From the very beginning the judge makes it clear that he is NOT deciding on whether CSW is Satoshi Nakamoto. CSW and his fans have already repeatedly lied about this since the ruling.
The judge takes CSW's bitcoin ownership claims at face value; those lies now only work to Wright's detriment, and the judge seems content to let Wright lie in the bed he made for himself.
Judge Reinhart ordered sanctions under Rule 37 as punishment for Wright's willful misconduct during discovery.
The judge doesn't believe Wright's stories about being unable to access his bitcoins, but doesn't think the evidence is enough for criminal contempt of court.
There *is* enough for civil contempt, but the judge thinks the sanctions he's ordering are sufficient punishment, so he declines to refer it to Judge Bloom.
Judge finds that W&K was formed as a 50/50 partnership, and owns all Bitcoin-related assets created by Wright prior to Kleiman's death. Plaintiffs retain Kleiman's 50% ownership.
Note the "and any assets traceable to them", directly contradicting Wright's recent claims that this ruling somehow only covers BTC, not BCH or BSV.
As sanctions, the judge awards attorney's fees and strikes Wright's affirmative defenses, basically leaving Wright without a leg to stand on for the rest of the case.
The judge tears into Wright's testimony and credibility in no uncertain terms, completely rejecting it. He agrees with Judge Bloom's recent finding that Wright is not credible.
Cui fucking bono at work. The judge clearly took no stock in Wright's suggestions that "a hacker did it".
The judge concludes that the Tulip Trust described by Wright does not exist, and that Wright merely used this story to intentionally impede discovery.
Though not being 100% accurate with terminology, the judge correctly identifies that it's weird to transfer bitcoins by copying keys instead of issuing transactions. (I'm not sure if this point was even argued during the hearings.)
Judge's TL;DR: the defense's entire argument rests on Wright's word, which is beyond worthless. Someone like Wright *would* lie in court.
The judge does not fault Wright's lawyers for Wrights willful misconduct. (In a previous hearing he more or less openly sympathized with them for having to deal with a lying client.)
As part of sanctions, the court deems the aforementioned facts (W&K 50/50 owns all assets etc.) as established. In other words, Wright is such a liar and a fraud that the court won't even try to find out what's really true, and instead declare facts in the plaintiff's favor.
BONUS: The judge explains how Shamir's Secret Sharing works, since Wright previously stated untrue things about it.
Late summary of COPA v some IT security guy, day 8 (Wednesday): 🧵
Wright's worst day so far. Until now he's only been asked about his own narrative, but today he was tested on his knowledge of C++ and the Bitcoin code, objective things you can't just lie your way through.
Yesterday Wright asserted that he'd never had anything to do with a particular email account on a domain owned by McGregor. Hough shows him an employment contract between Wright and McGregor's company. Wright denies it's his signature and says he didn't pay any tax. 🤨
Wright says he's not aware anyone discredited the Sartre blog post, as he never reads anything. He's also never used Reddit. Starts ranting about other people trying to keep him down, so he keeps getting degrees. Told to stop; "we've got to make some progress today."
Opens with an update on COPA's analysis of Wright's LaTeX files; some of the redactions in the turned over material are raised as questionable (judge calls them "very odd"), but it'll be handled after Wright's cross-examination.
Several of Wright's claims have been shown to be contradicted by Satoshi's own words in hitherto-unpublished private communications with people like @marttimalmi or @adam3us, and Wright is coming up with tortured interpretations to avoid admitting he was wrong.
He's also walked through the many contradictory claims he made in the Kleiman lawsuit (e.g. about trusts and key slices). COPA is less interested in arriving at which version he currently insists is true, and more in showing that he changes his story as needed.
A collection of Wright moments from my notes today: 🧵
Wright thinks copying entire blocks of text without making it clear they're quotes is fine for his academic work, though acknowledges missing a footnote or two and blames his software for that. Judge chimes in in disbelief.
Wright says his original version properly quoted & credited everyone, but his editors told him to reduce the word count so all the crediting got lost.
Wright accuses PaintedFrog (who uncovered this heavy plagiarism in Wright's LLM thesis) of being Greg Maxwell in disguise.
In recent years Wright says he's been enrolled in 23 simultaneous degrees and wrote 600 papers, and says that during this trial he's doing 5 PhD's and 12 degrees. He also listens to 8 hours of audio books a day. "I'm sure we're all very impressed", comments COPA's barrister.
MtGox creditors: are you unsure choosing between Early Lump Sum Payment or waiting for Final Payment? Both are perfectly valid and rational choices, and you should think for yourself and decide what's best for you.
Again, don't just blindly trust or follow what someone else says or does. Other people's thinking doesn't necessarily translate to good advice for your personal situation, and some actors have ulterior motives for wanting you to choose a certain way.
1. Time preference. ⌚️💸
Do you need the money urgently for something? Then ELSP will allow you to get most of your claim paid out the fastest. You can likely get a bit more if you can wait, but if you need it, you need it. There's absolutely no shame in taking the early payout.
All MtGox creditors: the deadline to choose between "Early Lump Sum Payment" and "Final Payment" is March 10. If you haven't already done so, please log in to claims.mtgox.com to choose your preference.
This is an individual choice for every creditor, and you should consider your own situation and time preference when choosing, and not merely follow other people's suggestions. See this previous blog post for a closer explanation of the options.
Early Lump Sum Payment: You get 21% of your claim valuation* paid out now (converted to BTC/BCH/JPY at fixed rates), and that's it; you get nothing more, unless something exceptional happens like a ton of additional coins being recovered (very unlikely).
The JSTOR forgery didn't come from somebody else, and it isn't just some corrupted file. Wright was holding up this very document on camera, with his own handwriting on it, claiming it proved how he came up with the name Satoshi Nakamoto. This is *his* document.
Wright suggesting we ask "cui bono?" (who benefits?) is hilarious because yes, let's ponder the great mystery of who could *possibly* benefit from forging evidence that Wright is Satoshi? Will we ever have an answer?
Only because he *got caught* forging documents is Wright now instead insisting there must be some great conspiracy where master hacker Ira Kleiman broke into all of Wright's homes and computers and replaced every single copy of his 100% legitimate evidence with bad forgeries!