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CASA co-founder and CTO Jameson Lopp has called into question claims that well-regarded computer scientist and cryptographer Hal Finney was Satoshi Nakamoto.
In a speech at the Plan B Forum held in Lugano, Switzerland, Lopp shared his doubts over claims that <a href="https://crypto.news/glossary/hal-finney/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Finney</a>, who died in 2014, was the man behind the pseudonymous character Satoshi Nakamoto who invented Bitcoin (<a href="https://crypto.news/price/bitcoin/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">BTC</a>).
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 Hal Finney was a legendary Cypherpunk, but he was not Satoshi. Today I present my research to support that claim.<a href="https://t.co/gZVQv3QW0B" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">https://t.co/gZVQv3QW0B</a>— Jameson Lopp (@lopp) <a href="https://twitter.com/lopp/status/1715715417795125480?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">October 21, 2023</a>
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Lopp acknowledges Finney’s contributions to Bitcoin. Besides Satoshi, Finney was the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2014/01/03/hal-finney-received-the-first-bitcoin-transaction-heres-how-he-describes-it/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">first</a> person to download and run the Bitcoin software.&nbsp;
However, the CASA CTO highlighted a race held on April 18, 2009, in Santa Barbara, California, in which Finney was a participant. The race took place as an email was being sent back and forth between <a href="https://crypto.news/who-is-or-was-satoshi-nakamoto/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Satoshi Nakamoto</a> and developer Mike Hearn.&nbsp;
According to Lopp, it would have been impossible for Finney to participate in an email exchange while focused on a race. Not to mention, there was a <a href="https://crypto.news/bitcoin-price-breaks-above-30000-mark/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Bitcoin</a> transaction confirmed during the same time as this race.
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 “You see, for the hour and 18 minutes that Hal Finney was running down this course in Santa Barbara, we can be quite sure that he was not at a computer or other electronic device where he would have been able to do what Satoshi was doing.” <cite>Jameson Lopp, CASA CTO </cite>
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Lopp also noticed something strange when looking into a Swiss IP address linked to Hearn, which lines up with the time he worked at Google’s Swiss offices. It provides further proof that Satoshi was active while Finney was out racing.
He did a side-by-side comparison of Nakamoto and Finney’s code <a href="https://towardsdatascience.com/stylometric-analysis-satoshi-nakamoto-294926cdf995" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">styles</a> and noticed a lot of differences in their line spacing preferences and overall personalities. With this information, he questioned how one person could have such different coding identities.
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 “I’m a software engineer. I know code. And their code was not the same. And in fact, we can look at Hal’s reusable proof of work code. We can compare it to the very first release of the published code for Bitcoin, and several large differences are immediately apparent.” <cite>Jameson Lopp CASA CTO</cite>
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While Lopp’s investigation does not provide definitive proof, it presents an interesting case against Finney as Bitcoin’s creator. The cryptographer died in August 2014 having <a href="https://vulcanpost.com/784074/cryptocurrency-beginner-notable-bitcoin-price-predictions/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">predicted</a> that Bitcoin’s price could one day go as high as $10 million.
Read more: <a href="https://crypto.news/bitcoin-options-traders-make-300m-bet-on-long-term-performance/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow"> Bitcoin options traders make $300m bet on long-term performance </a>

Jameson Lopp doubts Hal Finney, Satoshi Nakamoto connection

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