This week was the start of the trial that could potentially shape the rest of this century. I'm talking of course about the COPA vs. Craig Wright lawsuit that will determine the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto. The infamous inventor of the Bitcoin white paper and the biggest threat to the current financial establishment. The UK court made it possible to follow this lawsuit through a livestream. And I've been hooked on following the trial every moment I can. Which did get me a bit distracted from many of my regular work and tasks. But hey, this is truly history in the making. So besides my work assignments and following the trial, I wasn't able to focus on much else. I got started with my new information security assignment for [[Park&Charge]]. And I made some good progress with the new video editor of [[The Travel Vlog]] . Not much more has happened. So I wanted to dedicate this journal to explaining why this trial is such a big deal. ### [[The Original Bitcoin (BSV)]] Let's start with why the original Bitcoin is such a threat to the establishment. The title of the white paper says it all: "Bitcoin: A Peer-To-Peer Electronic Cash System". This means that it allows you to send money directly from one person to another, without the need for any kind of intermediary party like a bank or credit card company. An important part of the solution to make this electronic money possible is digital signatures. Every transaction gets a unique signature that is linked to the involved parties. This creates a chain of signatures that makes it possible to track exactly where money came from and went. #### "Follow The Money" This is a popular adage amongst truth-seekers. With a perfect audit trail of money, specialised parties could easily take down criminal networks that are transacting illegal goods like for example weapons, drugs and humans. You'll be surprised to find out how much our global economy, and thus the establishment, is relying on these sources of income. You can easily google how drug money saved the financial crisis of 2008. "Coincidentally" the Bitcoin white paper was published around the same time as this financial crisis. And instead of creating more of the same problems throughout the years that followed, Bitcoin offers a fundamental solution to prevent such disasters from ever happening again. And would take down the criminal foundation of our global economy with it. But certain people are getting ultra-rich with this status quo and wouldn't want to see that change anytime soon. So they are applying this same mob mentality to take down this existential threat for them. But they can't take out high-status business people and inventors in the open anymore. This is also part of why I believe Craig Steven Wright (CSW) took on the pseudonym of Satoshi Nakamoto. #### Going To War They're forced to do this by leading a business war. The only way that the established interests could stop this, was by infiltrating the developer community and corrupting the code so that it became harmless. They threw up a media smokescreen around making people believe that BTC is like gold and that crypto is about trading financial assets. Which has created an army of disillusioned crypto adepts who are not interested in the technological fundamentals whatsoever. They simply want to see their "number go up". And they created these crypto exchanges, mostly funded by Mastercard, that basically function as shadow banks. We saw this with Sam Bankman Fried and the fall of FTX. And now CZ, CEO of Binance, is currently on trial for his money laundering relationships with terrorist organisations. Within their entire spiel, they've kept the tech just usable enough to use it for their criminal games. #### The Final Battle This current trial is one of the final battles in this war. It is an epic story of biased experts alleging forgeries, corporate spies infiltrating companies to steal and alter documents and law firms that have to be changed because they can't be relied upon anymore. These kinds of tricks were the only remaining efforts they could resort to. Because from the inception of Bitcoin, everything has been carefully safeguarded so this technology can eventually see the light of day. Craig fully understood the fallback his invention could potentially trigger and set up a strong defence of trusts and patent strategies that no one could infiltrate or manipulate. And he's using the legal system as it's meant to prove this. #### Satoshi Strikes Back Around 2017 Craig returned to the Bitcoin space and took on the initiative to restore the blockchain to its original design. At the time the Bitcoin Core (BTC) developers community were planning to fundamentally alter the protocol and take away the digital signature core feature. Craig made a copy of the longest existing chain of signatures and ultimately branded it Bitcoin Satoshi Vision (BSV). From that point, BTC was no longer the longest chain of signatures. It didn't align any longer with the original design in the white paper and officially wasn't allowed to be called Bitcoin any longer. But the Core community, and the media machine around it, hushed up this fact and continued to pass off this fake as the real thing. Craig, and friends, continued to develop the BSV chain in line with the white paper. He now had to deal with an entire "number go up" community that was ironically painting him off as a scam artist and branding him Faketoshi. It was a full-fledged character murder! It eventually came down to the Bitcoin Core community forming an alliance called COPA (Crypto Open Patent Alliance) and suing him. With the ultimate aim to prove CSW has forged his evidence and go after his entire patent portfolio. Under the guise of achieving "open source technology" and "transparency". And with an almost infinite source of funding to spend on the most clever lawyers, they could probably have pulled that off eventually. #### Messing With The Wrong Aussie (Australian) Fortunately, Craig is a billionaire himself as well and perfectly knows how to play the legal game. So there's an actual chance of him winning this thing. This is what's getting me so extremely excited about all of this. And what has me fully hooked on what I believe to potentially be the trial of the century. It's truly a treat to see this unfold in court with my own eyes. The first 6 days are for the COPA lawyer to cross-examine Craig on the alleged forgeries. CSW presents the most detailed and elaborate explanations that simply are impossible to make up. In such a relaxed manner, that is only possible if you're simply explaining what happened without having to make up excuses for something. If you've been following the BSV developments for a couple of years, like me, you're able to recognise much of the context in which this has all played out. And conclude that it all makes sense. The exclusive insights that are given into these incredible stories make following the whole examination hugely entertaining. Especially when you see the COPA lawyer speechless sometimes on how much sense CSW is making, as opposed to the fiction they're attempting to uphold themselves. To me, as a legal layman, it seems like things are looking very strong for CSW. And I can't wait to see what the fallout of this trial will be. How the mainstream crypto community will have to come to grips with this new reality. #### The Last Ace? The most recent development, in his examination, is that Craig is alluding to the fact that he watermarked the white paper with a special message through whitespaces. Is this the last ace he has up his sleeve? Let's see what happens in the coming days when his own lawyers will start to question him.