Dr Craig Steven Wright v Magnus Granath
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | Lewis |
| Judgment Date | 17 May 2022 |
| Neutral Citation | [2022] EWHC 1181 (QB) |
| Docket Number | Case No: QB-2019-002311 |
| Court | Queen's Bench Division |
[2022] EWHC 1181 (QB)
HIS HONOUR JUDGE Lewis
(sitting as a Judge of the High Court)
Case No: QB-2019-002311
IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION
MEDIA AND COMMUNICATIONS LIST
Royal Courts of Justice
Strand, London, WC2A 2LL
Adam Wolanski QC and Victoria Jolliffe (instructed by ONTIER LLP) for the Claimant
Hugh Tomlinson QC and Darryl Hutcheon (instructed by Thomson Heath & Associates) for the Defendant
Hearing date: 24 February 2022
Approved Judgment
I direct that pursuant to CPR PD 39A para 6.1 no official shorthand note shall be taken of this Judgment and that copies of this version as handed down may be treated as authentic.
HIS HONOUR JUDGE Lewis
This judgment was handed down by the Judge remotely by circulation to the parties' representatives by email and release to The National Archives. The date and time for hand down is deemed to be 10:30am on Tuesday 17 May 2022.
In these proceedings the claimant seeks damages and an injunction for libel in respect of a tweet posted by the defendant on 17 March 2019 (“the Tweet”).
The defendant applies on notice for summary judgment pursuant to CPR rule 24.2. He says the claimant has no real prospect of succeeding in proving that the publication of the tweet caused him ‘serious harm’, and there is no other reason to allow the case to proceed. The claimant opposes the application.
Background
The claim arises in relation to a controversy about who was the developer of Bitcoin, which is a cryptocurrency. In October 2008, an academic paper was published under the name Satoshi Nakamoto which described how the electronic cash system operated. Since then, Satoshi Nakamoto has come to be regarded as the pseudonym for the person or persons who developed Bitcoin.
The claimant is a computer scientist with an interest in cryptocurrencies. He claims that he is Satoshi Nakamoto, the author of the 2008 academic paper and the developer of Bitcoin (“the Bitcoin Claim”).
The defendant is a citizen of Norway, resident in Oslo. He has tweeted on various technology issues, including cryptocurrencies, and has an interest in Bitcoin and its development. He considers the Bitcoin Claim to be false.
The claimant says that he has never wanted people to know that he is Satoshi Nakamoto. He says he was shocked in 2015 when he was approached by journalists looking into the story. In December 2015, some articles were published making the Bitcoin Claim, but a few days later the same journals published articles casting doubt on whether the claim was, in fact, true.
This sparked a debate on the subject within the Bitcoin community. As part of this, the claimant provided private demonstrations of Bitcoin ‘key signings’ to four people — a leading figure in the Bitcoin community, a board member of the Bitcoin Foundation and journalists from the BBC and the Economist. The claimant is adamant that he made clear to these four observers that his use of the private keys would not in itself provide conclusive verification of the Bitcoin Claim. It would, however, form part of the matrix of evidence needed to establish the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto.
The claimant provided separate demonstrations to each of the four observers between 23 March and 26 April 2016. In each instance, he says the observer applied the ‘public key’ associated with the ‘private key’ that the claimant was using, and then verified that the claimant had signed the messages with the correct ‘private key’. As a result, the claimant says that the two observers from the Bitcoin sector (not the journalists) confirmed publicly that the claimant had demonstrated that he was likely to be Satoshi Nakamoto.
On 26 April 2016, the claimant also met a journalist from GQ magazine, with a view to undertaking a further demonstration. There is a dispute about what happened at the meeting. The claimant says that the demonstration did not go ahead. The defendant says that there was a row after the journalist attended with a cryptography expert who did not find the claimant's attempt at verification to be convincing.
On 2 May 2016, the results of the private demonstrations were published. The BBC included the Bitcoin Claim on the Today programme, and on its website, and confirmed that evidence had been produced to back this up. The Economist published a report which is said by the defendant to be in more sceptical terms, asking for the claimant to produce better evidence.
On the same day, 2 May 2016, a lengthy post was published on the claimant's blog. The claimant says that whilst this was based on a document he had written previously, it was edited and published on the site by a third party without his knowledge or consent. The purpose of the article appears to have been to explain the process of verifying a set of cryptographic keys.
On 3 May 2016 a further post was published on the claimant's blog entitled “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof”. The article gives the impression that it has been written by the claimant – again, he denies being the author and says that at the time his website was controlled and managed by a third party. He also says that by this time he was extremely upset by the media furore surrounding the Bitcoin Claim, was in a state of mental collapse and was not fit to take any decisions about what should be published.
The author of the piece said that he was able to prove access to the early Bitcoin keys. He said that this in itself would not be sufficient to prove the Bitcoin Claim, and so over the coming days he would post a series of pieces that would lay the foundation for the claim, and then post independently-verifiable documents and evidence addressing some of the false allegations. He also confirmed that he would also be transferring Bitcoin from an early book.
The next day, the defendant says that the BBC arranged for one of its journalists and two others to send small amounts of Bitcoin to the public address used in the first ever Bitcoin transaction. The defendant says that the plan was that the claimant would then send the Bitcoin back from that address, using the Satoshi Nakamoto private key, but he did not do so. The claimant says that he was not involved in making any arrangements for this demonstration. By this stage he says his mental state was such that he was barely functioning.
On 5 May 2016, another post was published on the claimant's blog. Again, he says that this was nothing to do with him, and the message was posted by a third party who was running his site. The author of the blog posting said the following:
“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 now know 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.”
There is a significant level of disagreement between the parties about the events that have just been described. In the Defence, twenty pages are taken up with the particulars relied upon in support of the plea of truth. The claimant does not accept that he promised to prove the Bitcoin Claim publicly using the private keys. He says that some of the criticisms made of him arise out of a misunderstanding of the workings of Bitcoin or are made by those with a vendetta against him. As noted above, he also disputes being the author of much of the material posted on his blog.
The Tweet
The defendant has tweeted about the claimant for some years, focussed mainly on the fact that he does not believe the Bitcoin Claim and thinks the claimant is a fraud.
On 17 March 2019, the defendant decided to launch a campaign against the claimant, tweeting as follows:
“As a tribute to Craig Wright being a fraud, I'm going to make next week “Craig Wright is a fraud week”, and tag all my tweets with #CraigWrightIsAFraud Feel free to join the celebration [praying emoji]”
Later that day – possibly around lunchtime in the UK — the defendant posted the Tweet:
“The forensics to CSW's first attempt to fraudulently ‘prove’ he is Satoshi. Enabled by @gavinandresen. Never forget. #CraigWrightIsAFraud.”
This is the only message sued upon within these proceedings. The claimant puts forward an innuendo meaning that the Tweet meant that he “had fraudulently claimed to be Satoshi Nakamoto, that is to say the person, or one of the group of people who developed the cryptocurrency Bitcoin”.
The defendant's campaign appears to have taken off quite quickly, with the defendant tweeting later the same day to acknowledge the response on Twitter. Three of those tweets were in the following terms:
“Eric says giving attention to frauds is wrong. Which is often correct. But sometimes that can also end up enabling their scams. Making people aware that this man is a fraud is important, many new people coming in unaware. Also, I think it triggers him, which is a bonus”.
“#CraigWrightIsAFraud The chain goes strong”.
“The fact that Twitter agrees #CraigWrightIsAFraud must surely be causing a serious meltdown as we speak. Long on popcorn for the next couple of days”.
The next day, 18 March 2019, the tweets posted by the defendant included:
“Happy...
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