Hal Finney: The Man Behind Satoshi Nakamoto

Eleven years ago, on August 28, 2014, a cryptographer named Hal Finney passed away.

Let's go back four years. According to Chapter 2, Episode 7 of Liu Jiaolian's "A History of Bitcoin," "On December 10, 2010, the IT magazine PC World reported on the WikiLeaks shutdown and featured Bitcoin, a relatively unknown peer-to-peer payment technology. Bitcoin was thrust into the spotlight. On December 11, Satoshi Nakamoto posted on the forum, "This kind of attention would have been better under any other circumstances," and "WikiLeaks has stirred up a hornet's nest, and a swarm of hornets is flying towards us." From then on, Satoshi Nakamoto disappeared from public view. (Satoshi Nakamoto's last public post was the release announcement of version 0.3.19 on December 12.)" Hal Finney was born in California on May 4, 1956. He later studied engineering at Caltech. In other words, he was only 58 years old when he died. He had always been a marathon and even ultramarathon enthusiast. Why did he die so young? Because in 2009 he was diagnosed with ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis), also known as Lou Gehrig's disease. On October 31, 2008, Satoshi Nakamoto first appeared in public. That day, he sent an email to the Cypherpunk mailing list introducing Bitcoin and attaching the Bitcoin white paper. On January 3, 2009, the Bitcoin mainnet was launched. Thus, the boat bound for the New World quietly set sail. On January 10, 2009, Hal Finney tweeted that he was "running Bitcoin (node)." On January 12, 2009, at block height #170, Satoshi Nakamoto sent Hal Finney the first ever on-chain BTC transfer.

People with the same frequency sympathize with each other.

On this day, it was 700 days before Satoshi Nakamoto was forced to retire from the social world.

In the same year, Hal Finney was diagnosed with ALS, and the countdown to his life began.

Five years and seven months later, Hal Finney passed away suddenly, leaving this world forever.

His encounter with Satoshi Nakamoto and Bitcoin allowed him to spend the last five years of his life in the best possible way.

Perhaps, he would have truly felt that he had no regrets in his life.

Why?

As a hardcore cypherpunk, Hal Finney had previously worked on well-known cryptography projects such as PGP and the anonymous remailer.

In 2004, he invented "Reusable Proof-of-Work". The title is in English, "Reusable Proof-of-Work".

When Satoshi Nakamoto invented Bitcoin in 2008, he needed to introduce a technology to overcome the Byzantine Generals Problem and the FLP Impossibility Problem and achieve a decentralized consensus mechanism.

In the end, Satoshi Nakamoto claimed that he chose the Proof-of-Work algorithm in hashcash invented by cryptographer Adam Back. The first citation in Satoshi Nakamoto's own Bitcoin white paper is Adam Back's Hashcash paper. The Bitcoin white paper does not cite any of Hal Finney's work. This has fueled widespread speculation in the community that Hal Finney is Satoshi Nakamoto. By not citing his own papers, Satoshi Nakamoto demonstrates a certain obsession with academic ethics. This aligns with Satoshi Nakamoto's unfettered pursuit of fame and fortune, and his commitment to retiring upon achieving success. However, some community members have conducted research and pointed out that Hal Finney is not Satoshi Nakamoto. (See the article "Hal Finney is not Satoshi Nakamoto" on October 22, 2023.) Regardless, the person in question has passed away, and it may never be confirmed. Although Hal Finney is no longer with us, his final words will forever resonate in the Bitcoin community. On January 11, 2009, Hal Finney, in a reply to Satoshi Nakamoto's post on the Cypherpunks mailing list, speculated that the price of one BTC could reach $10 million. On Friday, August 29th, the crypto market continued its decline across the board, with BTC retreating below $110,000. Higher-than-expected US inflation data dampened expectations for interest rate cuts. USDT was trading at 7.16, and USD/CNH at 7.12, with the USD rapidly weakening. The US dollar index fell below 98 points. Gold continued to rise, approaching its recent high, currently trading at $3,436.