In Memory of Hal Finney, RIP — Builder of a More Trusted World

Did you know that the first proof-of-concept of Bitcoin was created on a Window’s XP?

In January 2009, Hal Finney — never a person to write long tweets — sent a message of “Running bitcoin”, and which was the start of a new world:

I’ve spoken to quite a few of the great people who developed the foundations of cryptography, but the one person I would have loved to have spoken to is Hal Finney. He was the person who received the first transaction of 10 BTC from Satoshi Nakamoto and was the person who created the first proof-of-concept of the cryptocurrency. In fact, Hal lived a few blocks away from a person named Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto, and, as if someone, somewhere, took a random name from the local telephone directory.

So, Hal, in helping to create Bitcoins, created a fascinating jumble of crypto that works surprisingly well:

His name appears in so many places within the rise of cryptography, such as an acknowledgement from…