Preface

"Running Bitcoin," the tweet read. Simple and plain, just a few words, published on January 11, 2009. Behind this brief message was Hal Finney, who became the recipient of the first Bitcoin transaction in history: just a day later, Satoshi Nakamoto directly sent him 10 BTC. Although debates about Satoshi's identity are fierce, one fact is undeniable: without Hal Finney, Bitcoin might have remained just an obscure white paper, rather than the financial revolution we know today.

Although he passed away in 2014 from Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), his legacy continues to shape the evolution of cryptocurrency. From his early privacy software work to his final contributions completed through eye-tracking technology while physically paralyzed, Finney's life seems like a blueprint of cyberpunk values embedded in Bitcoin's DNA.

From Colinga to Crypto Punk

Born on May 4, 1956, in Colinga, California, Harold Thomas Finney II showed early aptitude for mathematics and computing. After obtaining an engineering degree from Caltech in 1979, he began his career in the video game industry. At Mattel Electronics, Finney developed several famous console games, including "Armor Attack" and "Space Attack". Finney's career trajectory and the development of digital currency itself are inseparable from the context of the Cypherpunk movement that emerged in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Cypherpunks were a loose collective of privacy advocates, cryptographers, and libertarian tech experts who believed powerful cryptography could protect civil liberties from government intrusion and reshape society. The movement's foundational text, Timothy May's "Crypto Anarchist Manifesto," proclaimed that cryptographic technology would fundamentally alter the nature of government regulation and taxation. Finney found his intellectual home among these digital revolutionaries. The Cypherpunk mailing list established in 1992 became a crucial platform for discussing revolutionary ideas about privacy, anonymity, and freedom in the digital age.

By the early 1990s, Finney joined PGP Inc., collaborating with cryptography pioneer Phil Zimmermann to develop "Pretty Good Privacy" (PGP), an encryption software designed to protect email communication from surveillance. This was not just technical work but political activism, as the US government classified strong encryption as munitions, restricting its export like weapons. Finney operated two of the earliest cryptography-based anonymous remailer systems, allowing people to send emails without revealing their identity. This was radical technology in the early 1990s, embodying the Cypherpunk motto: "Cypherpunks write code."

Digital Cash Experiments

Finney's focus on privacy naturally led him to digital currency. For Cypherpunks, this connection was obvious: in an increasingly monitored world, financial privacy represented one of the last frontiers of personal freedom. This interest was not unique. Cypherpunks like David Chaum, Adam Back, Wei Dai, and Nick Szabo had proposed various digital cash systems in the 1990s. Finney carefully studied their work and engaged in extensive communication with Wei Dai and Szabo.

In 2004, Finney created his own digital currency system called Reusable Proof of Work (RPOW). Based on Adam Back's Hashcash concept, RPOW aimed to solve the "double-spending problem" through a unique method: tokens that could only be used once, preventing the same digital currency from being used multiple times. The system created RPOW tokens by allowing clients to provide proof-of-work strings of a given difficulty (signed by their private key). Tokens would then be registered on the server to that signature key. Users could transfer tokens by signing transfer orders to another public key, with the server updating registrations accordingly.

To address security issues, RPOW used an IBM 4758 secure cryptographic coprocessor, making the server more trustworthy than traditional systems. Although RPOW was never widely adopted, it represented a crucial step toward Bitcoin, demonstrating Finney's profound understanding of creating digital scarcity. When a mysterious figure named Satoshi Nakamoto published a white paper titled "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System" to the cryptography mailing list in October 2008, most readers dismissed it. Cryptographers had seen too many grandiose plans from "naive newcomers".

But Hal Finney saw something different.

Bitcoin's First User

"I think I was the first person to run Bitcoin besides Satoshi," Finney later recalled. "I mined around the 70th block and was the recipient of the first Bitcoin transaction when Satoshi sent me ten bitcoins as a test." This transaction in January 2009 - Satoshi sending 10 BTC to Finney - has become legendary in cryptocurrency lore, marking Bitcoin's transformation from theory to an operational system.

In response to the Bitcoin white paper, Finney wrote:

"Bitcoin seems like a very promising idea. I also think a form of unforgeable token, if its production rate is predictable and not influenced by corrupt parties, could have potential value." In the following days, Finney communicated with Satoshi via email, reporting bugs and suggesting fixes. Unlike many cryptographers, he recognized Bitcoin's potential early on.

His enthusiasm was not blind optimism. In a now-famous post from 2009, he wrote: "Thinking about how to reduce CO2 emissions from widespread Bitcoin implementation." This showed he was already considering cryptocurrency mining's environmental impact. Based on his rough calculations, each Bitcoin might be worth $10 million. At the time, Bitcoin was worth just a few cents, making this prediction seem far-fetched. Today, with Bitcoin hovering around $100,000, this prediction seems increasingly prescient.

A Tragic Diagnosis and Enduring Legacy

2009 was both a triumph and tragedy for Finney. While exploring Bitcoin's potential, he received a devastating diagnosis: Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), the same disease that afflicted Stephen Hawking. ALS causes motor neuron degeneration, ultimately rendering patients unable to walk, speak, or breathe independently. Typically, patients have two to five years from diagnosis to death.

However, even in his final years as his body gradually deteriorated, Finney's mind remained sharp and his spirit unbroken. He continued contributing to Bitcoin's development and learned to program using eye-tracking software while paralyzed. By his own estimate, his programming speed was about 50 times slower than before his illness.