meet hal finney hal finney was a game developer for some classic games from the late NUMBER_TOKENs to early NUMBER_TOKENs then his career took a suspicious turn when he became a cryptographer for the pgp corporation a company that sold a cryptographic software called pretty good privacy pgp was used for signing encrypting and decrypting text emails files and more to make emails more secure he held a successful competition to break the encryption netscape used in NUMBER_TOKEN he created the first reusable proof of work system long before bitcoin so needless to say how finney was a cryptographic expert even aligning himself with the cypherpunk movement an online community of people who advocate for strong cryptography and privacy tech for social and political reasons he once said quote the computer can be used as a tool to liberate and protect people rather than to control them end quotes and by the time bitcoin was up and running how finney receives the first ever bitcoin transaction if he wasn't the creator of bitcoin i think it's safe to assume that he was probably in contact with whoever it was but perhaps the strangest coincidence hal finney's address he lived just a few blocks away from dorian nakamoto for NUMBER_TOKEN years later during the same year bitcoin launched hal finney's life takes a tragic turn he gets diagnosed with als and by NUMBER_TOKEN he becomes essentially paralyzed an extortionist demands an extortion fee of a thousand bitcoins and ends up swatting finney's home by august NUMBER_TOKEN hal halifani passes away from complications of als taking any connection he had with satoshi to the grave his body was crowd preserved literally frozen in store to be hopefully reanimated in the future at the alcor life extension foundation in arizona if he's ever successfully brought back to life maybe we'll find out the
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