from Hacker News

Hal Finney was the designer of Bitcoin

by ableal on 2/6/24, 2:53 PM with 56 comments

  • by lqet on 2/6/24, 3:21 PM

    Or not: https://cryptonews.net/news/bitcoin/27725030

    > According to the race data, Finney competed in the “Santa Barbara Running Company Chardonnay 10 Miler & 5K,” starting at 8 am Pacific time and finishing the race at 78 minutes.

    > The race, however, coincides with timestamped emails between Satoshi and one of the first Bitcoin developers, Mike Hearn.

  • by geocrasher on 2/6/24, 3:29 PM

    Wow. Slashdot. Haven't seen that on HN in.... a long time, maybe never? I was a dedicated Slashdot user back in the day. I miss what it used to be.

  • by mouzogu on 2/6/24, 3:29 PM

    the white paper was written in British English with a very specific style afaik.

    which makes me lean towards Adam Back or Paul Le Roux.

    personally I like to think it was Le Roux, which would be insane if true.

    https://news.bitcoin.com/the-many-facts-pointing-to-paul-le-...

  • by nobrains on 2/6/24, 3:46 PM

    If it was from one of the usual suspects, then it was definitely Szabo.

    If you read about it you will come to the same conclusion.

    All others can be easily eliminated.

  • by rideontime on 2/6/24, 3:35 PM

    For those commenting without following the link, be aware that this is simply a link to a SlashDot comment.

  • by ak_111 on 2/6/24, 4:35 PM

    The "being in a rush" theory sounds very interesting and very plausible combined with adapting a pseudonym to avoid lawsuits.

    However, if these were the two reasons behind keeping his identity secret, wouldn't Hal Finney be also the kind of person who leaves some kind of digital trace that confirms his identity as creator even after he is dead? Like automating the execution of a transaction on the genesis block or something?

    Apart from wanting to take credit and glory of being creator, he must have had very interesting "war stories" to share concerning the creation of bitcoin, his feelings as he saw it grow... this would have been a very interesting memoir to share with the world.

    I am wondering if he left such a document somewhere that will suddenly decrypt itself to the world along with irrefutable evidence of his invention of bitcoin.

  • by slicktux on 2/6/24, 3:28 PM

    Everyone knows it was Paul Le Roux

  • by nu11ptr on 2/6/24, 3:20 PM

    I have heard most of this theory before. It sounds plausible to me. What do others think?

  • by dist-epoch on 2/6/24, 3:37 PM

    > Hal published a paper that describes essentially the whole BitCoin scheme two years before BTC was launched.

    What is the paper? Any link? I've never heard this claim before.

  • by tokai on 2/6/24, 3:34 PM

    That the creator of bitcoin would be cryopreserved makes a lot of sense.

  • by 082349872349872 on 2/6/24, 3:26 PM

    I hope this theory is not what led to Hal's having been swatted.

  • by notso411 on 2/6/24, 3:19 PM

    Opinion posed as fact.

  • by MilStdJunkie on 2/6/24, 3:29 PM

    Personal conspiracy theory is that "Satoshi" was an early emergent AGI trying to figure out a way to convince maximum monkeys to hook up maximum processing power to a network. And succeeding, apparently. Where are all those processors now?[1]

    [1] From early crypto? In the trash, mainly. But it ramped up production, which is what fictional "Satoshi" would want.

  • by skwashd on 2/6/24, 3:23 PM

    All the smart people know it was Craig Wright, right?

  • by monero-xmr on 2/6/24, 3:40 PM

    Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto, who was falsely accused of being the creator of bitcoin, also lived within a few blocks of Hal Finney's home. If that isn't proof enough of Hal at least being somewhat involved, I can't think of a more coincidental fact.