Hal Finney (computer scientist). Harold Thomas Finney II (May 4, 1956 – August 28, 2014) was an American software developer. In his early career, he was credited as lead developer on several console games. He later worked for PGP Corporation. He was an early Bitcoin contributor, and received the first Bitcoin transaction from the currency's creator Satoshi Nakamoto.

Early life and education 

Finney was born in Coalinga, California, on May 4, 1956, to Virginia and Harold Thomas Finney. His father was a petroleum engineer. Harold Finney II attended the California Institute of Technology, graduating with a BS in engineering in 1979.

Career 
After graduation from Caltech, he went to work in the computer gaming field for a company that developed video games such as Adventures of Tron, Armor Ambush, Astrosmash and Space Attack. He later went to work for the PGP Corporation where he remained until his retirement in 2011.

Finney was a cryptographic activist. During the early 1990s, in addition to being a regular poster on the cypherpunks listserv, Finney ran two anonymous remailers. Further cryptographic activism included running a contest to break the export-grade encryption Netscape used, which succeeded in doing so.

Finney was involved in the development of the first anonymous remailer, a tool for sending emails with the sender's identity concealed. He was one of the early contributors to this privacy-enhancing technology, which played a significant role in the cypherpunk movement and the broader field of online privacy. This work further demonstrated Finney's commitment to privacy and his significant contributions to the development of privacy-enhancing technologies.

In 2004, Finney created the first reusable proof-of-work system before Bitcoin. In January 2009, Finney was the Bitcoin network's first transaction recipient.

Bitcoin involvement 
Finney wrote on the Cypherpunks Mailing List in 1992,

Finney was one of the first Bitcoin users and on January 12, 2009, he received the first bitcoin transaction from Bitcoin's creator, Satoshi Nakamoto. He lived in the same town as Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto (Temple City, California) for 10 years, adding to speculation that he may have been Bitcoin's creator. Finney denied that he was Satoshi Nakamoto.

In March 2013, Finney posted on a Bitcoin forum, BitcoinTalk, a publication called "Bitcoin and Me (Hal Finney)" where he stated he was essentially paralyzed. He recalled finding out that Bitcoin had gained monetary value in late 2010 and mentioned that despite amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) slowing his ability to code, he still loved programming and the goals it provided. He continued to program until his death; he was working on experimental software called bcflick, which uses Trusted Computing to strengthen Bitcoin wallets.

During the last year of his life, the Finneys received anonymous calls demanding an extortion fee of 1,000 bitcoin. They became victims of swatting – a hoax "where the perpetrator calls up emergency dispatch using a spoofed telephone number and pretends to have committed a heinous crime in the hopes of provoking an armed police response to the victim's home". Extortionists demanded fees of more bitcoins than Finney had left after using most of them to cover medical expenses in 2013.

Personal life
In October 2009, Finney announced in an essay on the blog Less Wrong that he had been diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) in August 2009, and wrote: "I hope to be able to read, browse the net, and even participate in conversations by email and messaging (...) I may even still be able to write code, and my dream is to contribute to open source software projects even from within an immobile body. That will be a life very much worth living." Prior to his illness, Finney had been an active runner. Finney and his wife raised money for ALS research with the Santa Barbara International Marathon.

Death 
Finney died in Phoenix, Arizona, on August 28, 2014, as a result of complications of ALS and was cryopreserved by the Alcor Life Extension Foundation.

References

External links
 
 
 Review: Vernor Vinge’s ‘Fast Times’ (review by Finney in Extropy)
 Hal Finney's profile in Forbes Magazine

People associated with Bitcoin
American transhumanists
California Institute of Technology alumni
Cypherpunks
Deaths from motor neuron disease in the United States
Neurological disease deaths in Arizona
1956 births
2014 deaths
Cryonically preserved people
People from Coalinga, California