It’s an old and abiding question. Who, exactly, is Satoshi Nakamoto? This is the given name of the person, or people, who authored the ‘Bitcoin Whitepaper’, and who released it in October 2008. Titled ‘Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System’, the document laid out how online payments could be sent directly from one party to another without having to touch a financial institution. The ninepage technical paper goes into how this system would work, and it was from this that the Bitcoin blockchain was established, and continues to this day.

The last anyone was to hear of Nakamoto was an email sent on April 23, 2011 at 3.40pm to Mike Hearn, an early Bitcoin user: “I had a few other things on my mind (as always),” he wrote. “One is, are you planning on rejoining the community at some point (eg for code reviews), or is your plan to permanently step back from the limelight? I’ve moved onto other things. It’s in good hands with Gavin [Andresen, another early user] and everyone.”