Attorneys for Hodlonaut have called out Craig Wright, describing his claim that he’s the real Satoshi as fraudulent.
Lawyers representing Twitter personality Hodlonaut have dismissed claims by Craig Wright that he is the real founder of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto. In an Oslo District Court on Monday, Hodlonaut’s lawyer described Wright’s claims as a farce, adding that they lack credibility.
The ongoing court case seeks to determine the authenticity of evidence submitted by Wright to support his claim as the author of Bitcoin’s whitepaper. The court will also consider whether or not Hodlonaut, also known as Magnus Granath, was protected by Norwegian free speech laws in March 2019 when he called Wright a fraud on Twitter.
Regarding the Satoshi claim, Wright has offered several pieces of evidence, including supposed early drafts of Nakamoto’s 2008 paper. The Australian also referenced a signing session in 2016 where he claimed to show witnesses he held the private keys for early Bitcoins only the real founder should have.
Last week, multinational auditing firm KPMG presented evidence from its digital forensics experts to prove that Wright doctored submitted papers. However, Wright’s witnesses tried to debunk KPMG’s evidence. Speaking to the court, cybersecurity company Cyfor’s investigator Klaudia Sokolowska said:
“In digital forensics… if an independent third party were to verify, they should be able to recreate the steps and environment exactly as it was.”
Sokolowska noted that she could not scientifically reproduce the KPMG results because the firm’s description of its testing environment is inadequate. Alongside a fellow witness, Sokolowska argued that the irregularities KPMG showed are either unreliable or cannot be reproduced. Specified irregularities include double spacings and metadata discrepancies.
Irregularities in the Metadata Presented by Wright to Back His Satoshi Claim
The 2008 date on one document indicates that Wright researched the name “Nakamoto” before the white paper publication. KPMG’s evidence also shows that Wright used a different, smaller font for the second zero and eight. Haukaas said, without a doubt, that Wright manipulated the documents. According to Haukaas:
“This isn’t something that happens if you move it from Windows to Linux… it’s something that happens when you use a text editor and you change the text.”
Hodlonaut Free Speech Argument against Craig Wright
Wright exposed Granath’s identity on the internet after Granath hid behind the Twitter name Hodlonaut to sue Wright in Norway. Hodlonaut sued Wright to get a judgment that the freedom of speech law protects his tweet. He also tried preventing Wright from filing a libel case against him and seeking financial damages in connection to the tweets.
Granath’s lawyer, Orjan Salvesen Haukaas, said the question for the court is not whether Wright is Satoshi. According to Haukaas, the argument is whether Wright can get restitution because Granath described him as a fake Satoshi. Haukaas contested that the fraud term fits Wright, citing the Mariam-Webster dictionary definition of a person who is not what they pretend to be. The lawyer also argued that the Norwegian constitution protects an individual’s right to use the word freely. “A protection of the right of the individual to seek truth, to express oneself about untrue things is a strong and important right,” said he.
Tolu is a cryptocurrency and blockchain enthusiast based in Lagos. He likes to demystify crypto stories to the bare basics so that anyone anywhere can understand without too much background knowledge.
When he’s not neck-deep in crypto stories, Tolu enjoys music, loves to sing and is an avid movie lover.
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