Self-proclaimed Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto, Craig Wright, has refuted an early bitcoin miner signed a message using 145 different BTC addresses saying he was a “liar and a fraud,” and claiming he did not have the keys to sign the message.

During an interview with Patrick McLain on the REIMAGINE 2020 YouTube channel, Wright argued that “no message was signed” and refuted the idea an early bitcoin miner could have signed a message using the keys of 145 addresses anonymously. He said:

You have to either have an identity attribute or an identity to sign in this issue. Someone can’t go and say ‘Hey, I’ve got a key ⁠— I’m signing’. If you think that, then you don’t understand digital signatures at all.

Wright’s statements came when he was asked for a response on a messaging calling him a “liar and a fraud” being signed by 145 addresses with unspent coinbase rewards from 2009 to 2010. The message is believed to have been signed by an early miner, but not by Satoshi Nakamoto himself.

The message was highly relevant as it was signed from addresses that Craig claimed to own in his ongoing case against the estate of the late Dave Kleiman. Kleiman’s lawyers used it to argue that a list of BTC addresses Wright claim to own was forged. Indeed, a post on Memo.Cash signed last year from another address in the list also called Wright a “liar and a fraud” with a digital signature.

During the interview, Wright said it’s possible to “run a digital signature algorithm” but not sign a message without an “identity attribute or an identity.” Those who think it’s possible to sign a message by simply owning the private keys of an address, he said, “don’t understand digital signatures at all.”

He further argued that this was the defense Andreas M. Antonopoulos, author of the “Mastering Bitcoin” book, was going to use in the Silk Road case. Antonopoulos’ testimony was at the time rejected, as the topics he planned to testify about were seen as not relevant to the case.

Featured image via Pixabay.