Hal Finney is one of the earliest users of Bitcoin, who collaborated with its anonymous creator Satoshi Nakamoto. On January 12, 2009, Finney received 10 BTC from Satoshi, the first transaction in the history of the cryptocurrency.

Hal's mysterious relationship with Satoshi has spawned many theories. Some believe that Hal himself was the creator of Bitcoin or belonged to a group of people hiding behind the pseudonym "Satoshi Nakamoto".


Here is the details of the first transaction Hal received from Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto on 12 January 2009.

First Bitcoin transaction

By the way, Hal Finney is also known for his own thoughts on the future of the first cryptocurrency. He has speculated that Bitcoin could eventually reach the $10 million mark if the project proves successful on a global scale.

At the moment, such a prospect seems too distant. A new problem for the further popularization of cryptocurrencies was the refusal of the audit company Mazars to interact with cryptocurrency exchanges. The company had previously audited the reserves of major cryptocurrency exchanges such as Crypto.com, KuCoin and Binance, but in the end the articles confirming the existence of reserves were removed for some reason.

Why this was done is unknown. That is, the company may have miscalculated the risks and didn't want to engage with coin niche representatives amid the sharp collapse of the crypto market. However, from the outside it seems like negative news anyway.

Who got the Bitcoin transaction first

The password to Hal Finney’s account belongs to his wife Fran Finney. She posted a new message on behalf of her late husband, as well-known crypto-enthusiast and co-founder of crypto firm Casa Jameson Lopp suspected something was amiss. The fact is that Hal’s account appeared among his subscribers. Consequently, Lopp quite predictably thought his account had been hacked.

Here’s Jameson’s rejoinder, in which he shared the news.

WARNING: Someone has gained control of Hal’s Twitter account. We don’t know that person’s intentions. Which means the account may have been hacked.

Hal Phinney and his wife Fran.

Here’s what Fran posted in response.

This is Fran Finney. I am writing this tweet on Hal’s behalf so that his account will not be deleted by Ilon Musk.

Fran’s tweet from Hal Finney’s account

Recall that the day before, billionaire Ilon Musk bought out Twitter for $44 billion. Upon becoming the new CEO of the company, Musk began introducing radical reforms to the life of the social platform. One of these reforms was the release of more than 1.5 billion nicknames from among the old accounts or bots. This involves deleting accounts that have not been used for a long time.

Which means that if Fran hadn’t posted a new post to the social platform from her husband’s account, she could have automatically fallen into the algorithm for deleting old accounts. Consequently, the community could have lost a valuable piece of Bitcoin creation history.

By the way, here’s the very tweet we mentioned at the start of the news – Hal’s short message “using Bitcoin”.

The first mention of Bitcoin on Twitter

Had it not been for Fran, the original tweet might have been lost forever, even if Hal’s account could have been manually restored. But here it would probably have had to go to Musk, who is currently busy blocking journalists’ accounts. Now Hal’s account has remained safe from possible deletion and commentators have expressed gratitude to the programmer’s widow. A commenter named “HODL never SODL”, for example, wrote on the subject.

Thank you Fran Finney for supporting Hal’s account. It means so much to the crypto community. You are both legends.

According to Decrypt’s sources, Phinney belonged to the cipherpunks – those who were into cryptography. In fact, his biography contains many interesting and bizarre facts that make him look like Satoshi Nakamoto. For example, Hal lived in the same city as Dorian Nakamoto, whose photos are often presented as Satoshi himself. This engineer was “promoted” by journalists almost a decade ago as the creator of Bitcoin, even though he denied all claims of involvement in the development of the major cryptocurrency.

Dorian Nakamoto has long been mistaken for the real creator of Bitcoin

If you dive even deeper into the history of the crypto-world, you can find other candidates for the Nakamoto mask. For example, the anonymous cryptographer could be developer Nick Szabo, who created the Bit Gold currency before Bitcoin even existed.


We believe that the case of Hal Finney is hardly the only example of a valuable account whose creator is no longer alive. Accordingly, Twitter's current management would do well to consider this point before announcing a massive purge. After all, Fran Finney hasn't touched Hal's account in years, which means she didn't want to do it. Well, now the action was forced.


Read about this and other interesting facts in our millionaire cryptochat. There we will discuss other important news that affects the exchange rate of coins today.