Bitcoin OG Says Hal Finney Isn’t Satoshi (With Facts)

The quest to uncover who Satoshi is gets even more interesting as Peter Rizzo claims Hal Finney is not the Bitcoin creator.

Prominent Bitcoin OG and editor for Bitcoin Magazine, Pete Rizzo, has thrown in his thoughts on the boiling issue of early contributor Hal Finney being Satoshi Nakamoto.

In a long thread on Monday, Rizzo stated that his “researched suspicions” showed that Hal and Satoshi are different people.

Rizzo stated a couple of points in his long X post, citing pieces from the co-founder of Casa, Jameson Lopp, and a few other facts to back his claims. However, he noted that the thread was his opinion and not conclusive evidence.

Rizzo’s Facts

Among the facts that shaped his conclusion that Hal was not Satoshi is Lopp’s blog post from October 2023, which showed that Hal was in a 10-mile race in California when Satoshi was emailing early Bitcoin developer Mike Hearn.

The blog post also shared proof that Satoshi was active and shared 4 code check-ins with 17 forum posts during the period that Hal was diagnosed with ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis). Hal’s wife noted that the health condition prevented Hal from several activities, including typing.

Furthermore, Rizzo pointed out that Hal disliked the hashcash design, which was the basis that Satoshi used to build Bitcoin. The Bitcoin Magazine editor shared a 2001 email of Hal describing hashcash as “rent dissipation in action,” stating that “it doesn’t make economic sense to sell assets for hashcash.”

Hal Knew More

Rizzo pointed out scenarios showing that Hal knew more details than Satoshi. He cited an email released by British cryptographer Adam Back, which showed that Satoshi showed knowledge deficiency in some papers and proposals like the B-money, which Hal would be familiar with.

Rizzo also stated that Satoshi was unlikely to be an expert writer or coder, and Hal possessed these qualities. He shared a note on a Bitcoin P2P e-cash paper written by Hal, which was nothing like what Satoshi had ever written. If Rizzo’s claims were valid, the quest to know who Satoshi Nakamoto is would have been further hampered.

Meanwhile, Coinfomania reported last week that a court ruled last week that self-proclaimed Bitcoin creator Craig Wright is not the true Satoshi. The court stated that Wright was not the author of Bitcoin’s whitepaper or the creator of the asset.