We tried to interview Craig Wright – it ended with him calling us nasty things

Don’t get me wrong, journalism isn’t supposed to be easy. Most of the time, you imagine a certain angle or story, but after having researched or completed the main interview, you are often compelled to change the initial idea to fit the information in hand.

This was, as always, what I expected when I reached out to Craig S. Wright asking if he wanted to write an opinion piece about his view on privacy coins. He said yes, but when it took longer than expected to receive the text, me and my editor-in-chief Christian Ploog decided to go for an interview with Dr. Wright instead.

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Wanted to get his opinion

Our intention was simply to get to know his opinion on the fact that some of the biggest cryptocurrency exchanges in the world have decided to delist his coin bitcoin Satoshi Vision (bitcoin SV for short). We also wanted to hear what he had to say about the fact that he has been threating to sue people claiming that he is not the original founder of bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto.

Craig Wright is (to say the least) controversial within the bitcoin- and cryptocurrency industry. Claiming to be Satoshi Nakamoto without being able to immediately present solid proof to back it up, tend to make people a bit maliciously towards you. If you also – on top of that – threatens to file lawsuits against anyone saying that you are not Satoshi, you should probably expect to be treated as a scam.

“Answering follow-up questions don’t seem to be the way of the Craig”

Anyway, our intentions were truly honest. We wanted to give Wright the opportunity to share his view of what is currently happening around him and bitcoin SV, but after having sent and received answers to the first batch of questions, we had some follow-up questions intended to clarify things further.

Unfortunately, answering critical follow-up questions don’t seem to be the way of the Craig. Instead, he suddenly replied calling us “stupidly annoying” and our questions silly:

From: Craig Wright
Time: Sat, Apr 27, 3:37 PM

“Honestly, Now you’re just becoming stupidly annoying.

I started answering your silly follow-up questions. And this is where I’m going to answer it now. I’ve answered. […] It is clear to me from this that you have no idea what bitcoin is. Basically, you’re pandering to a bunch of fools who seek quick gain and no more.

Have a nice life. Don’t bother responding further.

Have a nice life. Any follow-up from your organisation will be straight into my spam bin do it you want with this.

Craig”

Of course, we sent him another email apologizing for offending him (even though I don’t really understand how we did offend him), but Craig Wright kept his word and didn’t reply to that email.

This abrupt ending of the interview puts us, as a cryptocurrency news site, in a weird situation. The interview itself is interesting, but even more interesting is the way things turned out. It would be outright misconduct of us to publish the interview without the follow-up questions and without reporting on how things turned out.

The reaction from Craig Wright is quite unique. This is normally the behavior of politicians and business leaders that have been caught doing something they really shouldn’t have done.

Therefore, we decided to publish the full, unedited interview complete with our unanswered follow-up questions. This to promote full transparency, but mainly to help you form your own opinion of who Craig Wright is.

Totte Löfström,
CEO of Trijo and Trijo News
Twitter: @TotteLofstrom
Facebook: /tottelofstrom

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