Hello everyone, I am Mr. K, and what we are going to talk about today is: "The Subfather of Bitcoin: Hal Finney".

When it comes to Bitcoin, many people may only know Satoshi Nakamoto, but few people know another man who has contributed as much to Satoshi Nakamoto as Hal Finney.

Hal Finney can be said to be a god-level figure in the field of cryptography. He graduated from Caltech in 1979 with a bachelor's degree in engineering. As early as the 1990s, he joined the software development team created by CypherpunkPhilZimmermann. As one of the founders, he created the first public key cryptosystem PGP in the public domain. Even today, PGP is still the most popular encryption protocol. one. And his fate with Bitcoin began in 1993.

Hal Finney, like Satoshi Nakamoto, is also a member of the cypherpunk organization. In the early days, Hal Finney often displayed his works as an anonymous replicator on the cyberpunk mailing list, so he also deeply Influenced by cypherpunk liberalism and monetary decentralism. Among them is a very key person-David Chaum, an early predecessor of cryptography, who proposed the concept of digital currency in 1983, which laid the foundation for Hal Finney's later intervention in the field of digital currency.

By 1992, Finney wrote on an encrypted mailing list: "Computers can be used as a tool to liberate and protect people, rather than control them." And in the following year, he expressed some of his ideas, hoping to There is a trading system where freedom and personal privacy can be perfectly protected. And these ideas coincide with the content of the Bitcoin white paper 15 years later.

In 2004, Hal Finney created the first reusable proof-of-work protocol. And this agreement has laid an important foundation for the POW consensus mechanism in the Bitcoin system. Without Hal Finney's innovation, the birth of Bitcoin may be a few years later. It may be fate, based on these two things, Hal Finney and Bitcoin forged an indissoluble bond.

As soon as Satoshi Nakamoto released the "Bitcoin White Paper" in 2008, Bitcoin received the attention of this great god. Finney said that after Satoshi Nakamoto released the Bitcoin software, he immediately downloaded it, because he has always liked cryptography, the mysteries and paradoxes of cryptography, and Bitcoin really attracted him. So, Hal Finney became the recipient of Bitcoin's first transfer.

In the next two years, Hal Finney often exchanged emails with Satoshi Nakamoto, pointing out the loopholes and optimization directions in the Bitcoin system. Even in 2010, Hal Finney proposed that Bitcoin can be extended. issues and the importance of mining’s negative impact on the environment. It can be said that at that time Hal Finney was the person who contributed the most to Bitcoin besides Satoshi Nakamoto, and even the second father of Bitcoin.

Unfortunately, on August 28, 2014, Hal Finney left his favorite crypto business and this world due to atrophic lateral sclerosis. But Bitcoin has influenced waves of latecomers, and these latecomers are constantly changing the world with blockchain technology. Perhaps, everything is as he said at the beginning: he likes the present very much, but he has looked into the distance.

Thanks to Teacher Xiong Yue for his help and guidance on the content of this episode.