The Fat Lady Sings (For Craig)

It's done. Justice Mellor, the judge presiding over the recent case to determine whether Craig Wright is Bitcoin's creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, has provided his written judgment.

To be clear, Mellor had already given his oral ruling at the end of the trial. This was an unusual move, but the nature of the trial and Wright's arguments allowed the judge to provide an early summary. Wright's mountains of "evidence" were shown by the expert witnesses and defense lawyers to be fraudulent, and he had provided nothing that suggested he really was Satoshi.

Will Wright’s Fake Evidence Land Him In Jail?

The Crown Prosecution Service would need to deem it in the public interest to start criminal proceedings against Wright.

REX WireBender Smort

Mellor therefore made it clear that he believed Wright was not the author of the white paper, not the creator of the original Bitcoin code, and not the person who operated under the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto between 2008 and 2011.

The Cult Of BSV

This was enough for many of Wright's supporters, who had been convinced he performed well in the court and would win the case. When Mellor gave his oral judgment, many of these people admitted they had been misled by Wright for years. Others deleted their Twitter/X accounts and disappeared.

But then there were those who doubled down. Their belief in Wright unshakable, even in the face of such overwhelming evidence, they held out for a miracle. Surely the written judgment would vindicate Wright, some said. It didn't matter that this would mean the judge was completely contradicting himself. Or perhaps he would appeal, and win that case. With what funds, we can't say, since his former financial backer Calvin Ayre is now AWOL.

Or maybe this was what he wanted all along: To be proclaimed not to be Satoshi, for various reasons, including wanting his privacy. Whatever the reason, Wright has been playing five-dimensional Chess, while COPA and the judge were playing checkers.

BSV Closes Ranks

The BSV community has suffered since the initial verdict, and this written ruling will remove another of their crutches. And yet this is a cult, and cults have a way of surviving because their hardest of hard-core supporters have invested too much (emotionally and financially) to walk away. It's the ultimate sunk-cost fallacy.

BSV has taken a turn down in price, but the remaining BSVers are out in force. Whatever the situation with Wright, whatever the judge says, doesn't matter, they claim. BSV is superior technology, and its large-block approach enables micropayments in a way that the small-block "Bitcoin" can never do. They maintain that BSV is the real Bitcoin, and all those fake Bitcoiners care about is "number go up".

For these reasons, BSV will survive. It will take on the status of a minor altcoin, with its own dedicated community of believers who still hold that Craig is Satoshi, or if not, it doesn't matter because their technology is better anyway.

If you pass one on Twitter, be firm, be kind, and move on quickly. They are trapped in a prison of their own making and your attempts to free them by shattering the illusion they have built may risk destroying their fragile egos altogether.