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Author Topic: Bitcoin and me (Hal Finney)  (Read 279655 times)
Mymikagab
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December 14, 2017, 04:22:54 AM
 #521

Your probably so much good  halyou change our lives.hal is astonishing the size of my admiration for him because the bitcoin is very much the help of salute you


Respect and so much thankfull
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December 25, 2017, 06:04:44 AM
 #522

He was an early Bitcoin user and received the first bitcoin transaction from Bitcoin's creator Satoshi Nakamoto. Finney lived in the same town for 10 years that Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto lived, 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 that he was essentially paralyzed, but continued to program. 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"
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December 25, 2017, 04:08:01 PM
Last edit: January 26, 2018, 04:21:52 AM by Testing Crypto
 #523

He was an early Bitcoin user and received the first bitcoin transaction from Bitcoin's creator Satoshi Nakamoto. Finney lived in the same town for 10 years that Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto lived, 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 that he was essentially paralyzed, but continued to program. 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"

IT is a cruel world out there, money has to much controls over EVERYTHING && many unbelievable things happen in the world of trade ;(

//RIP HAL7000 *cypher space has open 4 U in a way most could && would never understand

if [[ "Using a real world user name" ]]
then
    print "real" #hard mode
else
    print "anonymous" #easy mode
fi

# cryogenically frozen to visit the future of space && time.

ZwNpPhVYrSrPMS71GLc7TEnbqA9VSZopGn // Gift5YapqsZqSTW8T4S3sCU4sngCkvh4ba // 3Gwc4KzVtuJ9ADnuqzF7XRhSaaE7HkBWpr // 1PAGEHrN62tgUHncGWbbhKe9jhZGXsxFC4
"In a nutshell, the network works like a distributed timestamp server, stamping the first transaction to spend a coin. It takes advantage of the nature of information being easy to spread but hard to stifle." -- Satoshi {SAT OS hi}
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January 08, 2018, 12:34:40 PM
 #524

Rest in Peace.
Great man who did so much allowing us to make it where we are today.

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January 13, 2018, 08:41:09 AM
 #525

What a remarkable person! Most people would have given up with tubes stuck in most of their orifices, but he continued to the end. Hal Finney will leave a positive Legacy on this world, beyond that of many of his peers in this scene. <Some people just leave a bad taste in your mouth>

RIP <<Uncle of Bitcoin>>

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January 13, 2018, 09:04:41 AM
 #526

For those who haven't made the connection the "Finney Attack" commonly referenced on this forum is named after the OP who first theorized this double spend attack vector.
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Double-spending#Finney_attack

Thank you for sharing Hal.  I have sometimes wondered what would have happened if nobody had responded to Satoshi's idea.  Would it have simply died on the vine and vanished into the pages of history?
What a remarkable time machine. Existential thoughts provoking, and informative.
Kakmakr thanks for bumping this, I have never stumble across this thread before.
It has given me chills, at least three times. This Dude must have had strengths!
I hope that he was foreseeing enough, to secure passwords and keys to his dusty wallet, for the family.
Heritage is however much more than money and for us all to benefit from. Thanks for that Mr Hal, wherever you are.

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January 14, 2018, 05:11:33 PM
Last edit: January 14, 2018, 05:26:22 PM by drunkenbitcoin
 #527

Just wanted to add my name to the long list to say, Thank You. Whether you were Satoshi, part of Team Satoshi, or not your involvement helped bitcoin which helped me discover bitcoin. It has changed my life for the better. You will forever be remembered.

Sincerely,
@rt395
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January 26, 2018, 12:47:47 AM
 #528

RIP Hal

insert sMerit here.

Page 1 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=155054.0
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January 26, 2018, 01:25:11 AM
 #529

I thought I'd write about the last four years, an eventful time for Bitcoin and me.

For those who don't know me, I'm Hal Finney. I got my start in crypto working on an early version of PGP, working closely with Phil Zimmermann. When Phil decided to start PGP Corporation, I was one of the first hires. I would work on PGP until my retirement. At the same time, I got involved with the Cypherpunks. I ran the first cryptographically based anonymous remailer, among other activities.

Fast forward to late 2008 and the announcement of Bitcoin. I've noticed that cryptographic graybeards (I was in my mid 50's) tend to get cynical. I was more idealistic; I have always loved crypto, the mystery and the paradox of it.

When Satoshi announced Bitcoin on the cryptography mailing list, he got a skeptical reception at best. Cryptographers have seen too many grand schemes by clueless noobs. They tend to have a knee jerk reaction.

I was more positive. I had long been interested in cryptographic payment schemes. Plus I was lucky enough to meet and extensively correspond with both Wei Dai and Nick Szabo, generally acknowledged to have created ideas that would be realized with Bitcoin. I had made an attempt to create my own proof of work based currency, called RPOW. So I found Bitcoin facinating.

When Satoshi announced the first release of the software, I grabbed it right away. I think I was the first person besides Satoshi to run bitcoin. I mined block 70-something, and I was the recipient of the first bitcoin transaction, when Satoshi sent ten coins to me as a test. I carried on an email conversation with Satoshi over the next few days, mostly me reporting bugs and him fixing them.

Today, Satoshi's true identity has become a mystery. But at the time, I thought I was dealing with a young man of Japanese ancestry who was very smart and sincere. I've had the good fortune to know many brilliant people over the course of my life, so I recognize the signs.

After a few days, bitcoin was running pretty stably, so I left it running. Those were the days when difficulty was 1, and you could find blocks with a CPU, not even a GPU. I mined several blocks over the next days. But I turned it off because it made my computer run hot, and the fan noise bothered me. In retrospect, I wish I had kept it up longer, but on the other hand I was extraordinarily lucky to be there at the beginning. It's one of those glass half full half empty things.

The next I heard of Bitcoin was late 2010, when I was surprised to find that it was not only still going, bitcoins actually had monetary value. I dusted off my old wallet, and was relieved to discover that my bitcoins were still there. As the price climbed up to real money, I transferred the coins into an offline wallet, where hopefully they'll be worth something to my heirs.

Speaking of heirs, I got a surprise in 2009, when I was suddenly diagnosed with a fatal disease. I was in the best shape of my life at the start of that year, I'd lost a lot of weight and taken up distance running. I'd run several half marathons, and I was starting to train for a full marathon. I worked my way up to 20+ mile runs, and I thought I was all set. That's when everything went wrong.

My body began to fail. I slurred my speech, lost strength in my hands, and my legs were slow to recover. In August, 2009, I was given the diagnosis of ALS, also called Lou Gehrig's disease, after the famous baseball player who got it.

ALS is a disease that kills moter neurons, which carry signals from the brain to the muscles. It causes first weakness, then gradually increasing paralysis. It is usually fatal in 2 to 5 years. My symptoms were mild at first and I continued to work, but fatigue and voice problems forced me to retire in early 2011. Since then the disease has continued its inexorable progression.

Today, I am essentially paralyzed. I am fed through a tube, and my breathing is assisted through another tube. I operate the computer using a commercial eyetracker system. It also has a speech synthesizer, so this is my voice now. I spend all day in my power wheelchair. I worked up an interface using an arduino so that I can adjust my wheelchair's position using my eyes.

It has been an adjustment, but my life is not too bad. I can still read, listen to music, and watch TV and movies. I recently discovered that I can even write code. It's very slow, probably 50 times slower than I was before. But I still love programming and it gives me goals. Currently I'm working on something Mike Hearn suggested, using the security features of modern processors, designed to support "Trusted Computing", to harden Bitcoin wallets. It's almost ready to release. I just have to do the documentation.

And of course the price gyrations of bitcoins are entertaining to me. I have skin in the game. But I came by my bitcoins through luck, with little credit to me. I lived through the crash of 2011. So I've seen it before. Easy come, easy go.

That's my story. I'm pretty lucky overall. Even with the ALS, my life is very satisfying. But my life expectancy is limited. Those discussions about inheriting your bitcoins are of more than academic interest. My bitcoins are stored in our safe deposit box, and my son and daughter are tech savvy. I think they're safe enough. I'm comfortable with my legacy.
[edited slightly]
Yes it is a really great story. You are dedicated to your work. it has really made me very emotional. I really admire those who work hard for their work.
They have a lot of patience and passion for work as well as their life. I thank you for your contribution to Bitcoin. Without you and your colleagues, I did not know about Bitcoin. once again thank you very much.

MINTER - WE MINT COINS AND CREATE THE INTERNET OF MONEY
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RedWARxX
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January 28, 2018, 01:20:46 AM
 #530

RIP Cry and thanks a lot for your work


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"
I hope the family was able to handle those hoax.

Humanity...
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January 28, 2018, 05:31:22 PM
 #531

Nice reading this on this great "time machine."

True. I'm glad I've stumbled in this revived thread. A forum can be a true time machine. Nice story, even though without a happy ending. I had heard of Hal's story, but it's different to read it through his words. RIP.

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January 28, 2018, 06:05:58 PM
 #532

Very inspirational. People who are in to crypto recently don't understand the reception Satoshi would have got during the initial days. This post puts a lot of things in to perspective.

Hal became the first person to believe in a trillion $$$ industry..
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January 30, 2018, 04:53:21 AM
 #533

An interesting post I have found while browsing the original forum here > https://sourceforge.net/p/bitcoin/mailman/bitcoin-list/?page=5

Hal Finney wrote (back in 2009):

Congratulations to Satoshi on this first alpha release.  I am looking
forward to trying it out.

> Total circulation will be 21,000,000 coins.  It'll be distributed
> to network nodes when they make blocks, with the amount cut in half
> every 4 years.
>
> first 4 years: 10,500,000 coins
> next 4 years: 5,250,000 coins
> next 4 years: 2,625,000 coins
> next 4 years: 1,312,500 coins
> etc...

It's interesting that the system can be configured to only allow a
certain maximum number of coins ever to be generated. I guess the
idea is that the amount of work needed to generate a new coin will
become more difficult as time goes on.

One immediate problem with any new currency is how to value it. Even
ignoring the practical problem that virtually no one will accept it
at first, there is still a difficulty in coming up with a reasonable
argument in favor of a particular non-zero value for the coins.

As an amusing thought experiment, imagine that Bitcoin is successful and
becomes the dominant payment system in use throughout the world.  Then the
total value of the currency should be equal to the total value of all
the wealth in the world. Current estimates of total worldwide household
wealth that I have found range from $100 trillion to $300 trillion. With
20 million coins, that gives each coin a value of about $10 million.

So the possibility of generating coins today with a few cents of compute
time may be quite a good bet, with a payoff of something like 100 million
to 1! Even if the odds of Bitcoin succeeding to this degree are slim,
are they really 100 million to one against? Something to think about...

Hal
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January 30, 2018, 01:20:44 PM
 #534

What a remarkable human being, RIP
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February 07, 2018, 12:11:34 AM
 #535

Nice to read some history!
RIP.
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February 07, 2018, 12:32:02 AM
 #536

Finney thing I really like the philosophy of life journey and your career. I thank you so much for sharing your knowledge and experience. Cool
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February 09, 2018, 09:29:09 AM
 #537

I have known this forum for several years, but I have only recently been actively attending it. It is really interesting to be able to read such pioneering experiences.
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February 09, 2018, 10:04:39 AM
 #538

Wow, incredible story. Thanks for sharing.
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February 09, 2018, 10:08:57 AM
 #539

For me, as a beginner, this message was very useful
Thanks for the good advice
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February 09, 2018, 10:37:30 AM
 #540

I came a cross this quite old thread, it's like going back through a time machine. I was still in the early years of my collage back then, busy with programming and stuffs, not related with BTC at all  Cheesy
A very inspiring story, Sir!
I will tell my kids later regarding your and others contribution to this piece of technology that will changing the world we living today for good.
Should we have some kind of wall of fame later on somewhere? I think it should be in short of historic archive, like the first born of some early programming language (Cobol, ada, C, C++, etc.)
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