Hal Finney's Bitcoin Legacy

A discussion about who might be the real creator of Bitcoin, focusing on Hal Finney as the likely candidate.

"The best theory is that it's this guy Hal Finney. He was a cryptographer who received the first Bitcoin transaction - he was the second wallet. Normally when developers test something, they send it from one test account to another, which is exactly what happened here. He was very active in the forums, and then he got ALS and died around the same time that the last known Satoshi post was made.

What's interesting is that not a single coin has ever moved from Satoshi's wallet. If Hal was Satoshi, it means those coins are locked up forever, unless he gave his wife the keys. But even if he did give her instructions, I think he would have set it up so the coins couldn't be accessed until far in the future. Because if these coins move before Bitcoin fully succeeds, it would be very destructive - if the creator starts selling Bitcoin, it would trigger a huge sell-off in the market. People would think 'the creator's alive and selling their coins' and it would create drama that would hurt the project.

The genius of using the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto was that he'd never get credit for being a genius if it worked, but it's like the parent dies so the child can survive. The only way a currency like this could have worked is if you couldn't point to the creator, because then they would just attack the creator, saying they have too much control or ulterior motives."