Little-known life about the ‘godfather’ of virtual currency Bitcoin

Hal Finney was born in 1956. He is a programmer of software company PGP, also a game developer and expert in computer encryption. This laid the foundation for him to meet Satoshi Nakamoto, who is known as the father of the virtual currency Bitcoin.

“When Satoshi Nakamoto announced Bitcoin on the encrypted mailing list, he was questioned by many people, but I am quite optimistic about that since I was once trying to create a cryptocurrency called RPOW. So I found that Bitcoin is very attractive. Finney shares.

In January 2009, Hal Finney – who was known for his habit of never writing long tweets – sent a message “Running bitcoin” on Twitter. And that was the beginning of a new world for virtual currencies.

That’s when Satoshi Nakamoto released the Bitcoin software, and Finney downloaded it right away. He also spoke to Satoshi Nakamoto via email. Satoshi then gave Finney 10 Bitcoins for testing. The moment he received his first 10 BTC transaction from Satoshi Nakamoto was the moment he became the creator of the first proof of concept of a cryptocurrency.

Around the same time, Finney reported a technical bug and Satoshi Nakamoto fixed it. A few days later, Bitcoin is very stable. But at that time, although the mining difficulty was only 1, Finney’s computer became overloaded, so he decided to take a break from Bitcoin.

Finney’s second Bitcoin exposure was in late 2010, when he was surprised to find that Bitcoin was not only in circulation, but had monetary value. So he transferred the Bitcoins in his old wallet to an offline wallet.

Finney also said his views on Satoshi: “The first time I came into contact with Satoshi Nakamoto, I thought he was a young Japanese man. He’s very smart and very sincere. I’ve met a lot of talented people in my life, so I can. recognize these signs “.

Unfortunately, in 2009, Finney was found to have atrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). The illness caused his body to begin to weaken, lisp and no longer control his hands. Finney died on August 28, 2014, and his body was refrigerated by the Alcor Life Extension Foundation.

“In general, I’m very lucky. Even with frostbite, I’m satisfied with my life”, Finney shared while still alive. “I keep Bitcoin in a safe. Both my son and daughter know about technology. I am satisfied with the legacy I have left behind.”

In fact, even though past emails suggest Satoshi Nakamoto was the lead developer of Bitcoin and Hal Finney was essentially the first version tester, some still have conspiracy theories that Hal is Satoshi.

They assumed he forged emails to conceal his tracks. Evidence showed that they found someone named Satoshi Nakamoto living only about 3km from Hal’s house and had nothing to do with Bitcoin. So maybe Hal looked up the phone book and chose Satoshi as a fake name for him. This hypothesis was well supported because at the time, those involved in the creation of Bitcoin were worried that they would be arrested by the authorities for creating an infrastructure that could become a threat. against USD.

And yet, in the last days before his death, Finney was extorted by hackers. An anonymous person asked for 37.6 bitcoins (which was then worth $ 20,000) if the threat would publish all details of his personal data online. Previously, another hacker demanded 1,000 bitcoins (worth about $ 400,000 at the time) in exchange for not posting information about his family’s health data online.