[ExI] news about old member of the list

[Bryan Bishop]

On Sun, Apr 14, 2013 at 10:49 AM, Alejandro Dubrovsky
<alito at organicrobot.com> wrote:
> It is a post by Hal Finney about his story with Bitcoin and ALS which

"For those who don't know me, I'm Hal Finney. I got my start in crypto
working on an early version of PGP, working closely with Phil
Zimmermann. When Phil decided to start PGP Corporation, I was one of
the first hires. I would work on PGP until my retirement. At the same
time, I got involved with the Cypherpunks. I ran the first
cryptographically based anonymous remailer, among other activities."

"When Satoshi announced the first release of the software, I grabbed
it right away. I think I was the first person besides Satoshi to run
bitcoin. I mined block 70-something, and I was the recipient of the
first bitcoin transaction, when Satoshi sent ten coins to me as a
test. I carried on an email conversation with Satoshi over the next
few days, mostly me reporting bugs and him fixing them."

""Speaking of heirs, I got a surprise in 2009, when I was suddenly
diagnosed with a fatal disease. .. My body began to fail. I slurred my
speech, lost strength in my hands, and my legs were slow to recover.
In August, 2009, I was given the diagnosis of ALS, also called Lou
Gehrig's disease, after the famous baseball player who got it. Today,
I am essentially paralyzed. I am fed through a tube, and my breathing
is assisted through another tube. I operate the computer using a
commercial eyetracker system. It also has a speech synthesizer, so
this is my voice now. I spend all day in my power wheelchair. I worked
up an interface using an arduino so that I can adjust my wheelchair's
position using my eyes."

He also spoke up in 2009:
http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/2009-August/052656.html

- Bryan
http://heybryan.org/
1 512 203 0507