Bitcoin Extortionist Targeted Hal Finney and Others

Bitcoin Extortionist Targeted Hal Finney and Others

It appears that an extortionist is aiming to make life hard for certain bitcoin adopters. It has been reported that during the final stages of his battle with ALS, early bitcoin enthusiast Hal Finney spent a long and arduous 30 minutes shivering on his front lawn while a SWAT team cleared his home. It was the work of an alleged bitcoin extortionist, who after several failed attempts to extract $400,000 in bitcoin from Finney, finally used phone number spoofing technology to place a call to authorities from Finney's home number and make the following claim... That he had killed two people....


Related News

Bitcoin Extortionist Swatting Cryptographers

When Satoshi Nakamoto, a name widely believed to be a pseudonym for a small group, published the specifications for Bitcoin back in 2008 the effort was not widely recognized at first. One of those who did understand the implications was cryptographer Hal Finney. His early entry into mining Bitcoin provided him with the funds he and his wife Fran needed for his five-year battle with Lou Gehrig's disease. This financial success was not without its hassles, and the worst was the Bitcoin Extortionist. When two months of menacing calls to the Finney home failed to produce the desired results,....

Daily Bitcoin Fact # 2

The First Bitcoin Transaction took place in 2009 January 12! Satoshi Nakamoto sent 100 BTC to Hal Finney. About Finney: Hal Finney (born May 4, 1956) is a developer for PGP Corporation, and was the second developer hired after Phil Zimmerman. In 2004, Finney created the first reusable proof of work system before Bitcoin. In January 2009, Finney was the Bitcoin network’s first recipient transaction.

Hal Finney: Remembering The Early Bitcoin And Privacy Pioneer

August 28th marks the day in which one of the earliest Bitcoin users passed away: Hal Finney. Finney was born on May 4th, 1956 in Coalinga, California. Born as the son of a petroleum engineer, Finney attended the California Institute of Technology where he graduated with a BS in engineering. Though his upbringing and origins […]

Hal Finney on Bitcoin: In His Own Words

Hal Finney was arguably one of the earliest bitcoin pioneers, having been the second person to receive bitcoin after Satoshi Nakamoto himself. Yet beyond his role in the history of digital currency, Finney was also a cryptographic master, a veteran of bitcoin mining and a voice - sometimes prophetic - within the community at large. By perusing Finney's post history on the Bitcoin Talk forum, one can see that he foresaw the promise of bitcoin and its meteoric rise at the end of 2013 while the technology was still in its infancy. CoinDesk collected a number of quotes from Finney's Bitcoin....

Bitcoin News in Review: Hal Finney, Mark Karpelès, Mining Gear, and More

With the end of another week, it's time for the Bitcoin News in Review, where we feature some of the top stories of the week here on CryptoCoins News. This week, (24 August - 31 August), we lost Bitcoin pioneer Hal Finney, saw Mark Karpelès launch a new company, checked out some new mining gear, and more. Check out our video and keep scrolling for this Bitcoin News in Review, after the break. Remembering Hal Finney. For those who didn't know him, Hal Finney was always extremely active in the cryptology community. Finney was one of the earliest members of the PGP Corporation and ran the....