Original title: On this day 11 years ago, the person who might be Satoshi Nakamoto was cryogenically frozen.
On August 28, 2014, a man named Hal Finney passed away.
Subsequently, his body was sent to a cryonics facility in Arizona, USA. There, the body was preserved in liquid nitrogen, waiting for the day when future medicine could "revive" the deceased.
It has been exactly 11 years, but most people seem to have never heard of Hal Finney.
In the world of cryptocurrency, he may be one of the most important figures in the history of Bitcoin:
Finney is the first user of the entire Bitcoin network, aside from the founder Satoshi Nakamoto.
On January 3, 2009, a mysterious figure using the pseudonym "Satoshi Nakamoto" created Bitcoin. Nine days later, Nakamoto sent 10 bitcoins to Finney, marking the first transaction in Bitcoin's history. At that time, there were only two people on the entire network: Nakamoto and Finney.
Today, the market value of Bitcoin exceeds one trillion dollars. But in the beginning, this financial system that would change the world was just a transfer experiment between two people.
In 2009, 53-year-old Finney saw the Bitcoin white paper released by Satoshi Nakamoto and immediately realized its revolutionary potential.
He downloaded and ran the Bitcoin software, helping Satoshi Nakamoto fix vulnerabilities in the early code. Finney played a crucial role in Bitcoin's survival and development to this day.
But it was also in the same year that Bitcoin was born that Finney was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).
This disease causes a gradual loss of muscle control, ultimately leading to full-body paralysis. He passed away 5 years later. He chose cryonics, hoping that future medicine could bring him back to life.
One of the ways to pay for frozen fees is with Bitcoin.
On this day, 11 years after Finey's passing on the 11th anniversary, people seem to have not truly forgotten this Bitcoin pioneer.
Someone posted an image of a Japanese kana chart on social media, using Satoshi Nakamoto's name as a starting point, and based on subtle coincidences in the shapes of Eastern and Western characters, believed that these kana pointed to the shape and arrangement of Hal Finney's English name.
This word game is easily seen as overinterpretation.
But the interesting thing is that Finney was actually a cryptographer who spent his life researching how to hide and encode information.
For him, embedding his real name into the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto seems like an easily achievable intellectual game, as well as a subtle expression of a kind of cypherpunk.
However, Finney denied during his lifetime that he was Satoshi Nakamoto.
In 2013, he wrote on a forum, "I am not Satoshi Nakamoto," despite being almost completely paralyzed. He also publicly shared his email correspondence with Satoshi Nakamoto, showcasing two different personalities and writing styles.
However, it was after 2014 that Satoshi Nakamoto gradually stopped posting on the forum, and Finney was also frozen in liquid nitrogen a year later.
The Neighbor of Fake Satoshi Nakamoto
The discussion about "Finney might be Satoshi Nakamoto" also stems from some other noteworthy coincidences.
In March 2014, Newsweek published a report claiming to have found Satoshi Nakamoto himself. The journalist tracked down a Japanese-American man living in Temple City, California, whose real name is Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto. After the article was published, media from around the world flocked to this quiet little town.
But this was later proved to be a mistake. Dorian is an unemployed engineer who knows nothing about Bitcoin. Satoshi Nakamoto himself later returned to speak out after seeing the reports, having been absent from the Bitcoin forum for a long time:
"I am not Dorian Nakamoto."
Interestingly, Hal Finney also lived in Temple City. He lived here for 10 years, just a few blocks away from Dorian's house, where the media was chasing for questions.
This geographical coincidence has also sparked speculation: Could Finney have borrowed the name of his neighbor as a pseudonym?
The Japanese name Satoshi Nakamoto does indeed fit the sense of mystery that Nakamoto wanted to create. Of course, this could also be purely coincidental. However, Finney and Nakamoto do have some overlap on the timeline.
Not counting the sudden reply to himself in 14 years that he is not Dorian, Satoshi Nakamoto's last public appearance on the forum was in April 2011. He wrote in an email:
"I have moved on to other things." After that, he completely disappeared and never touched the millions of bitcoins in his wallet again.
Finney was diagnosed with ALS in August 2009. The progression of the disease is gradual, starting with the fingers becoming stiff, then the arms, followed by the legs, and finally the entire body.
By the end of 2010, Finney's health had noticeably deteriorated. Satoshi Nakamoto's withdrawal overlapped with Finney's worsening condition in time; however, it is unknown whether there is a connection.
What is even more thought-provoking is that Finney created a system called RPOW in 2004. The core problem this system aimed to solve is the key issue that Bitcoin would later address:
How to prevent double spending of digital currency without a central authority.
The Past of the Cryptography OG
OG is the abbreviation for original gangster, which roughly translates to "old hand" or veteran.
In the cryptocurrency industry, OG is often used to refer to those who entered the space early, have achieved significant results, and made substantial contributions. However, true OGs never refer to themselves as OG.
If Bitcoin were to be created in 2008, there would be no more than a few hundred people in the world capable of doing so. Hal Finney might just be one of them, a true OG of cryptography.
This is not an exaggeration. The creation of Bitcoin requires a rare combination:
Top-notch cryptographic skills, a deep understanding of distributed systems, familiarity with the history of digital currencies, and a steadfast belief in creating currencies that are not controlled by governments.
The story of Finney began in the early 1990s. At that time, the U.S. government classified strong encryption technology as munitions and prohibited its export. A group of hackers who called themselves "cypherpunks" believed that privacy is a fundamental human right and decided to fight against regulation with code.
Against this backdrop, Phil Zimmermann created PGP (Pretty Good Privacy), software that allows ordinary people to use military-grade encryption. In 1991, Zimmermann released the source code of PGP for free on the internet, causing a huge uproar.
Finney was the second programmer recruited by Zimmermann. At that time, PGP was still a rough prototype, and Finney's task was to rewrite the core encryption algorithms to make them faster and more secure.
Finney spent months rewriting the entire encryption engine, resulting in a qualitative improvement in the speed of PGP 2.0.
This experience made Finney a central figure in the cypherpunk movement.
At that time, the prevailing view among the cypherpunks was that cryptography could reshape the social power structure and return privacy rights to individuals. They exchanged ideas through a mailing list, discussing topics ranging from anonymous communication to digital cash.
Finney not only participates in discussions but also operates two anonymous email forwarders that allow people to send messages while hiding their identities. In this community, creating a government-independent digital currency is a recurring dream.
In 2004, Finney proposed his own solution: RPOW (Reusable Proof of Work).
His plan is as follows: Users generate a proof of work by consuming computing power and send it to the RPOW server. After verification, the server does not simply mark it as "used" but generates a new, equivalent RPOW token to return to the user. The user can transfer this token to others, and the recipient can then exchange it for new tokens at the server.
Does this have the flavor of Bitcoin's proof of work?
However, RPOW ultimately did not gain widespread adoption, but it proved one thing: digital scarcity can be created. You can use computing power to produce digital tokens that cannot be forged and can circulate.
Four years later, on October 31, 2008, a person using the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto published the Bitcoin whitepaper in the same cypherpunk mailing list. Finney immediately realized what this meant.
"Bitcoin seems like a very promising idea," he replied to Satoshi Nakamoto's post.
Bitcoin solves the last problem that RPOW has not addressed: complete decentralization. No servers are required, and there is no need to trust anyone; the entire network jointly maintains a ledger.
On January 3, 2009, the Bitcoin genesis block was born. Finney downloaded the software and became the first person to run a full node apart from Satoshi Nakamoto.
In the following days, there were actually only the two of them in the entire Bitcoin network. Finney later recalled: "I exchanged a few emails with Satoshi Nakamoto, mainly me reporting bugs and him fixing them."
On January 12, Satoshi Nakamoto sent 10 bitcoins to Finney, which is the first transaction in Bitcoin history.
Unfortunately, just a few months after helping Bitcoin get started, Finney was diagnosed with ALS. As his condition progressed, his activity gradually decreased. Meanwhile, Satoshi Nakamoto also gradually faded out after 2010, eventually disappearing completely in 2011.
Two trajectories, two characters, intersecting at the crucial moment of Bitcoin's birth, and then each heading towards different endings. One disappears into the depths of the network, while the other ultimately has their body frozen in liquid nitrogen. The true relationship between them may forever remain a mystery.
The Shining Moment of Crypto Stars
The technological lineage from RPOW to Bitcoin's POW is clearly visible. Speculating whether Finney is Satoshi Nakamoto is not very meaningful; it is more like a topic of conversation during tea or meals.
But perhaps what is more worthy of being remembered is that more than a decade ago, Satoshi Nakamoto and Finney, two early forum users, communicated and supported each other, repeatedly testing a little-known cryptopunk niche experiment until it went live.
No witnesses, no applause, just two computers quietly operating in some corner of the internet.
They did not anticipate that this seemingly geeky "peer-to-peer electronic cash system" would open up an era belonging to cryptocurrency over a decade later, creating a trillion-dollar market; nor did they expect that central banks around the world would study it seriously, Wall Street would embrace it, and that it would be a name associated with financial reform.
More importantly, the Bitcoin created by these pioneers of cryptography continuously corrects, changes, and influences the perceptions and investment choices of more people.
Finney once said something during a discussion about digital cash that still resonates today:
"Computer technology can be used to liberate and protect people, rather than to control them."
This passage was written in 1992, 17 years before Bitcoin. But it accurately predicted the dilemmas we face today, as well as the answers Bitcoin attempts to provide.
As for Satoshi Nakamoto, the person whose identity remains a mystery to this day, he was even more carefree, leaving behind a famous quote that future generations would remember and admire:
"If you don't believe me, I'm sorry, but I don't have time to convince you."
This sentence later became a spiritual totem of the crypto community. It represents an attitude: truth does not need to be marketed; time will prove everything.
On August 28, 2014, Hal Finney passed away. His last programming project was software to enhance the security of Bitcoin wallets. Even though he was completely paralyzed and could only operate a computer through an eye-tracking device, he continued to contribute code to the system he helped bring into existence.
Satoshi Nakamoto has not appeared since 2011. His 1 million bitcoins remain untouched to this day, serving as a digital monument that reminds people of the origin of this system. Some say this is the ultimate "proof of burn"; the founder demonstrates that he did not create Bitcoin for personal gain by never using his wealth.
If one day in the future, medicine can really wake Finney up, what will he think of today's cryptocurrency world? Will he feel proud of Bitcoin's success, or will he be disappointed with certain developments?
Everything has no answer.
But whether Hal Finney is Satoshi Nakamoto or not, he is an indispensable figure in the history of Bitcoin. Without his participation, support, and contributions, Bitcoin may never have turned from an idea into reality.
The moment when the stars shone brightly has passed, but the light they left behind continues to illuminate the road ahead.
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Finding Satoshi Nakamoto: The body of the first recipient of Bitcoin has been frozen for 11 years.
Author: David, Deep Tide TechFlow
Original title: On this day 11 years ago, the person who might be Satoshi Nakamoto was cryogenically frozen.
On August 28, 2014, a man named Hal Finney passed away.
Subsequently, his body was sent to a cryonics facility in Arizona, USA. There, the body was preserved in liquid nitrogen, waiting for the day when future medicine could "revive" the deceased.
It has been exactly 11 years, but most people seem to have never heard of Hal Finney.
In the world of cryptocurrency, he may be one of the most important figures in the history of Bitcoin:
Finney is the first user of the entire Bitcoin network, aside from the founder Satoshi Nakamoto.
On January 3, 2009, a mysterious figure using the pseudonym "Satoshi Nakamoto" created Bitcoin. Nine days later, Nakamoto sent 10 bitcoins to Finney, marking the first transaction in Bitcoin's history. At that time, there were only two people on the entire network: Nakamoto and Finney.
Today, the market value of Bitcoin exceeds one trillion dollars. But in the beginning, this financial system that would change the world was just a transfer experiment between two people.
In 2009, 53-year-old Finney saw the Bitcoin white paper released by Satoshi Nakamoto and immediately realized its revolutionary potential.
He downloaded and ran the Bitcoin software, helping Satoshi Nakamoto fix vulnerabilities in the early code. Finney played a crucial role in Bitcoin's survival and development to this day.
But it was also in the same year that Bitcoin was born that Finney was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).
This disease causes a gradual loss of muscle control, ultimately leading to full-body paralysis. He passed away 5 years later. He chose cryonics, hoping that future medicine could bring him back to life.
One of the ways to pay for frozen fees is with Bitcoin.
On this day, 11 years after Finey's passing on the 11th anniversary, people seem to have not truly forgotten this Bitcoin pioneer.
Someone posted an image of a Japanese kana chart on social media, using Satoshi Nakamoto's name as a starting point, and based on subtle coincidences in the shapes of Eastern and Western characters, believed that these kana pointed to the shape and arrangement of Hal Finney's English name.
This word game is easily seen as overinterpretation.
But the interesting thing is that Finney was actually a cryptographer who spent his life researching how to hide and encode information.
For him, embedding his real name into the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto seems like an easily achievable intellectual game, as well as a subtle expression of a kind of cypherpunk.
However, Finney denied during his lifetime that he was Satoshi Nakamoto.
In 2013, he wrote on a forum, "I am not Satoshi Nakamoto," despite being almost completely paralyzed. He also publicly shared his email correspondence with Satoshi Nakamoto, showcasing two different personalities and writing styles.
However, it was after 2014 that Satoshi Nakamoto gradually stopped posting on the forum, and Finney was also frozen in liquid nitrogen a year later.
The Neighbor of Fake Satoshi Nakamoto
The discussion about "Finney might be Satoshi Nakamoto" also stems from some other noteworthy coincidences.
In March 2014, Newsweek published a report claiming to have found Satoshi Nakamoto himself. The journalist tracked down a Japanese-American man living in Temple City, California, whose real name is Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto. After the article was published, media from around the world flocked to this quiet little town.
But this was later proved to be a mistake. Dorian is an unemployed engineer who knows nothing about Bitcoin. Satoshi Nakamoto himself later returned to speak out after seeing the reports, having been absent from the Bitcoin forum for a long time:
"I am not Dorian Nakamoto."
Interestingly, Hal Finney also lived in Temple City. He lived here for 10 years, just a few blocks away from Dorian's house, where the media was chasing for questions.
This geographical coincidence has also sparked speculation: Could Finney have borrowed the name of his neighbor as a pseudonym?
The Japanese name Satoshi Nakamoto does indeed fit the sense of mystery that Nakamoto wanted to create. Of course, this could also be purely coincidental. However, Finney and Nakamoto do have some overlap on the timeline.
Not counting the sudden reply to himself in 14 years that he is not Dorian, Satoshi Nakamoto's last public appearance on the forum was in April 2011. He wrote in an email:
"I have moved on to other things." After that, he completely disappeared and never touched the millions of bitcoins in his wallet again.
Finney was diagnosed with ALS in August 2009. The progression of the disease is gradual, starting with the fingers becoming stiff, then the arms, followed by the legs, and finally the entire body.
By the end of 2010, Finney's health had noticeably deteriorated. Satoshi Nakamoto's withdrawal overlapped with Finney's worsening condition in time; however, it is unknown whether there is a connection.
What is even more thought-provoking is that Finney created a system called RPOW in 2004. The core problem this system aimed to solve is the key issue that Bitcoin would later address:
How to prevent double spending of digital currency without a central authority.
The Past of the Cryptography OG
OG is the abbreviation for original gangster, which roughly translates to "old hand" or veteran.
In the cryptocurrency industry, OG is often used to refer to those who entered the space early, have achieved significant results, and made substantial contributions. However, true OGs never refer to themselves as OG.
If Bitcoin were to be created in 2008, there would be no more than a few hundred people in the world capable of doing so. Hal Finney might just be one of them, a true OG of cryptography.
This is not an exaggeration. The creation of Bitcoin requires a rare combination:
Top-notch cryptographic skills, a deep understanding of distributed systems, familiarity with the history of digital currencies, and a steadfast belief in creating currencies that are not controlled by governments.
The story of Finney began in the early 1990s. At that time, the U.S. government classified strong encryption technology as munitions and prohibited its export. A group of hackers who called themselves "cypherpunks" believed that privacy is a fundamental human right and decided to fight against regulation with code.
Against this backdrop, Phil Zimmermann created PGP (Pretty Good Privacy), software that allows ordinary people to use military-grade encryption. In 1991, Zimmermann released the source code of PGP for free on the internet, causing a huge uproar.
Finney was the second programmer recruited by Zimmermann. At that time, PGP was still a rough prototype, and Finney's task was to rewrite the core encryption algorithms to make them faster and more secure.
Finney spent months rewriting the entire encryption engine, resulting in a qualitative improvement in the speed of PGP 2.0.
This experience made Finney a central figure in the cypherpunk movement.
At that time, the prevailing view among the cypherpunks was that cryptography could reshape the social power structure and return privacy rights to individuals. They exchanged ideas through a mailing list, discussing topics ranging from anonymous communication to digital cash.
Finney not only participates in discussions but also operates two anonymous email forwarders that allow people to send messages while hiding their identities. In this community, creating a government-independent digital currency is a recurring dream.
In 2004, Finney proposed his own solution: RPOW (Reusable Proof of Work).
His plan is as follows: Users generate a proof of work by consuming computing power and send it to the RPOW server. After verification, the server does not simply mark it as "used" but generates a new, equivalent RPOW token to return to the user. The user can transfer this token to others, and the recipient can then exchange it for new tokens at the server.
Does this have the flavor of Bitcoin's proof of work?
However, RPOW ultimately did not gain widespread adoption, but it proved one thing: digital scarcity can be created. You can use computing power to produce digital tokens that cannot be forged and can circulate.
Four years later, on October 31, 2008, a person using the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto published the Bitcoin whitepaper in the same cypherpunk mailing list. Finney immediately realized what this meant.
"Bitcoin seems like a very promising idea," he replied to Satoshi Nakamoto's post.
Bitcoin solves the last problem that RPOW has not addressed: complete decentralization. No servers are required, and there is no need to trust anyone; the entire network jointly maintains a ledger.
On January 3, 2009, the Bitcoin genesis block was born. Finney downloaded the software and became the first person to run a full node apart from Satoshi Nakamoto.
In the following days, there were actually only the two of them in the entire Bitcoin network. Finney later recalled: "I exchanged a few emails with Satoshi Nakamoto, mainly me reporting bugs and him fixing them."
On January 12, Satoshi Nakamoto sent 10 bitcoins to Finney, which is the first transaction in Bitcoin history.
Unfortunately, just a few months after helping Bitcoin get started, Finney was diagnosed with ALS. As his condition progressed, his activity gradually decreased. Meanwhile, Satoshi Nakamoto also gradually faded out after 2010, eventually disappearing completely in 2011.
Two trajectories, two characters, intersecting at the crucial moment of Bitcoin's birth, and then each heading towards different endings. One disappears into the depths of the network, while the other ultimately has their body frozen in liquid nitrogen. The true relationship between them may forever remain a mystery.
The Shining Moment of Crypto Stars
The technological lineage from RPOW to Bitcoin's POW is clearly visible. Speculating whether Finney is Satoshi Nakamoto is not very meaningful; it is more like a topic of conversation during tea or meals.
But perhaps what is more worthy of being remembered is that more than a decade ago, Satoshi Nakamoto and Finney, two early forum users, communicated and supported each other, repeatedly testing a little-known cryptopunk niche experiment until it went live.
No witnesses, no applause, just two computers quietly operating in some corner of the internet.
They did not anticipate that this seemingly geeky "peer-to-peer electronic cash system" would open up an era belonging to cryptocurrency over a decade later, creating a trillion-dollar market; nor did they expect that central banks around the world would study it seriously, Wall Street would embrace it, and that it would be a name associated with financial reform.
More importantly, the Bitcoin created by these pioneers of cryptography continuously corrects, changes, and influences the perceptions and investment choices of more people.
Finney once said something during a discussion about digital cash that still resonates today:
"Computer technology can be used to liberate and protect people, rather than to control them."
This passage was written in 1992, 17 years before Bitcoin. But it accurately predicted the dilemmas we face today, as well as the answers Bitcoin attempts to provide.
As for Satoshi Nakamoto, the person whose identity remains a mystery to this day, he was even more carefree, leaving behind a famous quote that future generations would remember and admire:
"If you don't believe me, I'm sorry, but I don't have time to convince you."
This sentence later became a spiritual totem of the crypto community. It represents an attitude: truth does not need to be marketed; time will prove everything.
On August 28, 2014, Hal Finney passed away. His last programming project was software to enhance the security of Bitcoin wallets. Even though he was completely paralyzed and could only operate a computer through an eye-tracking device, he continued to contribute code to the system he helped bring into existence.
Satoshi Nakamoto has not appeared since 2011. His 1 million bitcoins remain untouched to this day, serving as a digital monument that reminds people of the origin of this system. Some say this is the ultimate "proof of burn"; the founder demonstrates that he did not create Bitcoin for personal gain by never using his wealth.
If one day in the future, medicine can really wake Finney up, what will he think of today's cryptocurrency world? Will he feel proud of Bitcoin's success, or will he be disappointed with certain developments?
Everything has no answer.
But whether Hal Finney is Satoshi Nakamoto or not, he is an indispensable figure in the history of Bitcoin. Without his participation, support, and contributions, Bitcoin may never have turned from an idea into reality.
The moment when the stars shone brightly has passed, but the light they left behind continues to illuminate the road ahead.