you’re not signing a message with
the PGP key. You have…”

Craig: “No, No, I’m not signing with the PGP key because that’s not
evidence. We have a system called law and evidence. Evidence doesn’t
come because I’ve got a key and I possess something. I’m going to
court. ..”

Nicole: “Okay, that’s what my next questions is about. So, you say
that ‘evidence law has been developed over centuries to make decisions
based only upon real evidence that can be authenticated and is
reliable.'”

[This was fun. He’s interrupted me several times at this point, and I
finally took my chance to cut in on him. I was laughing on the
inside.]

Craig: “Yes.”

Nicole: “So, what kinds of evidence could someone provide to prove
identity as Satoshi?”

Craig: “Everything I’ve put out there. Like it or not, my entire
history that is easily discredited. So if you want to be Satoshi, you
need an entire history going back to 2005 with everything that matches
my life. You need to have stopped working in 2009 in January. You need
to have been working on digital money before that. You need to have a
foundation in law, mathematics, computer science.  You need to
actually not be a cypherpunk. You need to be able to show all of that.
And here’s the thing, if you can discredit one little bit, if you can
show one little bit of my history that’s fake, I get to wear an orange
suit. If you get to yell out there and say you’re Satoshi, I get to
put you in an orange suit.”

[I’m not sure about this. It does confuse me that Craig is risking
prison time to prove he’s Satoshi. I wonder if he’s terminally ill and
agreed to all of this with nChain because he knows he won’t have to
spend decades behind bars, but that’s just speculation. I also wonder
who else is saying he or she or they are Satoshi that Craig is suing.
I’m pretty sure CSW is the only person publicly claiming to be Satoshi
right now. The people he’s suing are just saying that Craig is not
Satoshi. Unless he means he’s going to sue everyone who says  ‘we are
all Satoshi.’ If that’s the case, I’ll expect my summons any day.]

Nicole: “So you say that you need to not have been a cypherpunk, and
that was something that came up in our first conversation. You said
that…”

Craig: “James A Dulld was a cypherpunk, and unfortunately, he twisted
many of the arguments. The typical anti-government bit was where I
stated how I alighted James’ rant and the bit that no one seems to
link is James’ rant. So the ‘alighted’ statement means to cut short or
curtly. It’s my wife likes to point out that I should use words that
people understand. I read too many old books. And unfortunately
there’s all these words that people think are misspelled that are
actually real words.”

[I’m actually not offended by his defining the term ‘alighted’. I
didn’t know what it meant. My eyes are rolling a bit because he’s
talking about reading old books and using fancy words, but he is an
academic and some degree of pomposity is to be expected.]

Nicole: “So, in 2016, you told Andrew O’Hagan, the author of The
Satoshi Affair that ‘we were all using pseudonyms, that’s the
cypherpunk way.'”

Craig: “Umm, I wouldn’t believe everything the way – Andrew wanted to
make a book that painted everything in his three parts so Andrew
didn’t sign the NDA and Andrew didn’t end up doing what he was sort of
initially bred for, which I wouldn’t have been out. He would have been
following us as we produced patents over the next decade uhh, but
Andrew wanted to basically. He already had a story and he fitted me
into it. So like my mother made a statement. My mother said I dreamed
big and came up with whacky ideas when I was a child. Andrew put that
down as ‘Craig’s mother says he lies.’ So it’s basically, you take
something that has a grain of truth and you make it into a fiction.”

[He wasn’t expecting me to bring up the Satoshi Affair, or Andrew
O’Hagan. It’s old news, but I haven’t been able to find Wright’s
response to the whole thing, so I think it’s still worth talking
about. No one has given me guidelines for anything that’s off-limits
during this interview. To go further into the O’Hagan piece though,
it’s long, but anyone who follows the Satoshi story should read it. I
was lucky enough to stumble upon it because another CCN journalist
mentioned it in a Slack channel general discussion board about a week
before I conducted this interview. HUGE shout out to Greg Thompson!]

Nicole: “Okay, so I’m sorry just a question. You said that you did not
create bitcoin as a reaction to the 2008 financial crisis…”

Craig: “You can’t have it as a reaction to the 2008 financial crisis
because it started, and I’ve said this, before in 2007. Beginning of
2007. So it isn’t a reaction. Read the Genesis block article. It isn’t
a reaction to that. Because a reaction to a statement by Chancellor
Dali, saying ‘I am going to nationalize the banks unless they do what
I say.’ He said that. He said, ‘I will renationalize the banks if they
don’t do what I say.'”

Nicole: “So you did tell, I’m sorry, perhaps you did tell Andrew
O’Hagan that you saw the crisis coming. Is that true?”

Craig: “No, it’s not true.”

[Note: Andrew O’Hagan: I expect you’ve moved far beyond this and are
not following this story anymore. Even if you are, it’s highly
unlikely you’ll stumble across my rambling notes on my interview with
CSW, but on the off-chance you see this, please contact me! I have so
many questions for you. If you want an NDA, I’ll sign one. You can
tell me things off-the-record, and I’ll take them to my grave. (This
goes for anyone else too btw). If anyone reading this knows or can
contact Andrew O’Hagan, I’ll be eternally grateful.]

Nicole: “Alright, so…”

Craig: “Andrew, we talked about a few things, and I said there are a
lot of problems in the economic system at the time. Credit fault swaps
were problematic especially with the inability to actually value
assets, and we discussed those things. That’s not the same as what he
put down.”

[He’s back-pedaling. CSW doesn’t want to call O’Hagan a liar directly.
Something is going on here, but we’re almost out of time, and I have
to wrap it up. I want to investigate this more.]

Nicole: “So one more question and then I know you have to go.”

Craig: “Mhmm.”

Nicole: “Mike Hearn once asked Satoshi if the Electronic Funds
Transfer law would apply to Bitcoin. And Satoshi said, ‘I’m not a
lawyer, and I can’t possibly answer that.'”

Craig: “So I finished my masters in law in sort of the 2008, beginning
of 2009. Now everyone says that means I’m a lawyer. I wasn’t. It was
in 2013 that I did college of law. So I followed up, and I did my
training to be a barrister and soliciter years later. Now, as an
academic who teaches law, I’m not a lawyer, and I’m certainly not an
American lawyer or your lawyer. Now, at the time, in 2009, I was not a
lawyer. You became a lawyer not by doing a law degree but by doing
practice. And it was on;y when I went to the college of law and did
barrister training and etc and then became I’m now what is called an
academic lawyer, so I’m a member of the society of legal scholars and
other such things there. So when I spoke to everyone in the past I was
not a lawyer. I know that’s a distinction that many people don’t get.
So an academic who teaches law, may not be a lawyer unless you have
done practice training, you’re not a lawyer. Do you see the
difference?”

[There is a difference between having a law degree and being a lawyer.
The difference is in practice. He’s not wrong, but he’s deflecting.
BSV (Bitcoin Satoshi Vision) is hinged upon Craig’s claim that he’s
Satoshi. Much of the small community that supports that token would
vanish if they didn’t believe that claim. For every question I could
ask about contradictions between Craig and Satoshi, Craig would have
an answer, a way to discredit the discord. That’s his job, and he’s
good at it.]

Nicole: “Yes, I do. Okay, well, I know that you have to go. I have so
many more questions, but we are out of time. So thank you very much
for agreeing to talk to me today.”

Craig: “You’re welcome.”
After the Interview…

I ask Craig if it would be alright if I send my remaining questions
through Ed Pownall to him, and he says yes. I haven’t done it because
after analyzing all of the data from our two interviews, I’m certain
there’s no question that would really stump him. Craig and Ed are
talking about the CCN hit piece on BSV that ran that morning. Craig
hasn’t seen it yet. Ed wonders why there’s anything to criticize when
the value of BSV has only been going up. They’re not talking to me,
but I chime in anyway.

“I’m not writing a hit piece,” I look at Craig and say.

I won’t quote him because I’m not sure of his exact words when he
responded, but I think it was something like: ~ I know, and I have
nothing against you personally.

“Nor I you,” I tell him, and I don’t.

Truly, I wanted to write this piece because I thought there were
questions that he deserved a direct forum to answer. And not from
BSV’s propaganda arm. I thought there was a media imbalance in
coverage about CSW and his coin. I still do. I wanted to try and be a
part of the solution. Finally, and I’ve said this before, I think it’s
important that when we criticize people, we try and remember their
humanity. Craig Wright is a human. He deserves some human kindness,
even when he doesn’t show it. Two wrongs do not make a right, and
someone has to take the first step to be the bigger person. I want to
see more compassion in the way people treat each other. I’m trying to
demonstrate the empathy and kindness that I think is too often missing
in the digital age.

Love wins.
"





"
I Chased Craig Wright to Toronto for an Interview. Full Text Transcription.
By nrdgrl007 June 3, 2019

When I first approached Dr. Craig S. Wright’s team for an interview
with him on behalf of CCN, they were very courteous and responsive. I
emailed them questions, and Ed Pownall told me I’d have responses
shortly. However, before I got them, Craig Wright publicly slammed CCN
(and other crypto media) while he was at Oxford. CCN responded.

Weeks later, Mr. Pownall contacted me again. He asked if we could
still do the interview. I said of course, but when I pitched it to my
editors at CCN, they said we needed to ask some follow-up questions.
Of course we did.

Reading over Wright’s responses to my initial questions, I knew I
needed to get the follow-up in-person. As luck would have it, in our
initial correspondence, Wright told me to come to Toronto to find out
(some answers). So I contacted Mr. Pownall and asked if I could get a
press pass and an in-person video interview with Craig Wright. He said
yes to both. So I went.

CCN will publish the video I captured for them and my accompanying
article this weekend (6/7/19). I will admit though, the video is not
the highest quality since I was alone and filming with my iPhone on a
tripod. Further, there are times when Wright walks all over me and
doesn’t answer the questions I asked.

The following is the transcript of my interview with Dr. Craig S.
Wright, the man who created Bitcoin SV, and according to him the
original Bitcoin as well. It is a direct interview. I asked him
questions, and he answered.

Craig Wright Video Interview Transcription

Nicole: “I’m Nicole with CCN and I’m here today with Dr. Craig Wright
in Toronto at the CoinGeek Scaling conference. Dr. Wright, thank you
so much for agreeing to meet with me today”

Wright: “You’re welcome”

Nicole: “And for your invitation to the CoinGeek conference here in Toronto.”

Wright: “Again, you’re welcome.”

Nicole: “And for anyone interested in the questions and answers from
my previous correspondence with Dr. Wright, I will have a link to the
full text of that conversation in the description and a transcription
of this conversation as well. So that being said, I do have some
follow-up questions.”

“And first, shortly after you initially agreed to talk with me –  at
Oxford discussing your detractors and cryptomedia, you singled out
CCN, and uh said CCN is ‘owned by a group of people who are backing
alt-chains, who are backing multiple coins, who are backing
unregulated and uncontrolled exchanges’

Craig: You mean like most of the exchanges, or sorry, bucket shops.

Nicole: okay, Yes, as you said in our previous correspondence, that
was a term that you used. So, my question is…

Craig: It’s not just a term. It’s actually a term in law. Um, these
aren’t regulated by definition they’re bucket shops. They do wash
trading, they facilitate illegal trades, in fact, um I think at the
moment 30% of the trade through Binance and Bitfinex actually happens
to be, Islamic Migrab and also Syrian fighters. So basically, 30% of
the current funding in Bitfinex is actually terrorist funding. Doing
the analysis and whatever else and about 17% is in people smuggling.
So basically what that is is taking older women and forcing them into
labor, and younger women and forcing them into sex slavery. And they
wash the money and trade it through that, so what you’re really seeing
is Tether used as a means, now that Liberty Reserve has been gone and
e-Gold is gone – of taking those people’s funds and legitimizing them.
So yes, their bucket shops.

Nicole: Okay, okay, well, that is…

Craig: “And I notice you’ve got ‘hardcore cypherpunk’” [he’s referring
to my shirt, which says ‘hardcore cypherpunk’], “but does that mean
you don’t want law at all?”

Nicole: “No, sir…”

Craig: “Good”

Nicole: “It just means I support privacy-enhancing technologies.”

Craig: “So, privacy requires law by definition. Anonymity is
different. So, what these other people want is anonymous. They don’t
want privacy. They don’t want to be traced. Why they want not to be
traced is very simple: because you go to jail for a long time when you
get women addicted to heroin so that you can make them sex slaves, and
that’s where a lot of this money is going. When you’re saying you
support privacy, do you support people forcing sex slavery? “

Nicole: “No, of course not.”

Craig: “So, there’s your question. So, do you support the right for terrorism?”

Nicole: “I suppose that would depend on the definition of terrorism.”

Craig: “So, women and children – I spent some time in the Congo where
there were 12-year-olds with guns. Do you support that?”

Nicole: “Um, no, but actually my question…”

Craig: “Do you support where people in Rwanda had their arms cut off
because they weren’t the right racial group?”

Nicole: “Of course not.”

Craig: “That’s terrorism. Do you support funding them?”

Nicole: “No”

Craig: “Do you support the terror groups that have come into the US –
for people who have nothing to do with any of this including blowing
up an Islamic mosque because they didn’t agree with the hardcore
radical group?”

Nicole: Actually, I’m not wanting to argue with you on the exchanges
or even really discuss it. What I’d like to know is why you
singled-out CCN? If there was a catalyst while you were at Oxford, if
there was a catalyst that sort of led to that…

Craig: It’s your own hit-pieces. Look at what your media is. You’re
supporting pumping coins on wash exchanges. That enables – it enables
these people to get things like Tether out. It enables crime. None of
this is about building an ecosystem. It is funded by criminals who
basically want to get their money in and out. So a good percentage of
this comes from Russian State. There’s a reason why the Russian state
loves Ethereum and ICOs. Because there’s a lot of money coming out of
there that is actually tainted. So, let’s see articles, what article
have you said about building an ecosystem – not cryptoshitties or
something like this – real building; real securities, where people are
protected. Not some guy who like in Token2049 sat there and said “I
raised 50 million US dollars. I was able to democratize finance
because I was able to get money from all these people who would never
invest or be able to in a regulated system. They gave me 50 million
dollars, and my project, well, there was no hype for it, but it’s
okay. I can sit here until I have another idea with that 50 million
dollars now.” Do you know that’s called fraud? That guy raised money
on a promise. He actually actively sat there saying how he raised
money in small amounts from pensioners, from the unemployed, from
disabled people, whatever else – who weren’t able to act – who weren’t
actually registered investors and said he’s able to steal from
thousands of people because it’s democratizing finance, and you guys
gave him a big write up – in the past. And said his wonderful idea
about this huge thing he’s building that never got built, never hired
someone. He took all $50 million dollars and is retired. That’s what
you built. Now, where is your thing about someone actually building a
regulated exchange? Where people aren’t ripped off?

Nicole: Everyone from CCN is an independent journalist…

Craig: Um-Hmm

Nicole: and every piece is independent, unique to that person. It’s
not necessarily speaking to CCN’s ownership or CCN as a whole.

Craig: But they allow it. It’s an organization. What you’re saying is:
‘We’re CCN. We don’t care. It’s independent. We let anything go out
there no matter how scammy and fraudy apart from one thing.”… apart
from one thing. Where are the articles on the real exchanges, the ones
that are regulated, the ones that make sure that people don’t lose
their money?

Nicole: Well, perhaps that’s something I should look into. Do you have
some suggestions for exchanges I should consider?

Craig: I would love to give you some real ones.

Nicole: So, I do want to move to our next question, and that is, in
our email correspondence, you talked about the importance of know your
customer and anti-money laundering laws.

Craig: Correct

Nicole: So, why didn’t you, why didn’t you build those into Bitcoin?

Craig: I did. This is what people are trying to remove. Bitcoin is a
system where the identity is firewalled. Read the whitepaper. That’s
the, there’s a section in there. The core taking out allows all this.
Right now, you’ve seen, if you’d been through any of this yesterday,
dev day, Ryan talked about identity systems that can be built right on
top of bitcoin. Totally private. No one knows who you are, apart from
the KYC entities, apart from the businesses. Allowing you to have full
traceability but privacy at the same time. That was right there in the
beginning. The nature of bitcoin has an immutable evidence trail. You
don’t reuse addresses, but you still have fungibility under the law.

Fungibility actually means – it’s a legal term – and it means that you
are able to trace money. Monetary tracing is actually a requirement of
money. It goes right back. So money is legal and fungible when it’s
exchanged for valuable consideration without knowledge of fraud. To
have no knowledge of fraud, you can’t have an anonymous coin. You need
to be able to go to the person and say, “Here’s your coffee, here’s my
money” that’s a valuable exchange. If someone gifts you money right
now, if someone walks up, that you know even, and gives you 50,000
dollars in US dollars, and says it’s a gift, it’s not fungible. Under
law, the police can walk in and say, give me that back. By law. It’s
always been that way.

Nicole: So, um, can you tell us about the value proposition of bitcoin
if it cannot be used anonymously the same way that cash is? Okay,
there’s nothing illegal about cash, currently.

Craig: The value proposition of bitcoin is exactly the same. What
we’re doing in SC is the value proposition. The reason e-Gold was shut
down was because it became an anonymous crime coin. That goes to zero.
What happens one day when they finally get confidential transactions
and all the rest working. And you’ve already got the money laundering
laws etcetera.

In Europe, they’re clarifying so that if by the 20thof January next
year, you don’t have all these things in place, you’re a criminal –
that simple. So if you’re not going to do that, it doesn’t just end in
a slow, decline where you can get out. It ends like [snaps fingers]
that. You’ll have no value. When those dates hit, and the first
exchange is taken down, and it will be – quicker than lightning,
quicker than eighteen months, I guarantee you this. Within the next
eighteen months, the first exchange is going to get taken down, and
when it goes down [snaps fingers lighter this time] that’s BTC.
Whatever it is now, 8000 or whatever US dollars, and mere possession
will be a crime, exchanges will be a crime, ownership will be a crime.
Like e-Gold. E-Gold was worth a lot of money one day, the next day
zero, Liberty reserve, zero. It goes one day valuable, next day,
nothing.

Now, Bitcoin on the other hand, has a way of tracing. The Value
proposition is we can distribute money globally to anyone legally,
cheaper, faster, quicker. We can have micropayments. We can enable
people in countries like Africa and India. People who can’t get bank
accounts today. Not this bull from people like Samson Mao saying
people under 2 dollars a day shouldn’t have bitcoin. They’re the
people who should have bitcoin. There are billions of people right now
who cannot get money, who cannot get bank accounts, who cannot
register their ownership and goods, who cannot sell online, who cannot
buy, sell, and trade like we do here in the west and we take for
granted.

Nicole: the unbanked

Craig: The unbanked. All of them who can access on not these old
phones like people think but feature phones will be able to do this
simply. Not because people sit there going that’s unsecure, because
it’s unsecure for large amounts of money, but people who only have a
few dollars don’t want to pay $4 in fees or $40 in fees. They don’t
want to pay a cent.

 If you’ve spent any time in Africa or India or whatever else then
what you will see is people, women, children, etc who go into stores
and buy boxes of matches so that they can sell individual matches.
That’s trade in commerce. But they can’t do that unless they have a
way of doing it. People trade, right now, for things like fish and
whatever else in markets. And they can exchange on mobile phones, but
they can’t pay for it and lock it in. With bitcoin they can.

The aspect everyone is missing, that you’re forgetting, code is law is
stupid. It is the dumbest thing you ever want to do because people
matter. Bitcoin was designed with all these escrow contracts and
whatever else, not to get rid of people, to integrate us, to build
society. Someone like you could build a reputation as an arbitrator
and then people can come to you to sort problems. Not fix the code.
Not cold impersonal computers that are set no matter what. People you
can talk to and explain problems. Things happen. What happens if you
set up a contract and something goes wrong? Do you want a way of
negotiating your way out? Do you want to say, I’m sorry I broke my
leg, I couldn’t make it, please give me another day? Is that
reasonable.

Nicole: Of course it is.

Craig: My child got sick. I couldn’t make it, I’m an hour late, please
don’t close my contract. Is that reasonable?

Nicole: Yes, of course I think it is. I’m sorry I do have to move on.
I have so many questions and such a small amount of time. So I do have
some questions to follow up about Satoshi.

Craig: Mm, hmm.

Nicole: So you’ve said that signing a message with a PGP key won’t
prove anything, and I can understand that. But, wouldn’t it be more
convincing…

Craig: To whom?

Nicole: To naysayers

Craig: To people who want the idea of code is law, yes. To people who
want to say mere possession is ownership, to people who want to say
Ross Ulbricht shouldn’t be in jail because he didn’t break the law
because other people have his keys. And they can sign them proving
that he doesn’t have the keys so therefore it’s not him.

Nicole: I understand your argument but I mean for people who argue
that you are not Satoshi

Craig: No, what you’re saying is for people who don’t want me to be
Satoshi because they want anonymity. You know how much funding there
is to make a criminal store? You know Mr. Maxwell used to be an
anti-seg member, and leader of Ulsich and others, and what his really
saying, and I’m happy for you to put this on, and I’m happy to go into
court and libel and we’ll present evidence. What Mr. Maxwell and
others really want is they want ransomware, andextortionware that
cannot be traced, that’s what anonymity is for them. They want to lock
company computers and force people to pay. Right now, bitcoin ends up
in jail for a lot of hackers and criminals. When they do this, they
tried it, Mr. Maxwell helped. He’s got a background in this stuff. So,
unfortunately, he’s also a weasel and when Aaron Schwartz went to
jail, Mr. Maxwell managed to weasel out by coming to Canada and
whatever else. But criminals like this want a system that enables them
to anonymously make money, anonymously steal, corrupt, basically
engage in every dirty thing society has and there’s a lto of money out
there for that.

Nicole: So, I understand that’s why you’re not signing a message with
the PGP key. You have

Craig: No, No, I’m not signing with the PGP key because that’s not
evidence. We have a system called law and evidence. Evidence doesn’t
come because I’ve got a key and I possess something. I’m going to
court. ..

Nicole: Okay, that’s what my next questions is about. So, you say that
evidence law has been developed over centuries to make decisions based
only upon real evidence that can be authenticated and is reliable.

Craig: Yes

Nicole: So, what kinds of evidence could someone provide to prove
identity as Satoshi?

Craig: Everything I’ve put out there. Like it or not, my entire
history that is easily discredited. So is you want to be Satoshi you
need an entire history going back to 2005 with everything that matches
my life. You need to have stopped working in 2009 in January. You need
to have been working on digital money before that. You need to have a
foundation in law, mathematics, computer science.  You need to
actually not be a cypherpunk. You need to be able to show all of that.
And here’s the thing, if you can discredit one little bit, if you can
show one little bit of my history that’s fake, I get to wear an orange
suit. If you get to yell out there and say you’re Satoshi, I get to
put you in an orange suit.

Nicole: So you say that you need to not have been a cypherpunk, and
that was something that came up in our first conversation. You said
that

Craig: James A Dulld was a cypherpunk, and unfortunately, he twisted
many of the arguments. The typical anti-government bit was where I
stated how I alighted James’ rant and the bit that no one seems to
link is James’ rant. So the alighted statement means to cut short or
curtly. It’s my wife likes to point out that I should use words that
people understand. I read too many old books. And unfortunately
there’s all these words that people think are misspelled that are
actually real words.

Nicole: So, in 2016, you told Andrew O’Hagan, the author of The
Satoshi Affair that “we were all using pseudonyms, that’s the
cypherpunk way”

Craig: Umm, I wouldn’t believe everything the way – Andrew wanted to
make a book that painted everything in his three parts so Andrew
didn’t sign the NDA and Andrew didn’t end up doing what he was sort of
initially bred for, which I wouldn’t have been out. He would have been
following us as we produced patents over the next decade uhh, but
Andrew wanted to basically. He already had a story and he fitted me
into it. So like my mother made a statement. My mother said I dreamed
big and came up with whacky ideas when I was a child. Andrew put that
down as Craig’s mother says he lies. So it’s basically, you take
something that has a grain of truth and you make it into a fiction.

Nicole: Okay, so I’m sorry just a question. You said that you did not
create bitcoin as a reaction to the 2008 financial crisis

Craig: You can’t have it as a reaction to the 2008 financial crisis
because it started, and I’ve said this, before in 2007. Beginning of
2007. So it isn’t a reaction. Read the Genesis block article. It isn’t
a reaction to that. Because a reaction to a statement by chancellor
Dali, saying I am going to nationalize the banks unless they do what I
say. He said that. He said, I will renationalize the banks if they
don’t do what I say

Nicole: So you did tell, I’m sorry, perhaps you did tell Andrew
O’Hagan that you saw the crisis coming. Is that true?

Craig: No, it’s not true.

Nicole: Alright, so…

Craig: Andrew, we talked about a few things, and I said there are a
lot of problems in the economic system at the time. Credit fault swaps
were problematic especially with the inability to actually value
assets, and we discussed those things. That’s not the same as what he
put down.

Nicole: So one more question and then I know you have to go.

Craig: Mhmm

Nicole: Mike Hearn once asked Satoshi if the Electronic Funds Transfer
law would apply to bitcoin. And Satoshi said, “I’m not a lawyer, and I
can’t possibly answer that.”

Craig: So I finished my masters in law in sort of the 2008, beginning
of 2009. Now everyone says that means I’m a lawyer. I wasn’t. It was
in 2013 that I did college of law. So I followed up, and I did my
training to be a barrister and soliciter years later. Now, as an
academic who teaches law, I’m not a lawyer, and I’m certainly not an
American lawyer or your lawyer. Now, at the time, in 2009, I was not a
lawyer. You became a lawyer not by doing a law degree but by doing
practice. And it was on;y when I went to the college of law and did
barrister training and etc and then became I’m now what is called an
academic lawyer, so I’m a member of the society of legal scholars and
other such things there. So when I spoke to everyone in the past I was
not a lawyer. I know that’s a distinction that many people don’t get.
So an academic who teaches law, may not be a lawyer unless you have
done practice training, you’re not a lawyer. Do you see the
difference?

Nicole: Yes, I do. Okay, well I know that you have to go. I have so
many more questions, but we are out of time. So thank you very much
for agreeing to talk to me today.

Craig: You’re welcome.

After the Interview…

I stayed to attend some of the lectures, interview Calvin Ayre (which
I will also post), talked to a lot of BSV proponents, and attended the
after-party. I’ll write about all of that. But this was just the
direct transcript of my interview with Dr. Craig S. Wright, who – no
matter what else he is or has done – was involved in Bitcoin earlier
than most of us, and is a highly intelligent human being. .. We are
ALL Satoshi.
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