C
Craig Wright
drcraigwright.net · Personal blog · on HN since 2016
Craig Wright's site, where he claimed to be Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto and posted a purported cryptographic proof.
What HN saysHN commenters treat the proof as fake and the claim as unconvincing, and joke about the site's bare, single-image home page.
20HN people shared it
17linked it in comments
5stories submitted
382story points
11 years agolast shared
2016people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1Jean-Paul Sartre, Signing and Significance9 people · 101 points · first shared 2016 · 15 comments on HN
- 2Dr. Craig Wright (Satoshi Nakamoto) Blog5 people · 2 points · first shared 2016 · discussion on HN
- 3Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof2 people · 54 points · first shared 2016 · 59 comments on HN
- 4About2 people · first shared 2016
- 5I’m Sorry1 people · 222 points · first shared 2016 · 173 comments on HN
- 6Generating a Bitcoin address1 people · 3 points · first shared 2016 · discussion on HN
- 7*1 people · first shared 2016
- 8Jean paul sartre signing signif..1 people · first shared 2016
What HN people wrote when they linked it
daturkel · 2016-05-05
The home page of http://www.drcraigwright.net/ currently just displays this image. Linked straight to it so that it wouldn't get flagged as a duplicate submission.
edit: Here's a mirror of the image, in case it comes down: http://i.imgur.com/7lhU0mr.jpg
And here's the OCR'd text:
I'm Sorry.
I believed that I could do this. I believed that I could put the years of anonymity and hiding behind me. But, as the events of this week unfolded and I prepared to publish the proof of access to the earliest keys, I broke. I do not have the courage. I cannot.
When the rumors began, my qualifications and character were attacked. When those allegations were proven false, new allegations have already begun. I know now that I am not strong enough for this.
I know that this weakness will cause great damage to those that have supported me, and particularly to Jon Matonis and Gavin Andresen. I can only hope that their honour and credibility is not irreparably tainted by my actions. They were not deceived, but I know that the world will never believe that now. I can only say I'm sorry.
And goodbye.
andremendes · 2016-05-05
Source: http://www.drcraigwright.net/
Asides the conversation, the whole source code of this website is: <img src="homepage.jpg">
This man is really not caring.
EDIT: site is updated now, with proper html+css coding.
m52go · 2016-05-05
Gosh it certainly reads like one. Same text is hosted at his root...
http://www.drcraigwright.net/
VMG · 2016-05-02
Australian dude publishes fake proof he's the famous inventor of bitcoin:
* http://www.drcraigwright.net/jean-paul-sartre-signing-significance/
* https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/4hflr3/craig_wrights_signatu…
High-profile Bitcoin dev Gavin Andresen inexplicably supports the fraudster: http://gavinandresen.ninja/satoshi
gtrubetskoy · 2016-05-05
My (non-provable) theory is that Satoshi is not a person but a team, now defunct, that was tasked with developing a crypto-currency. They are probably more scientists/mathematicians/economists than they are software developers, which would explain the very sound but not exactly elegant initial code.
It would also explain the silence - the project is over, the team is probably bound to secrecy because this stuff is classified.
The only time Satoshi spoke out (edit: and we don't even know that it was authentic, see discussion below) was to help the poor bloke who was mistaken to be Satoshi and his life was being ruined, and that was probably a collective decision by the former team members, it was the right thing to do.
This is a different case - Satoshi speaking out wouldn't help in this case, Craig sounds like someone in need of help from a professional psychiatrist or psychologist, http://www.drcraigwright.net/ almost sounds like a suicide note. I feel sorry and worried for the bloke.
bootload · 2016-05-02
"Questions about Mr Wright’s academic degrees arose because he had listed so many on a LinkedIn profile which has since been deleted, and because some could not be confirmed. He now says that the profile was a “joke”—to “take the piss out of myself” and to keep people from bothering him. “No one took me seriously, which was great... His doctorate in theology, however, remains a mystery and Mr Wright does not want to talk about it" [0]
For once Nik, I tend to agree with you. The above line is a line from the Economist that points to deception. Is that Doctorate a technical PhD? [1] What matters most is a demonstration of the ideas in code and then discussions with bitcoin peers. You don't need a doctorate on your CV to show this.
[0] http://www.economist.com/news/briefings/21698061-craig-steven-wright-c…
[1] "His doctorate in theology, however, remains a mystery and Mr Wright does not want to talk about it" ~ http://www.drcraigwright.net/about/
smokinman · 2016-05-04
it looks like you might have to eat your words....
http://www.drcraigwright.net/extraordinary-claims-require-extraordinar…
verytrivial · 2016-05-03
Well, for his sake I hope he has some sort of direct price manipulation scam going, or at the very least is about to issue some sort of "it was all a test lol!" message -- he has committed reputation suicide regarding his quest to "remove the fear surrounding bitcoin and the blockchain"[1] in every other case.
[1] http://www.drcraigwright.net/about/
jdlee0 · 2016-05-02
There's more chicanery in Wright's code [1]
In the posted image of EcDSA.verify.sh, he base64 decodes $signiture, but this is uninitialised. The path is stored in $signature.
http://www.drcraigwright.net/jean-paul-sartre-signing-significance/
stordoff · 2016-05-02
> EDIT: Current opinion: still skeptical. Here is the public cryptographic "proof": http://www.drcraigwright.net/jean-paul-sartre-signing-significance/
A little off-topic, but suppressing right-clicks (and trying to suppress Ctrl/Alt/Shift?) is a really obnoxious thing for a website to do.
document.onmousedown=disableclick;
status="Sorry, not sharing images!";
function disableclick(event)
{
if(event.button==2)
{
alert(status);
return false;
}
}
function detectspecialkeys(e){
var evtobj=window.event? event : e
if (evtobj.altKey || evtobj.ctrlKey || evtobj.shiftKey)
alert("The key is not available.");
}
document.onkeypress=detectspecialkeys
patio11 · 2016-05-02
Much more useful link: http://www.drcraigwright.net/jean-paul-sartre-signing-significance/
Working through it now -- lets say I am rapidly heading towards "Not a hoax" territory.
[Edit: Or, possibly, totally quackadoodle -- but very convinced-in-himself quackadoodle. I've gotten as far as proving "OK, he knows how to reverse a Bitcoin address into a public key, and picked a good address for the purpose."]
DyslexicAtheist · 2016-05-02
>> [1] "His doctorate in theology, however, remains a mystery and Mr Wright does not want to talk about it" ~ http://www.drcraigwright.net/about/*
OMG the narcissistic self-biography of an egomaniac. Doesn't this guy live in a rental property?
6nf · 2016-05-02
There's no real proof here that Craig is Satoshi. If he really wanted to prove it to us, he would need to sign a message saying 'Craig Wright is Satoshi signed 2016-05-02' using the genesis block key.
Read his post: http://www.drcraigwright.net/jean-paul-sartre-signing-significance/ he goes into all sorts of details but then glosses over the fact that the arbitrary Sartre quote could have been signed by anyone at any point in the past.
maaku · 2016-05-02
> EDIT: Well nevermind, here is the public cryptographic proof: http://www.drcraigwright.net/jean-paul-sartre-signing-signif...
Really? That just looks like a much too long (targeted to journalists) description of ECDSA signing. Where's the _actual_ signature?
faraggi · 2016-05-02
I don't want to sound like a nerd-snob, but isn't weird that the potential Satoshi Nakamoto uses Windows and notepad?
http://www.drcraigwright.net/jean-paul-sartre-signing-significance/
I mean, to each his own- especially when talking about dev tools- so why not I guess?
mappum · 2016-05-02
EDIT 2: Debunked!
The signature in Wright's post is just pulled straight from a transaction on the blockchain. Convert the base64 signature from his post (MEUCIQDBKn1Uly8m0UyzETObUSL4wYdBfd4ejvtoQfVcNCIK4AIgZmMsXNQWHvo6KDd2Tu6euEl13VTC3ihl6XUlhcU+fM4=) to hex (3045022100c12a7d54972f26d14cb311339b5122f8c187417dde1e8efb6841f55c34220ae0022066632c5cd4161efa3a2837764eee9eb84975dd54c2de2865e9752585c53e7cce), and you get the signature found in this transaction input: https://blockchain.info/tx/828ef3b079f9c23829c56fe86e85b4a69d9e06e5b54…
Note that the base64 string at the top of his post isn't a signature, just a cleartext message: " Wright, it is not the same as if I sign Craig Wright, Satoshi.\n\n".
Now the only question is how he fooled Gavin. I would imagine this story will still get spread around some naive channels for a while, just like the last time Wright tried something like this.
Credit goes to jouke in #bitcoin for figuring it out.
-----------------
EDIT: Current opinion: still skeptical. Here is the public cryptographic "proof": http://www.drcraigwright.net/jean-paul-sartre-signing-significance/
Something still seems off to me, why does he go into such specific detail in verifying the signature? I would have assumed he would just let people figure out the verification themselves. But maybe I'm just skeptical because Satoshi having a public identity takes some of the magic away.
As pointed out by maaku, he never revealed what message the…