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motivation by reproducing a headline from The Times from January 2009: ‘Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks’.
    It would seem that someone who was wary about WikiLeaks bringing ‘heat’ to his invention would certainly have some issues with it being used as the cornerstone of dark-web markets. But he never made any statement about them. Nakamoto’s appearances, postings and emails became increasingly sporadic, and then, in early 2011, he quietly disappeared, surfacing only for the briefest of moments in April 2011 to tell a bitcoin developer that he had ‘moved on to other things’.
    Naturally, some people wanted to stay in touch and tried to contact him. But they couldn’t. Searches for a telephone number, an address, an alternative email to contact the man were fruitless. His name was not associated with any academic papers, publications or institutions in the profession in which he was so clearly an expert. It was becoming apparent that Satoshi Nakamoto (male, 38, Japan) had never existed.
    And so began a hunt for the pseudonymous genius. The intrigue surrounding Nakamoto’s true identity built into the type of frenzy reserved for characters such as British street artist Banksy. His English was faultless, suggesting it was his first language, with some even saying they recognised the marks of an Oxbridge graduate. Others pointed out that though the bulk of his communications were in British English, initially he had used American English. His website led to dead ends: the domain name had been registered through a privacy protection service. The other hints he had dropped from time to time contradicted each other and similarly led nowhere.
    Journalist Andrew Smith, who spent months reviewing the 100,000 words known to be written by Nakamoto, came to the conclusion in a piece he wrote for The Sunday Times that Nakamoto had deliberately sown seeds of ‘systematic obfuscation aimed at throwing us off the scent. One is tempted to further infer that Satoshi, having pointed us in the directions of the British Isles, Finland, Germany and Japan, is unlikely to come from any of these places . . .’
    The 364 posts Nakamoto made on the bitcoin forums, while detailed and technical, revealed little about their author other than that he, she or they were a genius who had thought of nearly everything, responded quickly to flaws found by fellow cryptographers, and plugged every identified problem with, and potential attack upon, the currency.
    As bitcoin gained value and mainstream publications began to take it seriously, the hunt for Nakamoto moved beyond the realms of internet sleuths and on to investigative journalists who saw the potential in the story.
    One theory was that his name was drawn from technology multinationals Sa msung, Toshi ba, Naka michi and Moto rola. Some took this further, suggesting that top scientists from those companies had worked together to create bitcoin. It was a neat hypothesis, but no evidence that it was anything more than a coincidence has ever emerged.
    Some surmised Nakamoto was an invention by those who have much to gain from the currency’s success – perhaps the head of the Bitcoin Foundation (a lobby group dedicated to promoting bitcoin), or the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, MtGox. Others believed it to be a pseudonym for a disruptive government or the CIA.
    As attempts to locate Nakamoto failed, his cult status intensified. Mythology grew of the man who had apparently not made a single mistake – not in the code behind his invention, nor in covering his tracks, despite there being few people in the world who could possibly be him.
    The mystery spawned an entire industry, with T-shirts emblazoned with ‘Who is Satoshi Nakamoto?’ and ‘I am Satoshi Nakamoto’ selling in worldwide stores dedicated to technology buffs.
    If Nakamoto were a fictional character he would be the James Bond or Jason Bourne of cyberspace – a genius, an inventor, an outlaw with