Hal Finney was one of the first to show genuine interest in Satoshi Nakamoto's proposal for a peer-to-peer cash system, noting that "when Satoshi announced the creation of Bitcoin on a cryptography mailing list, he was met with skepticism at best. Cryptographers have seen too many great things." the plans of ignorant newcomers. I was more positive."
He was also probably the first person other than Satoshi to launch Bitcoin. In January 2009, real-life distance runner Hal tweeted the following: “Running for Bitcoin.”
In one remarkable email, Finny Nakamoto writes
I came up with something here. Eventually, there will be interest in brute force scanning Bitcoin addresses to find one in which the first few characters match your name, just as if you were given a phone number that says something.
By luck I have my own initials. The Bitcoin address Satoshi refers to in the message is his own, 1NSwywA5Dvuyw89sfs3oLPvLiDNGf48cPD - the first two letters are "NS".
There are several points that intrigue Satoshi's bloodhounds. First, Japanese names are traditionally pronounced and written with the surname, so a person known in the US as Satoshi Nakamoto would be called Nakamoto Satoshi (NS) in Japan.
However, judging by Nakamoto's smooth English writing style and impeccable grammar - not to mention his uncharacteristically Japanese sleep schedule - one wonders why the "Westernized" creator of Bitcoin would use his initials in Japanese order.
Perhaps Finney was familiar with this aspect of the culture and, by writing about himself as Satoshi, missed this point.
Some believe the initials stand for "Nick Szabo", another early cyberpunk, creator of Bit Gold, the predecessor to Bitcoin, and a contemporary of Finney's who corresponded extensively with him. While this theory would seem to point to Szabo rather than Finney as Satoshi, some Satoshi hunters view Bitcoin's pseudonymous creator as some sort of group project consisting of two or more members.
Hal Finney retired from PGP Corporation in early 2011. Satoshi Nakamoto's last known email correspondence was dated April 26, 2011. In a letter to developer Gavin Andresen, after he had effectively handed over the Bitcoin project to his leadership, Satoshi states: “I would like you not to continue to talk about me as a mysterious shadow figure, the press is simply relegating this to the plane of pirate currency.
Maybe you'll talk about the open source project instead and give more credit to its developers; it helps motivate them."
Andresen responded by telling Satoshi that he had been invited to speak at a CIA-related event. Nakamoto never responded. Like Szabo and many others in the field, Hal Finney had a deep interest in extropianism and cryonics, and following his untimely death from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) in August 2014, his body was cryopreserved at the Alcor Life Extension Foundation in Arizona.
Just 17 days after his initial diagnosis, five years earlier, he tweeted: Hal Finney's contribution to getting Bitcoin to where it is today cannot be overstated. Rare among hackers, cryptogeeks and cryptographers is the warm spark of Finney's childlike enthusiasm, as well as the spontaneity that brought a human element to his work and legacy.
Whether he is Satoshi Nakamoto, of course, remains unknown. But the fact that Bitcoin is still working is undeniable.
