January is a month of important anniversaries in the cryptocurrency community. Just a few days ago we celebrated Bitcoin's 15th birthday, but today, January 12, is also an important anniversary. It is, of course, making the first P2P transaction using bitcoin. It was on this day in 2009 that Satoshi Nakamoto sent 10 BTC to Hal Finney. Today, this transfer is worth approximately USD 460,000. What did the first transaction in the history of cryptocurrencies look like?
Satoshi Nakamoto and Hal Finney begin the history of cryptocurrencies
The 15th anniversary of the first transaction in the history of cryptocurrencies is an excellent opportunity to remember where the digital asset market actually began. In the early days of the cryptocurrency world, which is now worth hundreds of billions of dollars, the main fiddles were played by two cypherpunks, the still anonymous Satoshi Nakamoto and Hal Finney. While we can say very little about the founder of bitcoin, Hal Finney was definitely not an anonymous figure.
This American computer scientist was recognized by the cypherpunk community long before bitcoin was created. All this thanks to his knowledge and experience that he acquired at PGP Corporation. It is worth adding that Finney is today considered one of the most important people who contributed to the development of cryptography and the cryptocurrency market. Finney created Reusable Proofs of Work (RPOW) software in 2004. This software was based on the Proof-of-Work concept by Adam Back. It was this technology that Nakamoto used to create bitcoin four years later.
Behind the scenes of the first transaction in the history of cryptocurrencies
Satoshi Nakamoto sent the Bitcoin White Paper by e-mail on October 31, 2008. The recipients of this e-mail were a group of cypherpunks, including Hal Finney. In January 2009, he became interested in Satoshi's project and became the first person to download and install the Bitcoin network software. Satoshi then sent 10 BTC to Finney on January 12. In the following weeks, he liked the anonymous cypherpunk's project so much that he decided to become one of the first BTC miners.
Finney not only got involved in mining subsequent BTC blocks, but also found several significant bugs in the bitcoin software. He wrote about it in an email to Satoshi. Finney's later recollections show that as soon as he determined that the Bitcoin protocol was stable, he turned off the software due to the very high processing power consumption of his computer.
Bitcoin valuation and Finney's disease
The first recipient of the bitcoin transfer is also the person who was the first to value Satoshi Nakamoto's cryptocurrency. Hal Finney approached this topic very analytically. At the beginning of the valuation, he estimated the value of a fraction of total global household wealth. What for? Well, he suggested in his analysis that bitcoin will one day be an extremely desirable currency. According to his calculations, the limited nature of bitcoin (only 21 million coins) means that the price of 1 BTC may ultimately reach up to USD 10 million.
It is worth adding that in the same year Finney was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a disease that is currently incurable. In Finney's case, the disease progressed quite slowly at the very beginning, but in 2014 the symptoms intensified to such an extent that Finney became paralyzed. The condition worsened day by day and finally, on August 28, 2014, the cryptographer died.
Theories regarding Satoshi Nakamoto's connection to Hal Finney
The 15th anniversary of the first transaction in the history of cryptocurrencies is the time when the cryptocurrency community remembers Hal Finney. He is one of the most important people who contributed to the development not only of bitcoin, but of the entire cryptocurrency market based on it. Many people claim that he contributed to this as much as Satoshi Nakamota. There is also a theory here that equates these two characters into one person.
There are suspicions that Hal Finney and Satoshi Nakamoto are the same person. Hal would hide his alterego to see how Bitcoin's fate was shaping up as an outside observer. This theory is also confirmed by the lack of activity on Satoshi's part since Finney's death. Of course, Nakamoto abandoned the project much earlier, but the wallets containing huge amounts of BTC are still untouched by Satoshi. This is, of course, only a theory, fueled by the fact that the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto – despite 15 years of bitcoin's history and the fact that BTC has now entered the mainstream – still remains behind a veil of cryptographic secrecy.
