Faketoshi: Fraud, Lies and the Battle for Bitcoin’s Soul (Volume 1)

Description

In 2013, IT consultant Craig Wright was in deep trouble. The Australian Taxation Office was closing in on his web of companies, and the fraudulent multi-million-dollar tax refunds he had claimed were starting to unravel. Facing financial ruin and a possible prison sentence, Wright found a way out: he would become Satoshi Nakamoto, the mysterious creator of Bitcoin.

It was a brazen lie, but it would take a decade, and some of the most dramatic courtroom defeats in British legal history, to finally bring it down.

In Volume I of Faketoshi: Fraud, Lies and the Battle for Bitcoin’s Soul, Dr Bitcoin creators and hosts Mark Hunter and Arthur van Pelt dig into Wright’s past to reveal his Satoshi claim for what it always was: a cavalcade of lies designed to enrich himself and his backers. Along the way, Wright faked multi-million-dollar contracts with his own companies, NASA, a Saudi banking giant and a porn baron; forged, then disowned, evidence of everything from Seychelles trusts to stolen assets; “lost” some of the most expensive supercomputers in the world; and much, much more.

Inspired by the podcast and drawing on the evidence and testimony since presented in court, Faketoshi lifts the lid on one of the most audacious and lunatic swindles ever attempted.