Is this former video gamer the real Satoshi Nakamoto

“I have moved on to other things.” So announced a shadowy figure, Satoshi Nakamoto, in a cryptic email in April 2011 before he disappeared from the face of the Earth and set off what’s been called ‘the greatest mystery of the internet age’, writes Tom Leonard.

For Nakamoto was the pseudonym of the creator of Bitcoin, the multibillion-dollar cryptocurrency that yet may revolutionise how the world does business and become its global currency.

Nakamoto’s achievement gives him more than just bragging rights, for he holds about a million Bitcoin, currently worth €57.5m – and if it continues to appreciate in value, could make him the world’s first trillionaire.

Not for nothing, then, has there been intense interest in who he may be.

For years, the internet has been gripped by what amounts to a great nerd hunt that, at one time or another, has fingered as Nakamoto a Japanese mathematician, a Finnish …