Imagine being the first person to learn about bitcoin, believe in it and be the first person to receive it. Well it can not be an average person who doesn’t know anything about cryptography, blockchain or the technology backing it. This is the reason lots of people doubted bitcoin and are still doubting it now. Because lots of people didn’t understand it and are still not understanding it, but lots of people understand NFT better that is why NFT got adopted faster than bitcoin got adopted, you can read about it on Ask Leo: Why Was NFT Adoption Quicker Than Bitcoin Adoption?.
Who Was Hal Finney?
Well not going to give you a full biographic details of Hal Finney I will just go straight to the point, he was an American Developer that saw the future of crypto. Being a cryptographer, he understood the concept and the beauty of the crypto technology(cryptography and blockchain) enough to help Satoshi contribute to what bitcoin is today. Can we call him the first Bitcoin Miner? But nonetheless he was the first person to receive a crypto transaction from satoshi of about 10 Bitcoin. This transaction was done as a test.
Twitter
It’s not a surprise that the first person to receive it was a cryptographer. He believed in the future of bitcoin so much, sad that he didn’t live enough to see the contribution bitcoin has done to the world as he died in 2014. But then, it’s legendary to be the first person to have received bitcoin with the impact and history Bitcoin is creating.
10 Bitcoin Huh?
What do you expect, this bitcoin was worth close to nothing at that time, as a matter of fact it was just some complex new technology computer code that had no value because there was no demand for it. So it’s possible he sent it back, it’s possible he sold it off after and it’s also possible that he held it till he died. But something that was worth nothing about then, is worth about $390k now.
Being the first person that took the opportunity of running bitcoin, coupled with the fact that he was a developer and cryptographer, he worked with Satoshi Nakamuto as they always converse through email, and he spend most of his time finding bugs and sending them to Satoshi Nakamuto to fix. Must have been really cool to have been friends with Satoshi Nakamuto, although it was easy for the world to think that he was Satoshi Nakamuto.
In 2009, it had to take a lot of believe and courage to be fully invested in bitcoin and its technology thinking that one day it will boom so hard. During this time, no financial value was attached to bitcoin so everything done during this period was done on experimental level to see how viable it’s technology is. I guess the next historic event will the last bitcoin to get mined off the blockchain. That’s going to be the 21st Million bitcoin, this is going to be in the next 20 years or more.