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Anyone can create a fork at any time whenever they want. What they can't do is get users to use their fork and call it Bitcoin. Wright has already attempted t

by nullc 5y ago

Anyone can create a fork at any time whenever they want. What they can't do is get users to use their fork and call it Bitcoin. Wright has already attempted this: He has a fork of Bitcoin called "Bitcoin SV" (satoshi's vision) which he claims is the real Bitcoin and that Bitcoin is an imposter. Today it has well under 1% of Bitcoin's hashpower, well under 1$ of Bitcoin's price (and has fallen a LOT relative to Bitcoin), and it's now down to less than 40 reachable nodes. Most of the few exchanges that have ever had it have dropped it, and it has recently had suffered some extremely severe reorg attacks -- causing millions of dollars in losses to at least one exchange. For the purpose of Wright's backdoor demands miners are irrelevant. If contributors were all anonymous you'd have the problem that they might actually be wright. He's even suing former developers like me, who haven't contributed for a couple years (or more!) ... really the targets of the lawsuit don't have much connection to reality. And the more obscure you make it to get the software the more ability he'd have to just setup impersonation sites to get people to run his malicious version instead. Also, anonymity hasn't helped that much in the case of the owner of Bitcoin.org-- being anonymous just caused him to lose in a default judgement when Wright sued him because the UK will not allow an anonymous party to defend themselves. Ultimately they'll likely have to deanonymize to prevent Wright from seizing Bitcoin.org. Addresses being private wouldn't really change anything about Wright's attack. He'd still demand to be given coins just the same. In fact, as of the moment Bitcoin is anonymous enough to severely frustrate his efforts: He claims to "own" 1.1M BTC but right now he's only suing developers for a backdoor to acces 0.111M of it, because whenever he'd claimed specific addresses for more he's gotten nailed by the true owners signing messages. So right now he's only going after a smaller portion where he can be confident the current controlling party won't speak up (the bulk of those coins were stolen from MTGox and haven't moved since).

betwixthewires 5y ago
There's a difference between being an anonymous owner of a domain registered at a central authority which can be compelled to turn over the domain and an anonymous contributor to a codebase which cannot be compelled to modify code if their identity is not known. The default judgment to me is a flaw in the legal system, if an anonymous party cannot defend themselves, how can an anonymous party be sued? This default judgment is a shame. The proper default judgment should've been "who exactly are you suing?" He can't demand coins he doesn't even know exist, he can't even prove the coins exist to a court without keys to show that they exist. Being private would absolutely prevent this vector, he'd have to have the keys to prove to a court he owns the coins, which means he wouldn't have to prove anything to a court, he would only have to move the coins. Interesting vector with impersonation sites, I'll have to roll that one around in my head for a while.
- nullc 5y ago
  > owner of a domain registered at a central authority which can be compelled to turn over the domain and an anonymous contributor to a codebase Agreed. But imagine that there is no normie accessible place on the web to get non-malicious Bitcoin software. And anyone running a site distributing it is at risk if their identity is leaked. What effect is that going to have in the long run? "There are levels of survival we are prepared to accept." -- Bitcoin would survive in such a state, but I don't think it would be a great outcome. > The default judgment to me is a flaw in the legal system, if an anonymous party cannot defend themselves, how can an anonymous party be sued? This default judgment is a shame. Fully agreed. > He can't demand coins he doesn't even know exist, he can't even prove the coins exist to a court without keys to show that they exist. He's actually argued that he could just demand the developers issue more coins too. And he doesn't have keys, but that isn't slowing him down! The big legal flaw he exploits is that if you go to trial it can be extremely expensive (esp in the UK where you pay the other sides legal costs for every failed motion, and wright sticks a whole firm on his case). ... normally the expense of trial is protected against by preliminary motions like summary judgements. But in a summary judgement the court assumes all disputed facts favor the non-movant, and wright fills his cases with forgeries to makeup whatever disputed fact he needs to keep the case going. The huge volume of forgeries which require expert analysis and debunking also add massively to the cost of being in litigation with him. His goal isn't to win (though I'm sure he'd be happy if he did)-- his goal is to burn time and the opponents resources.
  - betwixthewires 5y ago
    > What effect is that going to have in the long run? This is where we get off in the weeds about the architecture of the internet. Ideally, we would have a decentralized domain registry and everyone would use tools like onion sites for everything. Hopefully that is the outcome, but likely not.
  - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
    But all of this has to be fairly expensive for Wright, too...
howdydoo 5y ago
If Bitcoin SV is the real bitcoin, why is he so interested in suing people for access to "fake" bitcoin core? /s >Ultimately they'll likely have to deanonymize to prevent Wright from seizing Bitcoin.org. I didn't know this was a risk. It would actually be a mild disaster if bitcoin.org was compromised. If Cøbra wants to remain anonymous, one idea is to transfer the domain to one of the current bitcoin devs whose identity is public (and maybe transfer it back once this blows over?) I don't know if it's too late for that, given the domain is already the subject of a lawsuit. The whole situation sounds like a mess. I'm sorry you got wrapped up in it.
rwmj 5y ago
> He's even suing former developers like me, who haven't contributed for a couple years (or more!) Wow that's a shitty move. Have you had to retain a lawyer to deal with this nonsense? I was once sued over some open source software I wrote, because one of the keywords used in the DSL was the same as a completely unrelated trademark. As you can imagine the whole lawsuit was baseless nonsense. Luckily they also sued my employer who happens to be Red Hat and our legal department stomped on the claimant for me.
- nullc 5y ago
  Yes, we're represented by Bird and Bird in the UK, it's a pretty well respected firm. Wright is unusually challenging even compared to the more typical litigation trolls, because he puts out a lot of forged documents that make it harder to establish a clear set of facts to kill a case in preliminary motions, which cost a lot of expert time to debunk, and carry a risk that a less technical judge/jury might be snowed by them in spite of expert debunking. This problem doesn't usually exist because in the long run the forgeries will make him lose... but he's not playing for the long run, he's playing to just keep it going as long as he can. Fortunately the community and industry has been able to step up and provide financial support, so far. But that doesn't replace the time and stress of dealing with it and only partially addresses the chilling effect. I heard that he's also just recently sent threat letters for two more unrelated lawsuits (sent by a separate set of shell companies), one alleging that the Bitcoin developers are infringing his "database rights" through their use of the Bitcoin blockchain without his permission, and one alleging that their use of the word "Bitcoin" is "passing off" (how he's going to argue that without a trademark is mystifying to me) and he's been saying in public that he's planning a patent lawsuit too.
  - rwmj 5y ago
    > Yes, we're represented by Bird and Bird in the UK, it's a pretty well respected firm. I know them well, all the way back to the 90s. Good luck with your case against him is all I can say.
AnimalMuppet 5y ago
I'm reading your write-up of this sorry saga. (Seriously, great good writing and great explanations.) And I'm thinking "If this kind of stuff is going on, am I supposed to take Bitcoin seriously as either a currency or a store of value?"
- nullc 5y ago
  Well in a very real sense this sideshow is independent of Bitcoin. Bitcoin is gonna keep on chugging whatever clueless nonsense goes along with it. To the extent that this has any real effect at all on _Bitcoin_ it would just be creating varrious headwinds like discouraging new contributions to the software. This wouldn't be the case for legacy systems that depend on trusted third party authorities. What it does tell you though is how much nonsense people will treat seriously. The same media that is misreporting on Wright's litigation is also the same media saying that Bitcoin is a big deal. :)

by nullc 5y ago

betwixthewires 5y ago

There's a difference between being an anonymous owner of a domain registered at a central authority which can be compelled to turn over the domain and an anonymous contributor to a codebase which cannot be compelled to modify code if their identity is not known. The default judgment to me is a flaw in the legal system, if an anonymous party cannot defend themselves, how can an anonymous party be sued? This default judgment is a shame. The proper default judgment should've been "who exactly are you suing?" He can't demand coins he doesn't even know exist, he can't even prove the coins exist to a court without keys to show that they exist. Being private would absolutely prevent this vector, he'd have to have the keys to prove to a court he owns the coins, which means he wouldn't have to prove anything to a court, he would only have to move the coins. Interesting vector with impersonation sites, I'll have to roll that one around in my head for a while.

nullc 5y ago
> owner of a domain registered at a central authority which can be compelled to turn over the domain and an anonymous contributor to a codebase Agreed. But imagine that there is no normie accessible place on the web to get non-malicious Bitcoin software. And anyone running a site distributing it is at risk if their identity is leaked. What effect is that going to have in the long run? "There are levels of survival we are prepared to accept." -- Bitcoin would survive in such a state, but I don't think it would be a great outcome. > The default judgment to me is a flaw in the legal system, if an anonymous party cannot defend themselves, how can an anonymous party be sued? This default judgment is a shame. Fully agreed. > He can't demand coins he doesn't even know exist, he can't even prove the coins exist to a court without keys to show that they exist. He's actually argued that he could just demand the developers issue more coins too. And he doesn't have keys, but that isn't slowing him down! The big legal flaw he exploits is that if you go to trial it can be extremely expensive (esp in the UK where you pay the other sides legal costs for every failed motion, and wright sticks a whole firm on his case). ... normally the expense of trial is protected against by preliminary motions like summary judgements. But in a summary judgement the court assumes all disputed facts favor the non-movant, and wright fills his cases with forgeries to makeup whatever disputed fact he needs to keep the case going. The huge volume of forgeries which require expert analysis and debunking also add massively to the cost of being in litigation with him. His goal isn't to win (though I'm sure he'd be happy if he did)-- his goal is to burn time and the opponents resources.
- betwixthewires 5y ago
  > What effect is that going to have in the long run? This is where we get off in the weeds about the architecture of the internet. Ideally, we would have a decentralized domain registry and everyone would use tools like onion sites for everything. Hopefully that is the outcome, but likely not.
- AnimalMuppet 5y ago
  But all of this has to be fairly expensive for Wright, too...

howdydoo 5y ago

If Bitcoin SV is the real bitcoin, why is he so interested in suing people for access to "fake" bitcoin core? /s >Ultimately they'll likely have to deanonymize to prevent Wright from seizing Bitcoin.org. I didn't know this was a risk. It would actually be a mild disaster if bitcoin.org was compromised. If Cøbra wants to remain anonymous, one idea is to transfer the domain to one of the current bitcoin devs whose identity is public (and maybe transfer it back once this blows over?) I don't know if it's too late for that, given the domain is already the subject of a lawsuit. The whole situation sounds like a mess. I'm sorry you got wrapped up in it.

rwmj 5y ago

> He's even suing former developers like me, who haven't contributed for a couple years (or more!) Wow that's a shitty move. Have you had to retain a lawyer to deal with this nonsense? I was once sued over some open source software I wrote, because one of the keywords used in the DSL was the same as a completely unrelated trademark. As you can imagine the whole lawsuit was baseless nonsense. Luckily they also sued my employer who happens to be Red Hat and our legal department stomped on the claimant for me.

nullc 5y ago
Yes, we're represented by Bird and Bird in the UK, it's a pretty well respected firm. Wright is unusually challenging even compared to the more typical litigation trolls, because he puts out a lot of forged documents that make it harder to establish a clear set of facts to kill a case in preliminary motions, which cost a lot of expert time to debunk, and carry a risk that a less technical judge/jury might be snowed by them in spite of expert debunking. This problem doesn't usually exist because in the long run the forgeries will make him lose... but he's not playing for the long run, he's playing to just keep it going as long as he can. Fortunately the community and industry has been able to step up and provide financial support, so far. But that doesn't replace the time and stress of dealing with it and only partially addresses the chilling effect. I heard that he's also just recently sent threat letters for two more unrelated lawsuits (sent by a separate set of shell companies), one alleging that the Bitcoin developers are infringing his "database rights" through their use of the Bitcoin blockchain without his permission, and one alleging that their use of the word "Bitcoin" is "passing off" (how he's going to argue that without a trademark is mystifying to me) and he's been saying in public that he's planning a patent lawsuit too.
- rwmj 5y ago
  > Yes, we're represented by Bird and Bird in the UK, it's a pretty well respected firm. I know them well, all the way back to the 90s. Good luck with your case against him is all I can say.

AnimalMuppet 5y ago

I'm reading your write-up of this sorry saga. (Seriously, great good writing and great explanations.) And I'm thinking "If this kind of stuff is going on, am I supposed to take Bitcoin seriously as either a currency or a store of value?"

nullc 5y ago
Well in a very real sense this sideshow is independent of Bitcoin. Bitcoin is gonna keep on chugging whatever clueless nonsense goes along with it. To the extent that this has any real effect at all on _Bitcoin_ it would just be creating varrious headwinds like discouraging new contributions to the software. This wouldn't be the case for legacy systems that depend on trusted third party authorities. What it does tell you though is how much nonsense people will treat seriously. The same media that is misreporting on Wright's litigation is also the same media saying that Bitcoin is a big deal. :)