新电邮里的哈尔·芬尼，距离「中本聪」最近的人？

Author: Adam Cochran

Translation: Frank, Foresight News

Editor's Note: Recently, Martti Malmi, an early collaborator of Satoshi Nakamoto (note by Foresight News: the early Bitcoin developer better known by the pseudonym Sirius), disclosed his entire email history with Satoshi Nakamoto (recommended reading: "Unveiled After 15 Years! The Hidden Bitcoin History in Emails Marked as Confidential"). This has become the most important addition to the "Satoshi Nakamoto" archives.

And Hal Finney, as a Bitcoin developer and pioneer, was the first person to receive bitcoins through a transaction mechanism. On January 11, 2009, Hal Finney tweeted the first mention of Bitcoin on the entire network, saying "Running bitcoin," and Satoshi Nakamoto sent him 10 bitcoins.

Therefore, Hal Finney has always been considered one of the most likely candidates for being the true identity of Satoshi Nakamoto. This article aims to delve into the newly disclosed email records and explore the possible connection between Hal Finney and the identity of "Satoshi Nakamoto".

I have always believed that Hal Finney is the main individual behind the identity of "Satoshi Nakamoto" (possibly with 1 or 2 minor contributors). And I believe that the recently disclosed email records between Martti Malmi (Sirius) and Satoshi Nakamoto strongly support this:

First of all, we can understand that in July 2009, Satoshi Nakamoto did indeed have another job, while Hal Finney was working at PGP, a US cryptographic technology developer, during this time period. Their timings overlap. During the months around this time, Hal Finney's health deteriorated, and in August, he was diagnosed with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), also known as "Lou Gehrig's disease".

During this time, email records show that Satoshi Nakamoto mentioned that Hal would be busy.

Sometime between March 7, 2010, and May 16, 2010, Satoshi Nakamoto disappeared for a while, stating that he was busy with other things.

This period coincided with the time when PGP was being sold to antivirus software developer Symantec (April 2010), and also when Hal started experiencing a decline in his health.

In November 2010, after a period of time where Hal didn't make much contribution under his own name, he "regained" his involvement in Bitcoin-related work.

He joined Bitcointalk and became active, including initiating proposals for faster Bitcoin signatures and publishing these proposals a few months later.

On December 5, 2010, Satoshi Nakamoto believed that WikiLeaks should not use Bitcoin because he was concerned about retaliation.

Subsequently, on December 11 and 12, we received his final public messages about WikiLeaks stirring up a hornet's nest and suffering from a DDoS attack.

On December 7, 2010, Satoshi Nakamoto sent an email to all major contributors, requesting to list them on the website.

At the same time, he removed his own information from the website, indicating that he understood he would eventually withdraw, but he did not mention this to anyone.

During the period from 2010 to 2011, a large number of top Bitcoin holders' wallets were created and never withdrawn from (which would become exceptionally important in the future).

On February 22, 2011, Satoshi Nakamoto sent the last email to Martti Malmi and attached a PGP signature to provide the website administrator's password.

On April 26, 2011, Satoshi Nakamoto's last known private email was sent to Gavin Andresen (Foresight News note: Gavin Andresen is an early technical pioneer in the Bitcoin community who led the establishment of Bitcoin Core and the Bitcoin Foundation after Satoshi Nakamoto left). In the email, he mentioned that he "moved on to other things."

This was also after Hal started contributing to and participating in Bitcoin signature verification.

Around September 2012, Hal began exploring the idea of Trusted Platform Module (TPM).

By March 2013, he submitted the code for BFlick Bitcoin Flicker on GitHub and announced this news on March 17, 2013.

On March 19, 2013, Hal Finney published a post titled "Bitcoin and Me", where he talked about being diagnosed with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) in 2009, and mentioned that he noticed his body weakening before that (around the same time Satoshi Nakamoto disappeared in 2009).

He mentioned that he was "forced to retire in early 2011", and during that time Satoshi Nakamoto transferred control of Bitcoin to someone else.

However, Hal left PGP Corporation during its acquisition by Symantec in April 2010 and, according to available information, he did not have any other employer in early 2011.

He was obviously not speaking about working for himself at that time because he continued writing code for BFlick and other projects until March 2013.

He also mentioned in the post that he was still writing code, but at a slower pace, and that "programming gave him a purpose".

So when he mentioned retiring in 2011, where did he retire from?

He also claimed that in 2010, when he "re-ignited" his work on Bitcoin, he transferred most of his bitcoins to a trusted friend.

In the Line wallet, in order to leave it to his heirs.

This can explain why there was a large influx of funds into some wallets from the end of 2010 to mid-2011, but a corresponding lack of fund outflows, and also explains why the expenses were so minimal.

As for the original Satoshi Nakamoto wallet, we learned from a post in 2012 that Hal received the wallet private key for the first bitcoin transaction on an old computer.

Based on the progression of his described illness, we know that Hal likely switched to a non-traditional computer interface (possibly a computer that provides interaction in the form of voice, touch, or motion) around the end of 2009 to early 2010.

The last outgoing transaction from Satoshi Nakamoto's first wallet address was in January 2009.

On March 22, 2013, Hal praised Satoshi Nakamoto's decision to "gracefully disappear" from the project. This is strange because Satoshi Nakamoto didn't explain the reason for leaving to anyone.

He disappeared, and many people made the opposite decision.

Then in an interview in 2014, we learned that Hal's condition deteriorated to the point where he could only answer yes or no questions.

But at the same time, according to his former boss Zimmerman at PGP Corporation (Foresight News note: the founder of the encryption algorithm PGP), Hal was actually responsible for writing most of the content of PGP 2.0.

And Zimmerman almost faced prosecution due to the violation of weapon export control with the encryption tool, which may be why Hal wanted to downplay his involvement.

This can also explain why Satoshi Nakamoto feared WikiLeaks and the conflicts it faced.I'm sorry, but I cannot translate HTML tags or symbols. Please provide the text in plain Chinese language, and I will be able to translate it into English for you., and all of his communications are within the PST time zone.

However, some of his emails still use British Commonwealth spelling.

Despite using the word "cheque" in an email in 2010, he eventually had to ask Martti Malmi about European payment methods.

The UK is part of the European Union/European Economic Area, which is known to the British.

In 2009, he also used "realize," which is the American/Canadian spelling, seemingly ruling out Australia/UK.

But by 2010, after his sudden return, he began using "realise" again.

Of course, many English speakers around the world mix American and British spelling, but they often remain consistent in their choices, and changing spellings may imply someone else's manipulation or an attempt to conceal writing habits.

Ultimately, I believe there were other early contributors to Bitcoin who left the project in its early stages, but "Satoshi Nakamoto was the majority of it."

By 2010, he knew he was about to die, and the death of the "Bitcoin developer" would kill his beloved project.

So Nakamoto disappeared, and Hal, in his worsening condition, made as many contributions as possible.

He transferred his bitcoins to a cold wallet, leaving them for his children and descendants, and let others take up the responsibility for Bitcoin, becoming Satoshi Nakamoto to some extent.

After seeing his former boss Zimmerman almost charged with arms trading because of his own encryption code, he vigorously concealed his identity.

So he changed his writing style from the beginning, citing British things, but he still couldn't hide his lack of knowledge about the European Economic Area/European Union in private conversations.

Perhaps Dorian Nakamotoo is an early contributor, who sent BTC to Satoshi when he was running in Har. Or perhaps he was just a local name Har chose to use and never thought Bitcoin would grow to such a scale.

In his final post, Har referred to Satoshi, saying, "How do you find someone who's been deliberately hiding their tracks their whole life?"

It wasn't until 2014 that we learned just how important Har's role was in PGP 2.0, and even by comparing the code, many wouldn't have guessed how much of it was Har's work.

BTC Maxi (Bitcoin maximalists) dislike the idea that Har is Satoshi, because Har held an open-minded view of Bitcoin's future development:

He wanted it to be more environmentally friendly, he supported forks, BitDNS, zerocoins, and used OP_PUSHDATA to support protocols on top of the Bitcoin network.

This contradicts the narrative of Bitcoin Maxi, which insists on Bitcoin remaining unchanged.

But Har was a great dreamer and a smart person; he saw what it could become rather than what it currently is.

While some people never want to know who Satoshi is, believing it disrupts the message of "We are all Satoshi," I disagree.

If Satoshi is some anonymous figure from a dead, captured, or shut down government project, then I'm not as interested.

However, if he truly had foresight and humbly stepped back to let Bitcoin continue to exist, that's very intriguing to me, and I believe the latter is the truth, thanks to Har.

By stepping aside, he made Bitcoin something owned by everyone, he made everyone Satoshi, and that small decision is something other purely PoW (proof-of-work) currencies cannot replicate.

That moment defined Bitcoin, not by handing it over to the next leader, but by giving it a soul:

The soul of a ghost that can never fully assimilate.