Almost a decade after Bitcoin was invented, the true identity of its creator - the pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto - is still unknown. But while its founder may remain a mystery, his or her vision for Bitcoin is not.

Nakamoto’s original White Paper, published in 2008, describes Bitcoin as “a peer-to-peer electronic cash system”, an “electronic coin” that would replace money transfers that are currently controlled by the financial system, and which would be almost immune to fraud.

Whoever Satoshi Nakamoto is - indeed, if they are even alive - the stash of Bitcoins the individual accumulated in its early days are now worth billions of dollars. But even as Bitcoin continues to break price records on an almost-daily basis, critics say it has strayed far from its original vision. The cryptocurrency (many disagree with the word itself) has proved to have almost no utility as a method of exchange.

Bitcoin has been dismissed as a commodity, not a currency, for years but there have still been plenty of opportunities to spend it. Expedia, Microsoft and Virgin Galactic have been among those willing to accept the digital currency.

But the frenzied interest of recent weeks has made things more difficult. This week one of the biggest supporters of cryptocurrency payments, the online video games seller Steam, announced that it would stop taking payments in Bitcoin. Valve, the service’s owner, said it had become “untenable”, owing both to its extreme volatility and the rising costs of using the network.

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Bitcoin has often been unstable, but never like this, and it has even enjoyed periods of relative calmness. Until 2017, its volatility had decreased each year: weekly fluctuations against the dollar in 2016 were only 6pc, just one percentage point higher than the oil price. For a time, Bitcoin started to look like a reasonable payment method, especially for expensive cross-border transfers.

But this year’s rapid increases, which have multiplied in recent weeks - it took just 15 hours for Bitcoin to cross the $13,000 mark, then $14,000, then $15,000 - have undone that. Prices have fallen as well as going up; Valve said it was losing as much as 25pc of transaction values by the time they had been processed.

Any payment method that suffers from such violent swings is no payment method at all, but Bitcoin’s rollercoaster price has not been the only problem. While it has no middleman, the supercomputers that maintain the Bitcoin network are paid small commissions in exchange for their output, and as Bitcoin’s price has risen, those fees have hit an almost unsustainable level.

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A year ago, it cost roughly 20 cents to make a payment; that is now $7, and fees have been as high as $20. The increase has far outstripped that of Bitcoin’s own price, and is now starting to bite. Not only that, but the strain on the network, amid its frenzied buying, has seen transaction times slow down dramatically. It often takes hours for a transaction to be confirmed; a delay that makes Bitcoin useless in many situations. Squabbling amongst the Bitcoin community has held back technological changes that would make it more efficient.

Even if its failures as a payment system are out of touch with Nakamoto’s vision, they are unlikely to trouble many investors, who have seen the value of their Bitcoin holdings explode in recent months.

Some now argue that Bitcoin’s utility is in fact as an asset, as digital gold rather than digital money. But if this is the extent of its utility, it is even more difficult to see what, exactly, is backing up its meteoric rise.