Adam Back revealed his early communications with Bitcoin founder Satoshi Nakamoto to a British court as part of his testimony in the Crypto Open Patent Alliance (COPA) v. Craig Wright trial on February 22nd. Submitted to.
Mr. Buck is testifying against Mr. Wright, who claims to be the creator of Bitcoin and wants to assert copyright claims to the Bitcoin white paper and related materials.
COPA noted that Wright's claims “prevent the development of Bitcoin.” [and] It leaves developers cold and silent. ” The group said this outcome is a matter of public interest and security for Bitcoin developers.
In an email, Nakamoto acknowledged HashCash, the predecessor to Bitcoin, writing:
“I'm preparing to release a whitepaper that references your Hashcash whitepaper. I wanted to make sure the quote is correct.”
Nakamoto called what would eventually become Bitcoin a version of electronic cash, the technology offered by David Chaum's DigiCash company until 1998.
In another email, Mr. Buck suggested that Mr. Nakamoto read about Mr. Wei Dai's “B-Money” proposal. Notably, Nakamoto told Buck that he had not read B-Money's webpage, but that he would credit the authors of the paper. B-Money is cited in Bitcoin's final white paper.
This development is notable as Wright has previously claimed that he took inspiration from BMoney when creating Bitcoin. However, the email suggests that Nakamoto did not know about Bitcoin until weeks before it went on sale.
In his written witness statement, Buck said his discussions with Nakamoto were minimal and that he only became interested in Bitcoin as a contributor several years later.
According to Buck:
“It wasn't an elaborate conversation and we didn't go into too much detail.”
He also said he had never made his emails public.
Buck's testimony
During his testimony, Mr. Buck highlighted inconsistencies that could support COPA's case against Wright based on the second witness statement.
Buck said he does not believe B Money influenced Nakamoto based on the emails. He also disputed Wright's claim that he denies any attempt to create digital cash.
Buck also denied Wright's claims that Bitcoin relies on algorithms other than Hashcash, pointing out that his own Hashcash v.0 is older than the alternative algorithm.
COPA's case against Wright began on February 5, and the trial has taken various turns since then.
Mr. Wright stood his ground and denied COPA's claims of forgery and plagiarism. Meanwhile, various COPA members and early Bitcoin contributors who interacted with Nakamoto have provided testimony denying his claims to have created Bitcoin.
