Hal Finney (Hal Finney): The Man Behind Satoshi Nakamoto
Eleven years ago, on August 28, 2014, a cryptographer named Hal Finney (Hal Finney) passed away.
The clock was set back 4 years ago. According to Liu Jiaolian“Bitcoin History”Chapter 2, episode 7 records: “On December 10 (2010), the IT magazine “PC World” (PC World) reported on the blockade of WikiLeaks and strongly introduced and promoted Bitcoin, a “peer-to-peer payment technology” that is still unknown to everyone. Bitcoin was dragged into the spotlight for a moment. On December 11, Satoshi Nakamoto left a message on the forum saying, “It's better to get this kind of attention in any other situation” and “WikiLeaks has stabbed a hornet's nest; a large hornet is flying over us.” Since then, Satoshi Nakamoto has disappeared from the public eye. (Satoshi Nakamoto's last public post was the 0.3.19 release notice on December 12.)”
On May 4, 1956, Hal Finney was born in California, USA. Later, he majored in engineering at Caltech.
In other words, he was only 58 years old when he died.
And he's always been a marathon and even an ultramarathon enthusiast. And why did she die young?
Because he was diagnosed with a rare disease in 2009, ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis), also known as fever.
On October 31, 2008, Satoshi Nakamoto first appeared in the public eye. On that day, he posted a Bitcoin introduction email to the Cryptopunk mailing list and attached a Bitcoin white paper.
On January 3, 2009, the Bitcoin mainnet was launched. The small ship bound for the New World set sail silently like this.
On January 10, 2009, Hal Finney tweeted that “Bitcoin (node) is running”.
On January 12, 2009, block height #170，中本聪给哈尔 · Finney initiated the first-ever BTC on-chain transfer.
People on the same band feel sorry for each other.
On this day, it is still 700 days until Satoshi Nakamoto was forced to retreat.
In the same year, Hal Finney was diagnosed with fever, and the countdown to his life began.
After 5 years and 7 months, Hal Finney suddenly passed away and left this world forever.
The encounter with Satoshi Nakamoto and Bitcoin made him spend the best time of over 5 years at the end of his life.
Perhaps he will sincerely feel that this life will have no regrets.
why?
As a major cryptopunk member, Hal Finney worked in his early years on projects such as PGP, a well-known cryptography project, and an anonymous re-mailer.
In 2004, he invented the “Reusable Proof of Work”. The title is “Proof-of-Work” in English.
When Satoshi Nakamoto invented Bitcoin in 2008, he needed to introduce a technology to overcome the Byzantine Generals problem and the FLP impossible problem and achieve a decentralized consensus mechanism.
In the end, Satoshi claims that he chose the Proof-of-Work (Proof-of-Work) algorithm in hashcash (hashcash) invented by cryptographer Adam Back (Adam Back).
The first citation of the Bitcoin white paper, written by Satoshi Nakamoto himself, is Adam Beck's Hashed Cash Essay.
The Bitcoin white paper doesn't cite any of Hal Finney's work.
Instead, this led to wild speculation in the community that Hal Finney was Satoshi Nakamoto.
Because he doesn't cite his own paper, it shows that Satoshi Nakamoto, Hal Finney's academic ethics.
This is quite the same as Satoshi Nakamoto's moral high standards, when he did not seek fame or fortune, and retreated with merit.
However, research by community members indicates that Hal Finney is not Satoshi Nakamoto. (Refer to the 2023.10.22 text“Hal Finney is not Satoshi Nakamoto”）
In any case, the person concerned has gone west, or it will never be possible to confirm it.
Although Hal Finney is no longer around, his amazing songs will always resonate in the Bitcoin community, with lingering sounds.
On January 11, 2009, when Hal Finney followed Satoshi Nakamoto in the Cryptopunk email group, he deduced that the price of a BTC could reach 10 million US dollars.
