From these early days, the author’s quest tracks cryptocurrency’s decline to its present state: an open-air cesspit of predation, zero-sum speculation, rug pulls, “shitcoins” and money laundering by organised crime. Whoever Mr Nakamoto is, if still alive, he would be disgusted at what came of his vision, the author notes. Bitcoin never delivered on decentralisation or anonymity, nor has it been used as actual currency. But the author notes that Bitcoin’s failure is more social than technological: the group fragmented into bitter sects, splitting over architectural decisions, the unified utopian vision collapsing to become easy prey for cynical opportunists. The lesson is important, if cliched: technology will never fix human nature.

Yet this history remains buried in Wallace’s book while the author focuses on finding out the identity of Nakamoto. Possible reasons for anonymity are offered. One flimsy notion is that Nakamoto still holds vast reserves of Bitcoin, so he would be immensely wealthy and concerned about security. More interesting is Wallace’s ideological suggestion: Bitcoin is decentralised by design and so needs to be “headless” to remain true to its original premise.

Unfortunately, The Mysterious Mr Nakamoto becomes bloated, with Wallace chasing his tail and rarely discovering anything irrefutable. We churn through one prospect then another, using a range of techniques that promise identification but uncover only more smoke and mirrors. He seems particularly taken with stylometry as a means of discovering common characteristics of coding or writing style, but every specialist returns a different set of candidates.

To his credit, Wallace has plenty of skin in the game: he learns to code and tries scraping the internet, he flies to Australia for a three-minute conversation. He uses gumshoe reporting, knocking on doors which slowly stop opening as the crypto world seizes up in the face of growing scepticism.

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By page 300, the identities of candidates begin to bleed into one another – with only the most roguish and noble retaining a place in the memory. And in the end, we return to the original set of suspects, none the wiser.

The problem is that real mysteries rarely have the pace and final reveal of their fictional counterparts. No single thread ever undoes the entire jumper. The mystery surrounding Nakamoto ends up being like Bitcoin itself: a promising start that loses direction within a cloud of speculation.