Hal Finney was the first person Satoshi ever sent Bitcoin to Long before Bitcoin, Hal Finney (@halfin) was a cypherpunk, one of the 1990s coders who built privacy tools. He was an early contributor to PGP, the encryption software, and in 2004 launched RPOW, his own digital cash system. When Satoshi Nakamoto released the first Bitcoin software on January 8, 2009, Finney was the first to reply. He soon posted “Running bitcoin” on Twitter, and on January 12, Satoshi sent him 10 $BTC. Some have long suspected that Finney was Satoshi himself. He denied it until his death, and the debate is still open today. Later that year Finney was diagnosed with ALS, a disease that slowly takes away control of the body. He kept writing Bitcoin code using an eye-tracking program. He died on August 28, 2014, at 58. True to his optimism, he chose to be cryopreserved by the Alcor Life Extension Foundation, in the hope that future medicine might one day bring him back.