The Breakdown - Hal Finney’s ‘Bitcoin and Me’

Starting point is 00:00:04 Welcome back to The Breakdown with me, NLW. It's a daily podcast on macro, Bitcoin, and the big picture power shifts remaking our world. The breakdown is sponsored by nexo.io, Casper, and NEM, and produced and distributed by CoinDesk. What's going on, guys? It is Sunday, March 31st, and that means it's time for long reads Sunday. The origin story of Bitcoin is legendary at this point. So many of us have imagined this moment where Satoshi presses send on that email, letting the cypherpunks mailing list know about this new invention of his, then watching that thing grow and grow and grow into something that is bigger than him, bigger than the cypherpunks,

Starting point is 00:00:51 bigger than anything anyone could have imagined. In truth, however, when he pressed send on that first email, he was received with quite a bit of skepticism. More skepticism, I think, than our imagination normally happened. it. Here's how Hal Finney put it in 2013. 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. Indeed, the exception to that was, in fact, Hal Finney. Howe was the second developer hired for Phil Zimmerman's PGP Corporation,

Starting point is 00:01:27 which was one of the most important companies in the early history of encryption, PGP, of course, standing for pretty good privacy. began corresponding with Satoshi and in fact became the first person ever to receive a Bitcoin transaction. On January 10th, 2009, he tweeted the famous two-word tweet, running Bitcoin. The excellent documenting Bitcoin account on Friday shared a post of Howls from March 19, 2013, eight years ago, exactly. The post is called Bitcoin and Me, and in honor of the anniversary, I thought it would be great to read it here. I thought I'd write about the last four years, an eventful time for Bitcoin and

Starting point is 00:02:04 me. For those who don't know me, I'm Hal Finney. I got my starting crypto working on an early version of PGP, working closely with Phil Zimmerman. 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 in the announcement of Bitcoin. I've noticed that cryptographic graybeards, I was in my mid-50s, tend to get cynical. I was more idealistic. I've always loved Crypto the mystery and the paradox of it. When Satoshi announced Bitcoin on the cryptography mailing list, he got a skeptical reaction at best. Cryptographers have seen too many grand schemes by clueless

Starting point is 00:02:44 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 Zabo, 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 R-POW, so I found Bitcoin fascinating. 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 10 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.

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Starting point is 00:05:06 his 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 recognized the signs. After a few days, Bitcoin was running pretty stably, so I left it running. Those were the days when difficulty was one, 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 not only was it

Starting point is 00:05:39 still going, Bitcoin's 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 errors, 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.

Starting point is 00:06:05 I worked my way up to 20-plus 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 motor neurons, which carry signals from the brain to the muscles. It causes first weakness, then gradually increasing paralysis.

Starting point is 00:06:30 It is usually fatal in two to five 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. Operate the computer using a commercial eye-tracker 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. Recently discovered that I can even write code. It's very slow, probably 50 times slower than I was before.

Starting point is 00:07:10 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, 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 more than an academic interest. My bitcoins are stored in our safe deposit box and my son and daughter

Starting point is 00:07:47 are tech savvy. I think they're safe enough. I'm comfortable with my legacy. Hal passed away on August 28, 2014. There has been much speculation about how actually being Satoshi, something that he strenuously denied. I don't think it actually matters. What I do think matters is the living history, the mythology of it. Bitcoin has attempted to do something so massive to totally reframe and reorganize a century of how finance had been organized, that it requires not just technology and financial incentives, but an actual mythology that makes people want to feel connected to it. Satoshi or not, Hal has an integral place in that mythology. Thanks for everything you did, Hal. And until tomorrow, guys,

Starting point is 00:08:28 be safe and take care of each other.

The Breakdown - Hal Finney’s ‘Bitcoin and Me’

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