Our Hero Hal: A Brief History of Hal Finney and his Fight with ALS

At Bitcoin Magazine, one of our heroes is Hal Finney.

Hal Finney was one of the first people to respond when Satoshi Nakamoto submitted the Bitcoin white paper to the Cryptography mailing list, he was the first contributor to Bitcoin development besides Satoshi, he was one of the first Bitcoin miners on the network, and he was the recipient of the first ever Bitcoin transaction — which he received from Satoshi.

But Hal was a hero even before Bitcoin. Back in the 1990s, he was a major contributor to the popular encryption program PGP. As a Cypherpunk, Hal also developed and ran the first ever remailer: a sort of precursor to Tor that anonymously forwarded emails to help people communicate privately. And having promoted the idea of digital cash within the techo-utopian Extropian circles early on, Hal Finney had in 2004 launched a digital cash project of his own, called Reusable Proof of Work.

In the summer of 2009, just months after he’d helped Satoshi bootstrap Bitcoin, Hal Finney was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS)

ALS is a progressive, fatal neuromuscular disease that slowly kills the motor neurons, which carry signals from the brain to the muscles. In other words, it robs the body of its ability to walk, speak, swallow or even breathe. ALS can strike anyone, and presently there is no known cause or cure.

Hal Finney ultimately passed away on August 28th 2014.

In honor of our hero Hal, Bitcoin Magazine is now raising money for the ALS Association. To contribute to our fundraiser or to learn more about Hal, visit bitcoinmagazine.com/our-hero-hal.