Speaker 1: My name is Lily Maddon and I'm a proud Arunda
Speaker 1: Bungelung Caalcutin woman from Gadighl country. The Daily oz acknowledges
Speaker 1: that this podcast is recorded on the lands of the
Speaker 1: Gadighl people and pays respect to all Aboriginal and Torres
Speaker 1: Strait Island and nations. We pay our respects to the
Speaker 1: first peoples of these countries, both past and present.
Speaker 2: Good morning and welcome to the Daily os. It's Friday,
Speaker 2: the ninth of February.
Speaker 3: I'm Zara, I'm Saram.
Speaker 2: Bitcoin is absolutely everywhere right now. But who actually invented
Speaker 2: the coin? Where did it come from? Well, it turns
Speaker 2: out that we actually don't have the answer to that,
Speaker 2: and there is an ongoing dispute as to who.
Speaker 4: Invented the coin.
Speaker 2: It's a dispute that has made its way all the
Speaker 2: way up to the UK's High Court. An Australian man
Speaker 2: says he founded the popular cryptocurrency in two thousand and eight,
Speaker 2: but on.
Speaker 4: The flip side, a group of tech have launched legal action.
Speaker 2: Accusing him of forging his identity. We're going to explain
Speaker 2: everything there is to know about the creation of bitcoin
Speaker 2: in the deep.
Speaker 4: Dive but first Sam that's making headlines.
Speaker 3: Toyota drivers could be at risk of having their personal
Speaker 3: information leaked, according to a new warning from consumer group Choice.
Speaker 3: It said Toyota's Connected Services technology collects information such as
Speaker 3: vehicle location, driving data, fuel levels, and even phone numbers
Speaker 3: and email addresses. Choice founds that the service poses significant
Speaker 3: risks to customers privacy and warns drivers data could be
Speaker 3: shared with third parties without their permission.
Speaker 2: The Climate Council says Australians are experiencing what it calls
Speaker 2: climate whiplash from current wild swings between weather extremes. Its
Speaker 2: latest report found almost every state has broken extreme weather
Speaker 2: records this summer after recent floods, bushfires, heavy rainfall, humidity
Speaker 2: and heat waves across the kind. The Climate Council said
Speaker 2: these extremes were signs of a fast warming planet, adding
Speaker 2: that coal, oil and gas burning were key contributors to
Speaker 2: climate wereplash.
Speaker 3: Pakistan has suspended mobile phone service across the country during
Speaker 3: its national election. It's part of efforts by Pakistani authorities
Speaker 3: to ease security concerns after dozens of people were killed
Speaker 3: in two blasts on Wednesday. Terrorist group Islamic State have
Speaker 3: claims responsibility for the bombing attack, and it follows recent
Speaker 3: political unrest and violent protests in the country. Pakistan's Interior
Speaker 3: Ministry said the suspension of phone coverage was temporary.
Speaker 2: And the good news Ozzie diver Alisha Kloy has won
Speaker 2: gold at the World Aquatic Championships in Doha. Twenty two
Speaker 2: year old placed first in the women's one meter springboard.
Speaker 2: Other OZSI metallists included Annamel Smith and Madison Keeney, who
Speaker 2: won silver together in the women's three meter synchronized diving event. Sam,
Speaker 2: do you know who invented bitcoin?
Speaker 3: The two bitcoins to Lores? I know is that one
Speaker 3: of the earliest transactions using bitcoin was buying a pizza.
Speaker 4: Okay, but that's not answering my question.
Speaker 3: Sorry, so. And the other one was that I think
Speaker 3: it was someone called Santoshi.
Speaker 4: Okay, do you know anything more than that that?
Speaker 3: We don't know who Santoshi is.
Speaker 4: So it's a pseudonym. Yes, Okay, you're right.
Speaker 1: Cool.
Speaker 4: Ten points for you.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 2: I love that I was asking you that with the
Speaker 2: full expectation that you wouldn't know the answer. I when
Speaker 2: I was researching this story, was reflecting on this thing
Speaker 2: that my friends and I do that sounds really lame
Speaker 2: when I say it out loud, but it is actually
Speaker 2: a really valuable exercise, which is that every few months,
Speaker 2: and certainly last year, we got together to learn something new.
Speaker 4: We realized that we all have heaps.
Speaker 2: Of skills and understanding and knowledge in certain areas, and
Speaker 2: that that's never transferred through like social groups. Anyway, I digress.
Speaker 2: The reason I'm saying it was we did one on
Speaker 2: crypto right, like a full deep dive on crypto, and
Speaker 2: that was the first time that I heard the name
Speaker 2: Satoshi Nakamoto, which I thought was the real name of
Speaker 2: the person that created bitcoin, but it turns out is
Speaker 2: a pseudonym. And we're talking about that today specifically because
Speaker 2: the idea of who actually created bitcoin is in the
Speaker 2: news at this moment in time.
Speaker 3: So why do you give me a really quick tail
Speaker 3: dr from that night with your friends and quickly explain
Speaker 3: what bitcoin is before we jump into this story in
Speaker 3: this current court case.
Speaker 2: So Bitcoin became the world's first cryptocurrency and exchange platform.
Speaker 2: It launched in two thousand and eight, and the central
Speaker 2: idea behind bitcoin was the ability to make payments without
Speaker 2: going through traditional banking channels. So the digital currency runs
Speaker 2: via something called the blockchain, where all transactions are verified
Speaker 2: and connected in sequence, and it goes to this whole
Speaker 2: idea of decentralizing the way that we understand financing and
Speaker 2: money and.
Speaker 4: Power really in the world around us. You're right.
Speaker 2: In twenty ten, a man in the US state of
Speaker 2: Florida made the first commercial purchase using bitcoin when he
Speaker 2: brought two pizzas.
Speaker 3: And so the discussion this week is about who invented it.
Speaker 3: And you said before that the person who invented it,
Speaker 3: what we do know is that they used a fake name.
Speaker 2: Right. So Bitcoin's first white paper, as it's called, which
Speaker 2: is just a document describing how bitcoin would work, that
Speaker 2: was drafted under the name I mentioned before, Satoshi Nakamoto,
Speaker 2: And in twenty fifteen several tech publications named somebody called
Speaker 2: Craig Wright, who funnily enough, is an Australian scientif.
Speaker 3: Wow, there's a local angleton I know.
Speaker 2: As the possible creator of bitcoin. Wright alleges that he
Speaker 2: wrote the paper under this pseudonym Totoshi Nakamoto. A bit
Speaker 2: about Craig Wright, who I truly had never heard of
Speaker 2: until this week and had no idea that there was
Speaker 2: any local connection to the story of bitcoin. Craig Wright
Speaker 2: describes himself like this in his Twitter bio. He says,
Speaker 2: the creator of bitcoin, eternal student and researcher in chain, consultant, lawyer, economist, pastor, investor,
Speaker 2: mathematician and husband.
Speaker 4: That's does he have more hours in the day?
Speaker 3: What I mean that a normal person? What an incredible buyer?
Speaker 2: I mean some of those make sense together, some of
Speaker 2: them are a bit confusing anyway.
Speaker 3: So he says he is the creative of bitcoin.
Speaker 2: So in all the spare time he has from being
Speaker 2: a loyer, economist, pastor, investor, and mathematician, son and husband,
Speaker 2: why not create bitcoin?
Speaker 4: He claims that.
Speaker 2: But not everyone is on board with this idea that
Speaker 2: he is actually the creator of bitcoin. Some online reports
Speaker 2: have questioned the claims and have said that he forged
Speaker 2: some of his academic credentials. He's right, talking to Kipko
Speaker 2: News in twenty twenty two.
Speaker 5: In twenty fifteen, Wyatt and Gizmoto put a whole lot
Speaker 5: of clap trap out outing me. I didn't want that
Speaker 5: out and a number of other people in Core did
Speaker 5: that to basically muddy the waters about what I was doing.
Speaker 5: I mean, then they came out with a whole lot
Speaker 5: of stuff about fake degrees, et cetera, which there's all
Speaker 5: proven wrong, but I didn't really want to face sort
Speaker 5: of media or any of that at the time.
Speaker 2: Nakamoto's identity has never been verified. And now there is this,
Speaker 2: as I said, ongoing lawsuit as to who actually is
Speaker 2: the real founder. Is it this Australian professor or is
Speaker 2: it someone else?
Speaker 3: And so who's the lawsuit between? Like how does that
Speaker 3: actually work in court?
Speaker 2: So Craig Right, the Aussie scientist, he's launched multiple lawsuits
Speaker 2: against people who have developed bitcoin technology without his consent.
Speaker 2: He claims to hold the copyright to the cryptocurrency.
Speaker 3: You know what's interesting about that claim is that the
Speaker 3: whole idea.
Speaker 2: There's no ownership, Yeah, yeah, is meant to decentralize ownership, right,
Speaker 2: and he were talking about.
Speaker 4: But like if I created something like bitcoin, you.
Speaker 3: Want to cut it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So he brought a defamation lawsuit against a blogger
Speaker 2: and a podcaster who said that he wasn't the creator
Speaker 2: of bitcoin. And then now the case that we're talking
Speaker 2: about is a group of tech developers who are suing him.
Speaker 2: They're saying that he falsified his identity and that his
Speaker 2: copyright claim to bitcoin is delaying innovation to the cryptocurrency technology.
Speaker 2: And the group that is suing Right is called the
Speaker 2: Cryptocurrency Open Patent Alliance. We're going to call them COPA.
Speaker 2: It's a group of individuals and organizations linked to the
Speaker 2: crypto industry. And I kept seeing headlines when I was
Speaker 2: reading about this about Jack Dawsey.
Speaker 3: Who's a former CEO of Twitter.
Speaker 4: Correct, he is financially backing COPA.
Speaker 3: Okay, so they're well funded.
Speaker 4: Yes, So that's a.
Speaker 2: Group that is taking legal action against RIGHT, and they
Speaker 2: claim that developers have been silenced by thread of legal
Speaker 2: action from RIGHT, and they've suggested that the future of
Speaker 2: the crypto.
Speaker 4: Industry is at stake.
Speaker 2: The main aspect of the case is looking to prove
Speaker 2: that Right is not Satoshi Nakamoto last month writes intermedia
Speaker 2: release out saying that he had tried to settle the
Speaker 2: case with COPA. The settlement offer included inviting the involved
Speaker 2: parties to make a donation to a specific Australian church
Speaker 2: which runs community support services. So that was one of
Speaker 2: the elements of this settlement, which is fascinating another was
Speaker 2: ending what he labeled as any media campaign against me
Speaker 2: and committing to ensure that bitcoin isn't used to lauander
Speaker 2: money or evade taxes. So those were the conditions that
Speaker 2: he wanted to settle. Ultimately, COPA rejected that settlement offer,
Speaker 2: and it's now gone to court in the UK.
Speaker 3: So we've now got that core case playing out. What's
Speaker 3: been happening in the courtroom.
Speaker 2: Yes, so, Copa's lawyers this week alleged that Wright had
Speaker 2: committed forgery on an industrial scale.
Speaker 4: It's a direct quote there.
Speaker 2: He stands by his claims obviously that he is the founder,
Speaker 2: insisting that he never forged any of these documents. Part
Speaker 2: of his defense rights defense will also rely on proving
Speaker 2: that COPA can't actually provide an alternative for who this
Speaker 2: pseudonym actually is.
Speaker 3: Right. I think it's so if you don't know any better,
Speaker 3: it could be me, I do. I think I'm not
Speaker 3: saying I invented bitclaim. It definitely wasn't me. When I
Speaker 3: was fourteen, I was thinking about you know, footy.
Speaker 2: No one has successfully proven that it was them, right,
Speaker 2: and so in the absence of being able to identify
Speaker 2: it right as saying, well, if you can't identify anyone else,
Speaker 2: and I'm saying it's me, you know, go forth with
Speaker 2: that knowledge, And that's the case that's playing out in
Speaker 2: the court at the moment.
Speaker 3: I think it's just absolutely fascinating to think about how
Speaker 3: much this technology has changed the world and has the
Speaker 3: potential to be even more embedded into our financial systems.
Speaker 3: I mean, in the last twelve months, it's just been
Speaker 3: adopted by a country as a sovereign coin for the
Speaker 3: first time, that's El Salvador. But yet despite that impact,
Speaker 3: we don't know who the owner is, whether it's Craig
Speaker 3: Right from Australia or well.
Speaker 2: I think that's why it's you know, we always talk
Speaker 2: about this news versus noise. I think ordinarily, if I
Speaker 2: was reading a piece about something like this, I would
Speaker 2: think it's noise.
Speaker 4: But I think you're right.
Speaker 2: I think that the significant impact it has made in
Speaker 2: kind of all economic spheres means it actually is really
Speaker 2: important where it came from, what its origin is, what
Speaker 2: the use of it was originally, and what the intention
Speaker 2: was because it's reshaped everything.
Speaker 3: But interestingly, it wouldn't matter who invented it if Craig
Speaker 3: Wright wasn't taking action to stop the development of it.
Speaker 3: So in some ways he's trying to kind of stand
Speaker 3: his authority on this coin. I mean, we don't know
Speaker 3: who invented money. I'm sure somebody does, but if there
Speaker 3: was a claim to patent money that would be very
Speaker 3: interesting as well. Well, you've got the answer of wow,
Speaker 3: those existential questions. Ends the week.
Speaker 2: Thanks for joining us for another week on the Daily Odds.
Speaker 2: If you have found us through the Daily Drive, welcome.
Speaker 2: We're back next week for another big week in the news,
Speaker 2: but until then, have a fabulous weekend
Speaker 1: Already and this is the Daily Oh now it makes sense.