Hal Finney was a prominent developer and computer scientist who became an early contributor to Bitcoin. Finney was the first person to receive a BTC transaction, from Satoshi Nakamoto.
Developer Hal Finney’s Twitter account is back up after a decade. While the activity was initially suspicious to many in the crypto community, Hal’s wife Frank Finney confirmed that she was tweeting for Hal to prevent his account from being deleted from the social platform for inactivity.
Elon Musk, the sole owner of Twitter, has been implementing a series of changes to the social network. Among them, the billionaire reported that Twitter would delete approximately 1.500 billion accounts that have been inactive on its platform for several years. The measure responds to the need to free up the names of these accounts for use by other users; in addition, most of these inactive accounts have been in disuse for a long time due to the death of their owners.
In response to Musk's announced purge, Bitcoiners and the crypto community took to the social network to ask the billionaire to make an exception and preserve a few inactive Twitter accounts, such as that of Hal Finney.
Who was Hal Finney?
Hal Finney, who passed away on August 28, 2014 from ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis), was a prominent developer and computer scientist who became The first Bitcoin contributor. In fact, Finney was the first person to run the Bitcoin software and the first to receive a transaction with this cryptocurrency.
A few days after the Bitcoin network went live, Satoshi Nakamoto, its creator, sent Hal Finney the first 10 bitcoins in history. The computer scientist also played a key role in the first year of Bitcoin development, helping Satoshi fix bugs and improve the network.
For all his contributions to the world's largest blockchain, Finney is considered a true Bitcoin pioneer, and his Twitter account is a treasure trove of historical value.
Crypto community calls on Elon Musk to preserve Finney's account on the social network
Among the many comments that Bitcoiners and the crypto community directed at Musk to preserve Hal Finney's Twitter account, one stands out: that of investor and founder of Lyn Alden Investment Strategy, Lyn alden, who pointed out the need to maintain a few hundred accounts, like Hal Finney's, that have a significant level of historical relevance.
Also, software engineer and Web3 enthusiast Ben DiFrancesco noted that Finney is one of the few people who could live up to the legendary status of Satoshi Nakamoto. His comment ties in with the belief of many Bitcoiners and crypto users that Finney was the real Satoshi, or at least part of the group of developers who used this pseudonym to create the cryptocurrency.
Bitcoin Magazine reporter, Namcios, was also one of many people who asked Musk not to delete Finney's Twitter account.
The crypto community also contributed several ideas for preserving Twitter accounts with significant value to users. For example, user @devchart commented that the social network could create a new memorial function to keep the accounts of deceased public figures active. Bitcoin enthusiast Bob Burnett told Musk that he could create a distinction to identify the accounts of important historical figures and prevent them from being deleted due to inactivity.
However, since this feature is not yet available on the social network, Frank Finney decided to reactivate her husband's account to preserve part of his legacy.
Hal Finney's Twitter account is showing activity
Jameson Lopp, a software engineer, cypherpunk, and Bitcoin advocate, alerted us to recent activity on Hal Finney's Twitter account, which had been inactive since 2010.
However, since the activity recorded in that account occurred within a few days of a transaction being signed with one of the private keys Hal's attempt to attribute the creation of Bitcoin to Paul Le Roux, Lopp warned that this could be suspicious activity.
BTCPay contributor Pavlenex told Lopp that this was perhaps a possible reactivation of Hal Finney's account to prevent it from being removed from Twitter. A few hours later, Frank Finney responded affirmatively to the messages, indicating that he had taken back his husband's account to keep it active and preserve it on the social network.
Currently, Lopp wrote that has received sufficient real evidence that Hal Finney's account is being managed by his wife Frank.
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Photos from Frank Finney's Twitter account
