TG:
Twitter/x:
ca:
Hal Finney's twitter: https://twitter.com/halfin
Hal Finney's Running Bitcoin charity 2024: https://twitter.com/halfin/status/1742589362997702666
Finney was a cypherpunk and said:
It seemed so obvious to me: "Here we are faced with the problems of loss of privacy, creeping computerization, massive databases, more centralization - and [David] Chaum offers a completely different direction to go in, one which puts power into the hands of individuals rather than governments and corporations. The computer can be used as a tool to liberate and protect people, rather than to control them."
He was one of the first Bitcoin users and on January 12, 2009, he received the first bitcoin transaction from Bitcoin's creator Satoshi Nakamoto.
In March 2013, Finney posted on a Bitcoin forum, BitcoinTalk, a publication called "Bitcoin and Me (Hal Finney)" where he states he was essentially paralyzed. He recalls finding out that Bitcoin had gained monetary value in late 2010 and mentions that despite amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) disease was causing his ability to code to be slower, he still loved programming and that it gave him goals. 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.
