Bitcoin, Law, and Satoshi’s Vision: COPA v Wright Appeal, Petition, plus BTC Passing Off case update (and how to be an intervener in the case)
This article has been edited and updated with new developments.
There is a transcript for the original article on youtube, Part1, and Part2, and seen below. Make sure to follow the links in the article for more information and research:
Since my previous post in August on Why Judge Mellor got the COPA v Wright judgment wrong, there have been some interesting updates related to the case. Dr. Wright submitted his permission to appeal later in August and the court has been processing this as can be seen on casetracker sites here, and here. Another permission to appeal was soon after filed in the Wright v Peter McCormack case. Dr. Wright had won a defamation case against McCormack, but the judge only awarded £1 in damages, which did not seem to serve proper justice for the defamation and harm caused by McCormack.
We don’t yet know all of the details and content related to Dr. Wright’s appeals in Wright v McCormack, or in COPA v Wright, because the documents are not all public. We have only seen small snippets leaked by COPA representatives on Reddit and elsewhere, as well as what Dr. Wright has revealed on his Twitter/X account.
Since I have started writing this article, the UK court has apparently now denied Dr. Wright’s permission to appeal in COPA v Wright. Although the circumstances around the judge and this decision are quite problematic. The appeal will now likely be sent to the UK Supreme Court where these issues will be considered. The problems with Judge Mellor and the appellate Judge Arnold will be discussed later in this article after we go over some of the other relevant happenings from the last several months.
Since my previous article, Dr. Wright has also become more active on X on his new Twitter/X account S Tominaga. The content on his X account consists of numerous articles he has authored, and has varied from elegant writing, education about Bitcoin and Satoshi’s vision, the lies of BTC, poetry, Christianity, law, literary reviews and analysis, international relations, fiction writing, philosophy, politics, history, and numerous other topics, including the many problems with “crypto” culture and BTC the fake version of Bitcoin. Dr. Wright has also talked about some revolutionary ideas to reform our tax system using Bitcoin technology, and says this system is already in development. Such a system he says would shatter the bureaucratic mysticism around taxation. Dr. Wright has also criticized people like Michael Saylor of Microstrategy and his idea for a BTC bank. Although the BTC network is broken at a limited 7 transactions per second and cannot scale, Dr. Wright has also talked about SPV and Teranode and its ability to scale to millions of transactions per second on the BitcoinSV network. This is something impossible on the limited 1MB block BTC-Core network.
To learn more about the difference between BSV the real Bitcoin, and BTC the imposter version of Bitcoin, I suggest reading my previous article and message to President Trump: “Message to President Trump & JD Vance ahead of Bitcoin conference July 27th: The threat of “Crypto”, and the promise of Satoshi’s vision for Bitcoin”.
It is worth noting that Dr. Wright has already been found to be Satoshi Nakamoto in the US court system when he prevailed in a jury trial in Miami, FL (Kleiman v Wright), and Dr. Wright was ruled the sole creator of Bitcoin.
One of the most interesting revelations since the COPA v Wright judgment was handed down, was a video released by COPA representatives on a Reddit account showing Dr. Wright logging into Satoshi Nakamoto’s vistomail and anonymous speech account, which was ignored in Judge Mellor’s written judgment. See the video below with passport blurred out:
There are also three more videos with Dr. Wright logging into the account that show the PGP section of the site and also the URL bar, but COPA has not released these three other videos yet. Along with this very convincing evidence, Dr. Wright has also signed cryptographic messages with Block 1 and Block 9, the very first blocks in the Bitcoin blockchain, for Gavin Andresen the man Satoshi left as a steward of the Bitcoin project when he receded in 2011. Despite lies pushed by BTC promoters, Gavin has testified under oath that he does not think Dr. Wright tricked him during the signing sessions, and that Dr. Wright most likely still has Satoshi’s keys:
Of course the COPA side is quick to deny reality and fabricate lies, and they claim that Dr. Wright somehow faked all of these things. First they claim that since Dr. Wright noted the account name was “sakura” it could not have been Satoshi’s account. But navigating the wayback machine and internet archive, it is revealed that the user name and email must be different on the AnonymousSpeech website, corroborating Dr. Wright’s story.
COPA representatives are also desperately trying to point to a deleted post by a user named “Mike V” on Twitter which claims to have been able to log into the AnonymousSpeech website to recreate a similar page as Dr. Wright published on his blog post in 2019. It is possible that this Mike V is also Mike Weber, the owner of the AnonymousSpeech website. It should be noted that Mike V’s screenshot is different than the one in Dr. Wright’s video showing the domain being registered and not just hosting. It is impossible to test Mike V’s claims because the website was taken down and no longer exists, and the circumstances around the closing of the site are also suspicious.
The COPA group next tried to point to an anomaly on the bottom copyright date of Dr. Wright’s video saying it proves it is a fake website created by Dr. Wright. But again Dr. Wright’s story is corroborated by the web archive which also shows the website with anomalous copyright dates on many pages and it would be something likely to manifest on Dr. Wright’s page since he was using a very old account without new features.
Before we get back to the suspicious events surrounding the closure of the AnonymousSpeech website, it should be noted that Dr. Wright revealed on X that in preparation for the COPA trial, he also gave his solicitors the credentials to log into the Anonymous speech “sakura” account used by Satoshi Nakamoto. Dr. Wright was asked about the videos of him logging into the account while under oath during trial, but it is puzzling why Judge Mellor did not mention the videos at all in his judgment, or appendix. This is after Mellor had claimed to examine all of the evidence , when he ruled hastily from the bench on March 14, 2024. Dr. Wright claims that he was not allowed to waive privilege during the trial to have evidence of his solicitors logging into the AnonymousSpeech account considered, partly due to his diagnosis of autism. These procedural wrongdoings will be important issues for the court to consider in Dr. Wright’s appeal in the case.
The interesting thing in all of this, is that the AnonymousSpeech website seemed to be functioning normally until right after Dr. Wright’s solicitors logged into Satoshi’s account using the credentials they were given by Dr. Wright. But as the solicitors noted, soon after they logged in on their home devices, it seemed to trigger something and the next day the site was completely shut down and login was no longer possible. It would seem that the AnonymousSpeech site owners reacted to the solicitors logging in to Satoshi’s account on their home IP addresses and devices. Even more strange, is that soon after shutting down there was a mysterious message left on the AnonymousSpeech website closing down message that seemed to be a rant against Dr. Craig Wright, saying “Craig Steve Wrigh is not Satoshi! He is just a loney person looking for real friends.” It appears that someone left the message and acted in anger and haste due to the actions of Dr. Wright, but now we know the events were related to his solicitors logging into the Satoshi account. It seems likely that the site was shut down in an attempt to thwart Dr. Wright and his claim of being Satoshi.
Further information has also come to light, which brings into question the partiality of Judge Mellor in the COPA trial, and his relationship to some COPA representatives. For example it has been revealed that David Pearce, a UK patent attorney who identifies as a cartoon cat “tuftythecat” has met with Judge James Mellor during the time Mellor was supposed to be writing his COPA judgment. Pearce claims that he was there to “suss Mellor out”, and he revealed that they talked about Bitcoin, Dr. Craig Wright, and the COPA case:
This is very concerning and is an important issue to be raised during Dr. Wright’s appeal. Pearce who claims to have met Mellor several times, spoke to Judge Mellor at a CIPA event , and there are also videos and photos of them meeting together at the event. Pearce has been revealed to have close connections to COPA and is a prominent member of the /r/bsv Reddit community which is used as a forum to harass and slander Dr. Wright and the BSV community of users and entrepreneurs. Surprisingly Pearce does not seem to know the rules on ex parte communication with judges in a case. Raising further suspicions is Pearce’s connections to a lawfirm Barker Brettell which has close ties to MasterCard working on patents related to blockchain technology. Now Judge Mellor has also admitted in a recent hearing that he did meet with Pearce at a CIPA, COPA event, but Mellor denied having any bias.
Pearce has denied being a COPA member, but admits to being biased in the case. Pearce seems to schedule his work and his whole life around the COPA case and Dr. Wright. In the web archive, Pearce is listed as an advisor to the “Open Crypto Alliance”, which seems to have goals very similar to COPA (The Crypto Open Patent Alliance). According to these videos, Pearce’s role was to help “debunk” patents primarily from nChain, something which he has admitted to have done in partnership with Arthur Van Pelt, another close associate of COPA, and Arthur has also admitted to being a paid influencer that puts out propaganda against Dr. Wright and the BSV community. Pearce talks more about their relationship in this video, and how he uses Arthur to initiate legal challenges. Here you can see Bittylicious exchange funding Pearce and Arthur to take legal actions against nChain patents:
Bittylicious is also one of the main defendants in the BSVclaims delisting class action lawsuit. Apparently David Pearce seeks donations directly from COPA as well.
It appears that well funded interests are trying to thwart Satoshi and his vision for Bitcoin, and they have done their best to influence the outcome of the COPA v Wright case. These issues will likely be very important for Dr. Wright’s appeal to the UK Supreme Court.
As mentioned above, the UK appellate court has now denied Dr. Wright’s permission to appeal in COPA v Wright, with a judgment recently handed down in the appellate court by Judge Arnold. There is a video from Gavin Gregory covering the details of that here. Dr. Wright has made his intentions known that he will send his appeal in the case to the UK Supreme Court.
Interestingly the UK Supreme Court was not established until 2009 with the intention to solidify a separation of powers from the judicial and legislative branch. An important issue related to Dr. Wright’s upcoming appeal in the Supreme Court will be issues with bias from both Judge Mellor the trial judge, and Judge Arnold the judge who denied Dr. Wright’s permission to appeal. As seen in the video and evidence above, we know that David Pearce and Judge Mellor met at a CIPA event seen here, while the trial was ongoing and they have met other times prior to the case where they did discuss Bitcoin. We know that David Pearce has had dinner with judges, including Judge Mellor, and we know that Pearce and Mellor discussed Bitcoin and Craig Wright when they met at CIPA. We also know from the CIPA website, and from interviews with Pearce that Judge Arnold was also in attendance at the event. Yet despite being present at the CIPA event in question, Judge Arnold did not recuse himself, when the issue was central to the denial of Dr. Wright’s appeal. It does not seem reasonable to assume that Judge Arnold could make an unbiased decision in the case when he was also at the same event as Judge Mellor and David Pearce, an issue central to the decision:
Arnold also claims that it doesn’t matter because David Pearce was not a witness. Yet Pearce has admitted in videos, on Gavin Gregory’s channel, and on social media posts that he met Judge Mellor on behalf of BlockStream CEO Adam Back, a COPA member and a witness in the trial:
Another Judge Colin Birss was also present at the CIPA event and is also friends with David Pearce. Pearce says in a video that he thought Judge Birss might be the judge to deny the appeal, and if Judge Birss was selected “it wouldn’t be good news for Craig”. It is a wonder how Pearce, someone so close to COPA is able to have so much inside knowledge and communication with potential judges related to the case. Another eyebrow raising interview is found with Judge Birrs in relation to the CIPA event where Judge Birrs says he likes it because “you get to hear stuff” outside of the context of a court case, and he thinks it is “helpful”. The interviewer also notes CIPA attorneys and members said they never realized how accessible judges were and that you can actually have such candid conversations. All of this raises concerns whether these types of events where judges and attorneys of the industry meet together are ethical. Another poster on X has also claimed that Judge Mellor made comments about destroying Dr. Wright. All of these things along with the biased tone and language in Mellor’s judgment make this particular branch of the UK court system look very corrupt.
As a result of these events, the BitcoinSV community has now started a petition to investigate the potential judicial bias of Judge Mellor and Judge Arnold due to their meetings with David Pearce at the CIPA event, and other times prior to the trial. This has triggered panic among David Pearce and the anti-BSV community, and we can see a video here of Pearce threatening a member of the BSV community 369BSV who started the petition, and has often attended court to report on the COPA v Wright trial proceedings:
It is interesting that David Pearce complains about “harassment” yet Pearce has been harassing Dr. Wright, and the Bitcoin BSV community for years on the /r/bsv hateclub subreddit where he laughs and finds slander threads about innocent people and companies to be funny. Next David Pearce proceeded to dox 369BSV:
Next Pearce threatens 369BSV by apparently sending the police to visit him:
And the threats from David Pearce continue each day, suggesting 369BSV “gets legal advice”:
Now since these events have unfolded, apparently David Pearce AKA “tuftythecat” has deleted all of his tweets up until November 27th, in an effort to hide his tracks. This does not appear to be the actions of someone who is innocent with nothing to hide. Since the petition started gaining traction, I have also received violent death threats on X as a result of promoting the petition. Users on the /r/bsv hate forum where tuftythecat enjoys laughing at threads slandering nChain and their employees, have also begun attacking the petition by adding fake signatures and names pretending to be members of the BSV community such as myself, and making fake comments to try to discredit the petition. This shows that the BSV opposition is getting increasingly scared and desperate that their corruption is being exposed, and they may start resorting to violence. The judges could also be under threat from this violence and COPA members have promoted crypto assassination markets, and made numerous death threats against Dr. Wright. If you would like to help the cause and resist these criminals, corrupt bullies, and murderers, then please consider signing the petition about judicial bias in COPA here. Unfortunately since publishing this article the petition has apparently been removed by change.org for “intimidation”. This was after the petition had already received over 700 signatures. It appears that David Pearce “tuftythecat” took actions to get the petition removed. It is recommended that signers of the petition, instead e-mail the court directly to have their voice heard. It is also interesting that COPA founder Jack Dorsey is also a partner with the change.org website. This is just another continuation of the attacks and suppression against the Bitcoin BSV community for telling the truth.
Another big development has been a new “passing off” case initiated by Dr. Wright in the UK against the BTC partnership, and the Particulars of Claim for that case can be read here. The claim seeks damages against the BTC partners for a sum of £911,050,000,000 or $1.2 Trillion based off the difference in market cap between BTC and BSV. It is alleged that “The defendants have altered the foundational Bitcoin software to create a derivative product, BTC, while misrepresenting it to the public as “Bitcoin.” Such actions have confused consumers, investors, and the broader market, damaging the reputation, goodwill, and market value of BSV, which represents the only true continuation of the original Bitcoin protocol as set forth in Satoshi Nakamoto’s White Paper.” The implications of this being that people have been harmed by the actions of the BTC-Core partnership, which Dr. Wright argues that under UK law, a partnership can be created by the actions and conduct of the parties involved, without the need for formal registration or a written agreement:
On his X account @CsTominaga, Dr. Wright has given some examples of the vast amount of people that are caught up in the lies of the BTC-Core partnership:
Despite the risk, the BTC partners have decided to ignore the news, and companies like Microstrategy have failed to warn their shareholders.
It is important to note that Dr. Wright’s premise for launching the case relies on a principle known as “promissory estoppel” in UK law. Dr. Wright is not claiming to be Satoshi Nakamoto for the purpose of the passing off case, but is claiming to have relied on the promises that Satoshi set forth when he launched the Bitcoin system:
However COPA alleges otherwise, and they are now alleging that Dr. Wright is in contempt of court in regards to the previous injunctions put in place by Judge Mellor, which preclude Dr. Wright from initiating any more lawsuits by claiming he is Satoshi Nakamoto. There will be a hearing to resolve the issue of contempt on December 18th, and if Dr. Wright is found to be in violation he may have an opportunity to amend the language in the claim before it goes forward, as he noted it was never his intention to be in contempt of Judge Mellor’s ruling. You can read a summary of the previous hearing from November 1st in regards to the alleged contempt here. There was a second hearing on November 27 and you can see the transcript here by tuftythecat David Pearce who attended the hearing. Since publishing this article Judge Mellor has also released a written judgment from the hearing including addressing his apparent bias for meeting with David Pearce. Here also is information about the union IP event organized by David Pearce and attended to by Judge Mellor in February 2024, a month before the judgment was handed down. We can see here that Judge Mellor was a speaker at the event in 2023 where he met David Pearce to talk about Bitcoin, and to be “influenced” by David Pearce, who also helped organize the event to invite Judge Mellor. Using the same standard that Judge Mellor used in his judgment to declare Dr. Wright’s documents forgeries, we can also say that Judge Mellor has forged documents about these Union IP events as well. It appears also, that using the same standard as used by Judge Arnold, that Judge Mellor was also using AI in his judgment and that is why there are AI hallucinations found within Mellor’s written judgment. But this is also after the “AI hallucinations” alleged by Judge Arnold were also proven to be false, and it appears Arnold made a mistake because the case of Andersen v The Queen does indeed exist. These things will likely all be important for the appeal to the Supreme Court and maybe even for criminal investigations into the corrupt UK court system and these judges.
Judge Mellor has said that he is requiring Dr. Wright to come in person to the December 18th hearing, despite threats on Dr. Wright, and Mellor will not allow Dr. Wright to attend remotely from outside of the country. This leads some to think they may be trying to arrest Dr. Wright and charge him through the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) on forgery charges, as COPA has been advocating for. David Pearce has also hinted about this in a recent video, saying something will happen to Craig Wright before Christmas. One of the issues the December 18th hearing may focus on is whether Dr. Wright breached the injunction by claiming to upload the whitepaper to the bitcoin.org domain in his newest claim, but as Dr. Wright argues, this fact is independent of whether he is Satoshi Nakamoto or not.
Dr. Wright has since “opened up” the claim to other participants to join as interveners. Victims of the BTC partnership can read the claim here, and find more information on the metanet.icu website here where you can read more information and follow the steps to submit a witness statement. Interveners could include people harmed by the broken BTC network and false promises of the BTC partners. This could include businesses, entrepreneurs, miners, developers, or even small holders that have been harmed by the actions of the BTC partners, and have an interest in the case. It may also be helpful to e-mail the court and let them know we are interested in the case to act as interveners and that Dr. Wright is not directing us on this issue, but that we are doing it on our own initiative. You can e-mail the court at ChanceryJudgesListing@justice.gov.uk and it helps to put the case number in the title of your message (CA-2024–001771) and (CA-2024–001994). After some feedback from users it appears it is better to put the original case number when e-mailing the court, as it is ongoing with a hearing Dec 18th. The original case is Claim Nos. IL-2021–000019
IL-2022–000069. It makes sense to ask the court to have Judge Mellor recuse himself for the hearing. It helps to tell the court your feelings on the case and Judge Mellor and Judge Arnold’s bias, and that you are interested in seeing the BTC passing off case go forward. We don’t want to see the court throw out the case using the contempt allegations as an excuse. You can also mention our petition about judicial bias in the case.
It is also worth noting there is a separate class action suit that has been ongoing in the UK for £9 billion against Binance, Kraken, Bittylicious and ShapeShift, and you can learn more about that case at bsvclaims.com.
Besides the many points I raised in my previous post about why Judge Mellor got his COPA judgment wrong, Dr. Wright has also brought even more issues with Mellor’s judgment to light since returning to X/Twitter. For example, Dr. Wright has mentioned the fact that Mellor took it upon himself to imagine what he thought Satoshi would do, while refusing to engage with the primary sources involved in the case like Satoshi’s writings. In Judge Mellor’s refusal to engage with these sources he failed to grasp the necessary aspects of the case. The ignoring of these important issues has resulted in a gross miscarriage of justice against Dr. Wright. This injustice also affects those of us who want to use the original Bitcoin system.
Dr. Wright has also brought up on X/Twitter many issues which cast doubt on the many so-called independent expert witnesses provided by COPA during the trial. For example COPA’s crypto expert Sarah Meiklejohn being seen at a 2015 dinner gathering with many members of COPA and the BTC partners. You can learn more about Sarah’s errors as an expert in my previous analysis of the COPA v Wright case. Dr. Wright has also raised concerns about COPA’s forensic “expert” Patrick Madden’s capabilities and how he may be employed as a day trader of BTC which makes his impartiality questionable. You can also learn more in my previous article about Madden including some of his questionable comments on the stand about getting help from COPA lawyers Bird&Bird to “finesse” his final report and witness statement.
Dr. Wright on his X/Twitter account, also raised concerns about BlockStream CEO Adam Back as well as Bitcoin.org maintainer Martti Malmi admitting under oath that they withheld communications with Dr. Wright from the court. Dr. Wright also noted that Adam Back illustrated his complete lack of understanding of Bitcoin and Proof of Work while under oath during the trial. You can learn more about Adam Back’s errors on the stand in COPA in my previous article about the case. This includes some information about Back’s failure to understand that Bitcoin uses integer arithmetic and not floating point arithmetic, something you would expect an academic at his supposed level to understand.
Dr. Wright on X/Twitter also noted that Martti Malmi admitted under oath to seizing the credentials to the bitcoin.org domain from Satoshi, which could also be relevant to the COPA appeal. Judge Mellor asked this specifically to Malmi under oath, and a transcript of it can be listened to here. It is interesting that the current maintainer of bitcoin.org “Cobra Bitcoin” may be a pseudonym for Malmi and he has made violent death threats against the BSV community and has advocated for assassination markets as I outline in my previous article.
Dr. Wright on X/Twitter, has also raised concerns and brought up evidence which points to the possibility of ZCASH founder Zooko Wilcox lying on the stand under oath about his interactions with Satoshi Nakamoto. Wilcox had claimed on the stand that he had never received Bitcoins from Satoshi Nakamoto, something that conflicted with Dr. Wright’s version of events.
Dr. Wright has also had strong criticisms of the COPA counsel Bird&Bird. The most serious of these allegations is Dr. Wright claiming that disgraced former nChain CEO Christen Ager-Hanssen had handed over key pieces of evidence to Bird&Bird prior to the trial in a breach of confidence, which Bird&Bird failed to disclose to the court. This will likely be another very important aspect of Dr. Wright’s appeal in the case. Apparently Dr. Wright may have implanted web bugs into some of the documents to create a digital trail of usage.
Dr. Wright has also criticized his own solicitors in the case for refusing to allow him to waive privilege, and for allowing Christen Ager-Hanssen to influence his solicitors without his authorization. This is part of the reason that Dr. Wright who has multiple law degrees, has now proceeded in his cases by representing himself and acting as his own lawyer in the matter, rather than relying on solicitors that could sabotage his case.
It is unfortunate that the UK court is trying to sidestep all of these important issues and take away Dr. Wright’s ability to appeal the case. If the CPS does push to prosecute Dr. Wright for perjury or forging documents, it will be interesting to see if they could prove such a thing beyond doubt, because the evidence of forgery or wrongdoing in the COPA v Wright trial was very lacking. One would imagine that a criminal trial requires a higher burden of proof than a civil matter, which makes one wonder if they would actually attempt to prosecute Dr. Wright. Regardless, COPA insider David Pearce seems very happy to think something bad will happen to Dr. Wright before Christmas.
Dr. Wright needs all of our prayers and support. If you have not already then please sign the petition against Judge Mellor, Judge Arnold, and David Pearce for investigating judicial bias. Also read the PoC of the passing off case, and if you have been harmed by the lies of the BTC-partners, consider making a witness statement using the outline on metanet.icu to help with the case. This can even include small holders who have been harmed. Finally it is recommended to e-mail the court at ChanceryJudgesListing@justice.gov.uk and it helps to put the case number in the title of your message (CA-2024–001771) and (CA-2024–001994), letting them know that you are interested to see the passing off BTC case go forward whether as an intervener or otherwise. After some feedback from users it appears it is better to put the original case number when e-mailing the court, as it is ongoing with a hearing Dec 18th. The original case is Claim Nos. IL-2021–000019 and IL-2022–000069. We must act before the December 18th hearing. It makes sense to ask the court to have Judge Mellor recuse himself for the hearing. It is important for the court to know that we as the Bitcoin BSV community are taking the initiative on our own, and we are not doing it at the direction of Dr. Wright who is bound by Judge Mellor’s injunctions from encouraging us to participate in any lawsuits. Please share this article and information with as many people as possible.
If you like the content of this article, consider sharing and following, and also checking out my other Bitcoin related articles:
“COPA v Satoshi judgment: Why Justice Mellor got it wrong”
“The Spiritual Battle for Truth, Bitcoin and Satoshi’s Vision”
“Creating a live boot-able operating system with Ubuntu linux and a USB flash drive”
