Craig Wright is an Australian computer scientist, crypto entrepreneur and an early adopter who is as controversial as they come within the crypto world. He has contacts with some of the most powerful mining cartels in the world and is the key person behind the Bitcoin Cash and the subsequent Bitcoin Satoshi Vision fork. Among Wright’s extraordinary claims is one that continues to be associated with him even though he has not given any substantial proof of it and that is that he is the founder of Bitcoin, the one who used the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto to start the whole cryptocurrency industry with the Bitcoin network back in 2008.
Donald Trump is another man who has boasts a lot but has been debunked over the years regarding his claims. Political fact checking websites have reported over thousands of self-claimed lies by Trump. They include boasts about his wealth, claims about universal knowledge about everything as well as making wild predictions and sending intimidation lawsuits around the country. Craig Wright could well in fact be the Donald Trump of the cryptocurrency world because of his flamboyant style, his continuous brash tactics and the ability to sound completely crazy all of the time without taking a day off. Trump lies a lot and Craig Wright does too but is the comparison justified?
Craig Wright claims that he is Bitcoin’s founder and has tried for years to build a persona that oozes confidence and some people actually believe him. But, anyone can claim that they are the real Satoshi Nakamoto but in order to confirm that, any significant proof needs to be presented otherwise it will all be a simple case of he-said she-said. So, lets discuss his credentials and actions over the years whether he proves anything without resorting to any bias.
Back in 2016-17 when Bitcoin was less than $1000 and appreciating like crazy, Wright once again publicly claimed of being Satoshi Nakamoto. He even self-confessed to creating the cryptocurrency and even claimed it was used in terrorism finance without providing proof. While Wright’s antics raised interest in the cryptocurrency, it also caused crypto to become controversial as world news outlets ran headings like “Bitcoin Founder associates crypto with terrorism” and other similar stories which hurt the reputation of the sector. If he was indeed Satoshi, he would have fought hard to disassociate with the illegal and criminal activities that Bitcoin is unfairly associated with. But, Craig Wright was in the process to damage the credibility of Bitcoin which shows his viral leanings to achieve fanfare and media attention. Claiming unrealistic and difficult to verify claims is one of the hallmarks of Donald Trump. He recently claimed the advantages of Hydroxychloroquine without proof and since it is difficult to disprove it, many have started taking the medicine.
Craig Wright has been claiming to be Satoshi Nakamoto for years now. He claimed he adopted the pseudonym to avoid suspicion. but, the holy grail to proving being Satoshi Nakamoto has always been giving proof of an early involvement in the network. The main proof is that Wright could transact with the million or so Bitcoin Satoshi himself mined on the blockchain when he started the network back in 2009. Since the blockchain network stores every transaction, this could be easy to prove since those Bitcoin haven’t moved since the creation of cryptocurrency and still remain in that position. Craig Wright has repeatedly been called to do a transaction on those coins to prove he is the real Satoshi but to no avail.
However, he did cause some controversy back in 2019 when he posted some signatures of one of the earliest Bitcoin transactions ever recorded. Since it was only Satoshi who was performing transactions at that time, it is easily observable that the one who has private access to that transaction was in fact Satoshi Nakamoto. For the briefest period of time, many people were convinced that he was Satoshi himself but later it was found out that he just pasted a publicly viewable transaction. This kind of transaction data is easily accessible around the world and can be seen by anyone. Once again, Craig Wright failed to give proof that he was indeed Satoshi Nakamoto and got caught in the act.
He has also unsuccessfully sued other crypto pioneers
Craig Wright has long claimed to be a Phd in Computer Science from Sydney’s Charles Sturt University (CSU) back in 2015 but his claim was debunked by the university as it claimed that Wright hadn’t graduated with a Phd at all but had rather graduated with two Masters degrees only. This remains to be one of the single-most damning evidences against Wright as he had claimed an educational degree without ever actually getting it in the first place. Wright’s dissertation was eventually completed two years later in 2017 by the CSU. In this case, he is different from Donald Trump because one way or another, he did eventually did his PhD. Trump, on the other hand has only done an undergraduate and brags about knowing more than PhDs of almost every other field including Economics, Medicine, Engineering, Defence, Law, etc.
Wright’s roles in apparent academic issues also continued later as recently as April 2020 when a Medium poster showed that his dissertation to obtain a Law degree had several instances of openly plagiarized content directly and indirectly from other online sources with no references towards them. The anonymous user also posted snapshots of the plagiarized content and new questions were immediately raised regarding the authenticity of Craig Wright’s works and accomplishments. While the apparent plagiarism had nothing to do with cryptocurrencies, it did affirm that Craig Wright has a history of plagiarizing stuff despite being an open advocate against it. Donald Trump also has a history of claiming work done by other presidents and men as his own with little shame or attempt to give them credit. Wright, however was quick to react here and edited is online dissertation to reference the people from whom he had plagiarized his work. His last edit is on April 10, 2020 and that leaves no room for further imagination regarding what happened.
Craig Wright was one of the biggest proponents of Bitcoin Cash (BCH) hard fork that broke away from the main Bitcoin blockchain back in September 2017. He subsequently supported the Bitcoin Satoshi Vision (SV) hard fork in 2019 that further split Bitcoin Cash chain into Bitcoin Cash ABC and Bitcoin SV chains. For a person who started blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies to preserve the sanctity of currency over a secure ledger, he does seem to enjoy forking the currency unnecessarily too much. Craig Wright also stepped on the gas on his usual attacks on his previous chains and threatened to sue both Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash ABC in the courts in favour of Bitcoin SV.
These antics show that he doesn’t probably care about the cryptocurrencies and the wonderful technology that is behind these chains and can go to any lengths to discredit them to make his own BitCoin SV succeed. The real founder of Bitcoin wherever he is, wouldn’t stoop to that low because that would endanger the value of his existing original Bitcoin over a much smaller and much less proven chain of Bitcoin SV as well as casting doubts about cryptocurrency as a whole. Donald Trump, similarly has little empathy for the people he has worked with and and the ideas he has brought to the table.
In February 2018, Craig Wright was named in a lawsuit by the estate of Dave Kleiman, a dead partner of his over a claim to the Bitcoin mined in partnership between the two. Eventually, the judge ordered that the heirs of Kleiman be paid 50% of the Bitcoin mined by Wright in partnership with the deceased partner. The court also dismissed Wright’s claims of being Satoshi as of any relevance to the case too.
Judge Bruce Reinhart, the presiding officer of the case said:
“Dr. Wright’s demeanor did not impress me as someone who was telling the truth” and that he rejected Wright’s testimony in the motion: “Dr. Wright’s story not only was not supported by other evidence in the record, it defies common sense and real-life experience.”
Trump himself has been on the receiving end when it comes to being under fire by the Judiciary and cases decided against him. The case against Trump University is one of the instances in which Trump’s credibility was heavily questioned and came under the microscope. The failed university caused a lot of students to loose their money and eventually a settlement had to be made. He also has had a number of cases registered against him including ones on violating the anti-segregation Tenant laws as well as being accused of sexual assault. Despite being proven wrong and untruthful, Wright has continued his brash stance like Trump and threatened to sue anyone in his sites despite having little or no legal basis to actually do it. Wright tried to unsuccessfully sue Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash earlier this year and Trump has threatened to sue journalists through libel laws for reporting stories on him.
Craig Wright has used knee-jerk reactions to get his Bitcoin SV project going. He has claimed astronomical and unrealistic figures for the SV project. He even once flouted fake signatures that I covered earlier in this article regarding his authenticity as Satoshi Nakamoto to raise Bitcoin SV’s price for the short-term. He is continuously doing that and for the large part succeeding in bits because the cryptocurrency industry gets Fear and Uncertainty (FUD) and Feeling of Missing Out (FOMO) easily. Same is the case with Donald Trump as he used the platform of the President to regularly impress the stock market and other speculatives out there.
He has been bragging about the unprecedented heights of the stock market ever since he has assumed office. He is so occupied with the stock markets that even with the Coronavirus causing destruction around the world and US starting to report cases in late February this year, Trump’s whole attention was on the stock market mostly. He even gave misleading remarks and unreal optimistic predictions about the future to help the markets remain stable. Even afterwards when the markets tanked in early March, he still kept on with his rhetoric to help prop up the shares despite the tanking of the economy in general and reduction of commerce. Eventually, the markets tanked heavily and Trump brought out a bailout plan to help them. Trump and markets are a serious love affair.
Craig Wright seems to be have the same relationship with the value of the Bitcoin SV hard fork. He has regularly pursued flamboyant news headlines and ill-advised moves that eventually jack up the price of his cryptocurrency in the short-term. But, many believe that his approach would eventually loose its appeal and the cryptocurrency will tank heavily.
Trump and Wright have many similarities. Their whole careers are based on big promises and flamboyant lifestyles, big promises and some bad encounters with the justice system. Both are unapologetic and never publicly known to retrospect and accept their antics. Both have created a persona that resonates with some people and have a sizeable following as well. While they are also different in many aspects, it is safe to say that if there is a Trump-like character in the cryptocurrency space, it is none other than Craig Wright himself.
Image by Roland Schwerdhöfer from Pixabay
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