Stellar Snippets
Bitcoin was created by a person or group with the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto, and experts have long suspected that Harold Finney is Satoshi's true identity.
One of the reasons for this is that the American software developer was the first person to receive the freshly minted cryptocurrency from Nakamoto.
He also lived 10 blocks away from physicist and systems engineer Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto, another rumored identity of the Bitcoin creator.
However, new evidence uncovered by CASA CTO Jameson Lopp casts doubt on the widely believed theory that Finney is the real identity of Nakamoto.
According to Lopp, Hal Finney participated in a race on April 18, 2009, while Satoshi Nakamoto was exchanging emails with developer Mike Hearn.
Finney took an hour and 18 minutes to complete the Santa Barbara race during which a Bitcoin transaction also took place.
Finney couldn't be near a computer or electronic device if he was at the race, which provides substantial proof that he wasn't Nakamoto.
Lopp also mentioned that Finney's diagnosis of ALS, a neurodegenerative disease, contributed to a decrease in his coding speed.
Finney spent much of his earned bitcoin on medical expenses in 2013. He passed away because of complications related to ALS and was cryopreserved in 2014.