Craig Wright to Use 'Extraordinary Proof' This Time

Well after two days of media chaos Craig’s back with some further announcements. Australian Craig S. Wright, who claims he is Satoshi Nakamoto, after convincing Gavin Andresen and Jon Matonis, has more details and “extraordinary proof” to share with the community. In fact, according to BBC publication (with whom he’s been rather friendly with), Wright will move some bitcoin. To prove his case, however, Wright can’t just move any old bitcoin — it will have to be from the beginning or an address belonging to Satoshi.

Also read: Antonopoulos Declined ‘Opportunity’ to Identify Satoshi and Doesn’t Care

Craig Wright Has More to Reveal

Not only has a spokesperson representing Wright told the BBC the latest news but also the mysterious Aussie writes up a blog post called “Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Proof.” In this latest write up Wright praises Andreas Antonopoulos for telling the public it doesn’t matter who Nakamoto is but proceeds to say “I will present what I believe to be ‘extraordinary proof’ and ask only that it be independently validated.”

Wright claims after everything that’s happened he can never go back and must proceed forward with his story. The self-proclaimed Satoshi Nakamoto writes (with spelling errors to boot):

I will be posting a series of pieces that will lay the foundations for this extraordinary claim, which will include posting independently-verifiable documents and evidence addressing some of the false allegations that have been levelled, and transferring bitcoin from an early block.

Wright acknowledges that his upcoming series of proofs may never convince the stubborn or hard headed yet “swimming against the current would be futile.” Lots of people have dismissed his prior evidence after reading Dan Kaminsky’s evaluations and many others who investigated Wright’s signature claim. Kaminsky had even written to Gavin Andresen about the subject by email and got a response from the developer. Andresen also believes better proof is needed to convince the community.

“OF COURSE he should just publish a signed message or (equivalently) move some BTC through the key associated with an early block,” the Bitcoin developer states. Well, it seems Craig Wright plans on doing just that.

He can never go back after the last allegations of being called a hoaxster he says on his blog. Wright claims after the initial outing months ago he received personal threats and slurs against his family. The Australian says he can prove he has access to early keys and “can and will do so by moving Bitcoin.”

He hasn’t proved anything to the Bitcoin community that wasn’t publicly available before, but when Andresen met him in London it was a different story. Andresen explains:

Craig signed a message that I chose (“Gavin’s favorite number is eleven. CSW” if I recall correctly) using the private key from block number 1. That signature was copied onto a clean usb stick I brought with me to London, and then validated on a brand-new laptop with a freshly downloaded copy of electrum. I was not allowed to keep the message or laptop (fear it would leak before Official Announcement). I don’t have an explanation for the funky OpenSSL procedure in his blog post.

However, The Electrum Wallet team says there was no “freshly downloaded” Electrum wallet downloaded from that region at the time of the meeting. “Note: There was no download of a signature file of electrum (.asc file) from a UK IP on Apr 7th,” said Electrum. Yet in Wright’s blog post he details the meeting talking about him and Gavin “nurturing Bitcoin to life, and arguing in the early interactions.”

Is Wright who he claims to be? We all shall see in the coming days if he moves some bitcoin from the first blocks from the past and maybe some of this mystery will unravel. If he does not provide “extraordinary proof,” however, he will certainly go down in history as the cryptographically incorrect hoaxster of all time. As always Bitcoin.com will keep our readers updated as more develops with this story.

What do you think about Craig Wrights latest claims? Let us know in the comments below.

Images courtesy of IBtimes, Pixabay, Craig Wrights Blog & This hilarious Reddit post