Hal Finney

IRL Name:

Hal Finney

Biography:

Hal Finney is a renowned cryptographer, noted cryptographic activist, former developer for PGP Corporation, and was the second developer hired after Phil Zimmermann. In his early career, he was credited as lead developer on several console games. He also was an early bitcoin user and received the first bitcoin transaction from bitcoin's creator Satoshi Nakamoto. He died in Phoenix August 28, 2014 and was cryopreserved by the Alcor Life Extension Foundation.

Facts

He was one of the engineers who helped turn Satoshi Nakamoto's (Craig Wright) ideas into the Bitcoin protocol.

During the early 1990s, in addition to being a regular poster on the cypherpunks listserv, Finney ran two anonymous remailers.

Further cryptographic activism included running a (successful) contest to break the export-grade encryption Netscape used.

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