Craig Wright once claimed — in November 2014 — to own up to 5 Bitcoin supercomputers.
Let’s find out what is true of that claim. Disclaimer: this article is not suitable for Craig Wright fans.
“In the realm of cryptocurrencies and computer technology, Craig Wright emerged in 2013 as a controversial figure with audacious, often provably false claims and questionable if not fraudulent business dealings. One of his most infamous assertions involved the possession of no less than five supercomputers reportedly dedicated to Bitcoin mining and research. These claims, however, turned out to be a fabrication, leading to a protracted legal and financial battle between Wright and the Australian Taxation Office (ATO).” — Bard, Google’s online Artificial Intelligence tool when asked about Craig’s Bitcoin supercomputers in December 2023
The Prelude
To understand the full picture of the Craig Wright Bitcoin supercomputers saga, we go back to late 2008. Craig Wright was sacked from BDO, as he explained in January 2019 to Modern Consensus.
“Ten years ago was also the beginning of the great recession, which I’ve argued drastically shaped bitcoin.
Yes and luckily 10 years ago, I was given a golden handshake from BDO.
Oh wait. You mean you were laid off due to the recession? And that’s why you had time for all of this Bitcoin stuff?
In Sydney I got handed the golden handshake. They gave me the redundancy check. They said if you want to take money and not come back, have some money and go away. It was fortuitous. A couple weeks before that I was being a bum and I had two spare weeks to try things. My understanding is that this [the first Bitcoin transaction] was the start of the week. It was a weekday. In 2008, I would have been off working in the city and wouldn’t have had time to do anything. If it hadn’t have happened I probably would have quit anyway. So having them hand me a lot of extra cash was quite. I ran the IT audit. I ran digital forensics. I did CATS — computer aided audit technology. Audit firms everywhere started panicking. We were losing auditors in the recession.”
The Companies 2009–2013
2009: The foundation is being laid for the upcoming Bitcoin scams.
Not that Craig Wright had any clue yet at this point in time of the role that Bitcoin would go play in his life four years later, of course, because in the 2007 — 2011 era Craig had no idea that Bitcoin even existed, let alone that the real Satoshi Nakamoto had just released Bitcoin in the wild in January of 2009.
Straight after being sacked from BDO in December 2008 with this “golden handshake” or “a lot of extra cash” of AU$10,938.00 (around US$7,150.00), Craig Wright incorporated two Australian companies.
Information Defense Pty Ltd (January 29, 2009)
Integyrs Pty Ltd (May 11, 2009)
These two companies were straightaway used by Craig Wright for shady tax business, it appears. Because in one of the many Australian Taxation Office (ATO) reports that we learned about in the Kleiman v Wright lawsuit — running from February 2018 to December 2021 — we find the following quote.
We learn a few interesting tidbits about three of the companies that Craig incorporated so far, being Ridges Estate (raised October 23, 2001 but not relevant for this Bitcoin supercomputer story), Information Defense and Integyrs.
“many where the ATO has disallowed R&D claims and imposed penalties”
Penalties are only given to naughty boys, right?
This ATO report was filed in January 2022, shortly after the Kleiman v Wright trial in November/December 2021 concluded with a December 7, 2021 ruling by the trial Jury that defendant Craig Wright should pay $100,000,000 to plaintiff W&K (basically Ira Kleiman) for ‘Conversion’.
Notably, visible at footnote 6, there’s a gap between 2004 and 2008. This was the period that Craig Wright was employed by BDO in Australia and appears to have largely abandoned his R&D claims scheme, which he would pick up again after he left BDO in December 2008. More about that later.
2011: Craig Wright incorporates three more companies.
•Cloudcroft Pty Ltd (March 3, 2011)
•Panopticrypt Pty Ltd (June 20, 2011)
•Strasan Pty Ltd (July 21, 2011)— renamed to •C01n Pty Ltd (February 14, 2014)
Cloudcroft will become the vehicle where Craig Wright is going to put his Bitcoin supercomputers in later years.
April 2013
Let’s move forward to April 2013, a truly pivotal month in Craig Wright’s Bitcoin fraud career. No less than three notable events happened in the second half of April 2013. Firstly, Craig buys his first Bitcoin on Mt Gox, secondly, his ‘friend’ Dave Kleiman passes away, and thirdly he incorporates the Coin-Exch Pty Ltd company. Coin-Exch will become a member of the Hotwire Group.
August 26, 2013: Craig incorporates another four companies in Australia.
•Pholus Pty Ltd
•Denariuz Pty Ltd
•Zuhl Pty Ltd
•The Trustee for the Wright Family Trust
By now, the foundation has been laid for the Hotwire Group, two handfuls of companies that Craig Wright will use in an attempt to defraud AusIndustry and ATO for millions of Australian dollars in multiple types of tax refund and tax rebate claims for paper only projects and — activities, and faked buying & selling of diverse assets that he tried to give credibility with bookkeeping fraud.
For this article we only concentrate on the Bitcoin supercomputers.
September 15, 2013: Craig announces the Hotwire Group on his blog.
With several hints like “Fifteen years of planning;” (apparently starting 1998), “Four years of development;” (apparently starting 2009: note that this appears to be a somewhat crippled link to Satoshi Nakamoto, as Satoshi started development of Bitcoin in 2007, while Craig indeed incorporated Information Defense in 2009 as the reader might remember, a company that Craig apparently incorporated in the Hotwire Group at this point in time) and “In the next nine months, secrets will start to come out.”, Craig is apparently slowly preparing the world for his Satoshi Nakamoto cosplay.
However, we will learn that the world, to Craig’s frustration, didn’t pay attention too much to this cosplay for at least two years from here…
The Bitcoin Supercomputers
September 25, 2013: Craig’s First Bitcoin Supercomputer "Sukuriputo Okane" Enters the Scene
The first mention of a Bitcoin-related supercomputer called Sukuriputo Okane is in a September 2013 email. That email can be found in a June 3, 2019 post on Craig Wright’s blog. At first glance, it’s an impressively smart looking email from a very bright Bitcoin architect-level developer.
But is Craig Wright even such a person?
No, of course not. He never was, and he never will be a very bright Bitcoin architect-level developer. Because at second glance, one finds out that the meat of this email is simply copied from the Bitcoin Wiki. For example, some of the text is taken — both in paraphrase and verbatim form — from the Bitcoin Wiki Contract page, set up in 2012 by Mike Hearn and others.
This is, plain and simple, plagiarism, of which Craig once, in June 2008, said “Plagiarism is more serious than most people think. It is a criminal breach of both the copyright act and is also a criminal fraud.” in the comments to his blog article “Tisk, tisk, tisk…” (scroll down a little for the comments section).
October 7, 2013: “Sukuriputo Okane” Registered with AusIndustry ===
In October 2013, we find this first of several Bitcoin supercomputer projects that Craig Wright set up to scam the Australian government in an ATO report.
“The project is described as a software library for financial cryptography including a prototype server and high-level client API able to process Bitcoin transactions and markets.”
The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) however was quick to find out that “much of the application is taken from internet sources, without acknowledgement” and that the examples of the R&D activities were also “taken, unacknowledged, from an internet source”.
The reader only needs to scroll back to September 25, 2013, to know what ATO is talking about.
November 2013: The Two NSW Supreme Court Claims
In the tax fraud mix of Craig Wright are also two fraudulently obtained NSW Supreme Court claims for a total amount of almost AU$57 million in November 2013 (as described in “Craig Wright Ordered to Pay $100 Million in Kleiman v Wright Lawsuit”), and this “value” is received by Craig in the form of Bitcoin IP that he, as he claims, years earlier put in W&K for a meagre $5,000. This Bitcoin IP now also shuffled back and forth between his companies and is used in combination with the Bitcoin supercomputers.
December 6, 2013: And Another Bitcoin Supercomputer Enters the Scene!
Meet C01N, the second Bitcoin supercomputer that Craig Wright claims to have had in the early years. He actually claimed C01N was already in use in September 2012!
It appears ATO was again not very impressed with this machine. Nor with Craig’s performance in handling the audit. From one of the ATO reports: