The expert witness called by the opposing side was someone I had never heard of, who had a certificate from "Blockchain University," and near as I can tell never worked as a software engineer anywhere, much less on bitcoin.
Guess which one of us nearly got disqualified for lack of credentials.
Expert witness testimony is such a joke.
I’m curious about the context of Bitcoin in this divorce proceeding. What was at dispute?
The case I was consulted for was pretty bog standard “guy claims he lost his bitcoin in a hard drive reformat X years ago; wife claims BS and wants half of peak market value as of the highest historical price.”
Without getting into identifying details, I was able to use blockchain data to independently verify the guy’s claims. Traced transactions, found watermarking features tying them to specific wallet versions. Can’t actually prove that the keys were destroyed of course, but I did show the coins were being spent like crazy from one wallet on one machine, then all activity stopped right around when he claims he reformatted the computer, and the coins sit there on those same wallet outputs to this day, even with multiple market peaks in the intervening years, and many years between then and when he became aware of his wife’s intent to divorce.
That’s the way things go in court cases. Us software developers like to think that the law is a highly rational, proof based system. But in reality it basically comes down to “which story seems more believable” in the end, and being able to point to technical proof is the exception.
Sometimes a story is more believable because there is incontrovertible physical evidence. Normally in those circumstances it'd never go to the court room though -- plea deal in criminal cases, settlement in civil.
All of the qualifications you list amount to subjective evidence of clout in an obscure (to non-programmers) programming clique.
On the other hand, the certificate from a Blockchain University probably had a well defined curriculum and criteria for passing.
Is this serious?
The guy had an entire career as an engineer, he’s now in his 70s and retired.
Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
(I originally had something snarky here but in the spirit of being better I edited it out)
In computing even. E.g. that time Rivest and Diffie both went on the stand to bat for newegg
Unfortunately, it’s work that’s pretty distinct from engineering expertise despite in theory being supplemental atop engineering experience itself.
A former customer of mine was a civil engineer, and also a California-credentialed Professional Engineer (PE), who did code consulting and gave expert testimony about the ASME boiler and pressure vessel code. His code interpretations earned about $100k in 2023 dollars ($50k in 1996) for 45 minutes of effort in 1996. I'd take a guess that an appearance was ~$10-80k depending on the amount of preparation, time, and travel. Needless to say, he had/has a 8-figure house in Saratoga, CA. Finding a niche that is essential to industry and monetizing it well is a fairly repeatable plan for success if one identifies and chooses the right profession.
(PE in California means someone has attained accredited education, worked in a learning capacity at an appropriate type of firm for 4 years, and taken the very difficult PE exam. California licenses generic PEs and fields related and adjacent to construction and civil engineering. It's a shame there aren't specific software or hardware critical assurance PE subcategories.)
The other aspect that’s interesting to me is that, like “engineer”, the term “expert witness” may be too generic to have much meaning. From the related Oregon case linked elsewhere:
>“Courts have long recognized that the term ‘engineer’ has a generic meaning separate from ‘professional engineer”
>It's a shame there aren't specific software
NCEES tried to have a software PE but it withered on the vine and was only offered for a few years. I suspect the incentives in industry don’t support it and the only way itv would get traction is if it were forced by regulation.
So in that light, I want a software PE to know things like thermodynamics if they are writing controls code for a nuclear reactor or aerodynamics if they’re writing avionics code for an aircraft. In my experience, there’s a lot of problems created when SWEs don’t consider the physical dynamics of the system and having some breadth of engineering knowledge can mitigate some of that. Breath of engineering knowledge is the aim of the FE exam. There are oodles of materials to study specifically to pass the FE, so I don’t think that’s really an hurdle for a properly motivated person. Also in that vein, I want them with real experience under a PE. It’s a hurdle, but there are plenty of PEs in domains like oil & gas, aerospace, automotive etc. to work under. But if you think you’ll can work at a FAANG or adjacent SV role and get a PE, it’s probably harder to find a senior PE. I also don’t know if it adds much benefit to a web developer.
Not all that useful in practice.
I am far and away an expert in artificial intelligence, and had one of these “expert witnesses” interview me about my expertise. They hardly knew the basics of software engineering in a modern way let alone modern machine learning pipelines. This is a person who had some patent exposure and generally does small business type of “IT.”
The key differentiator in this case is because they couldn’t make it as a actual engineer they decided to parlay their skills into convincing even less technical people that they knew what they were talking about.