On January 11, 2009, a man in California wrote two words on the internet: “Running bitcoin”. No full stop, no explanation, no thread afterwards. It was a status message about a program that was running on his computer right then.
Today the sentence is one of the most quoted in Bitcoin's history. What few people know: for the man who wrote it, it was true a second time that same year — in a way he could not have guessed back then.
Who was Hal Finney?
Hal Finney, born on May 4, 1956 in Coalinga, California, was a cryptographer long before Bitcoin existed. He worked with Phil Zimmermann on PGP — the encryption that made e-mail tap-proof for ordinary people for the first time and that the US government considered so dangerous in the early nineties that it investigated Zimmermann for three years. Finney was one of the first employees of the company that grew out of it, and stayed a developer until his retirement in early 2011.
Alongside that he wrote on the Cypherpunk mailing list, that circle of programmers, mathematicians and activists who in the nineties held one simple thesis: privacy in a digital world does not come from laws, it comes from code. Finney ran one of the first anonymous remailers. He built the things other people were still discussing.
In 2004 he came closest to the goal: RPOW, Reusable Proof of Work — a digital means of payment whose units were based on proofs of work and could be passed on. It worked. It just still needed a single server as its linchpin. Exactly that one gap stayed open.
Four years later somebody else closed it. And Finney saw immediately what he had in front of him.
January 11, 2009: two words
On January 3, 2009 the genesis block came into being. A few days later Satoshi Nakamoto released the first version of the software. “When Satoshi announced the first release of the software, I grabbed it right away”, Finney wrote later. He started it — and posted the sentence that would outlive him. In his Californian local time it was still January 10; to this day the Running Bitcoin Challenge starts on that day too.
What “running bitcoin” meant technically back then: the client of 2009 was a single program — node, wallet and mining in one. Whoever started it ran a full node: it held the entire block chain, checked every transaction and passed it on. Whoever also switched on “Generate Coins” under Options was mining right away. Finney did both.
Nothing ceremonial was meant by it. The software was running on his computer, and back then almost nobody else was doing that. “I think I was the first person besides Satoshi to run bitcoin”, he wrote later — carefully phrased, and that caution was justified: analyses of early log files suggest that in the first days one or two more machines were running along. That does not change the order of magnitude. Back then you could count the network on one hand.
“I mined block 70-something”, he wrote about those first days — difficulty was at 1 then, an ordinary processor was enough for a block. He stopped because the machine ran hot and the fan noise bothered him. “In retrospect, I wish I had kept it up longer”, he wrote in 2013, “but on the other hand I was extraordinarily lucky to be there at the beginning.” It is worth picturing for a moment: the Bitcoin network consisted of a handful of computers — and one of them was switched off because it was too loud.
The first Bitcoin transfer: Block 170
On January 12, 2009, one day after the tweet, Satoshi Nakamoto sent him ten Bitcoin. As a test. It was the first Bitcoin transaction between two people, recorded in Block 170 — still readable in the blockchain today, with the same proof as on the day it was written.
In the days that followed Finney exchanged e-mails with Satoshi, reported bugs, made suggestions. He was not just one of the first users. He was the first person who took the thing seriously.
The second “Running”: 2009 was his running year too
Here comes the part that is missing from most texts about Hal Finney.
When he wrote “Running bitcoin”, he was himself in the best physical shape of his life. In his own words: “I was in the best shape of my life at the start of that year, I'd lost a lot of weight and taken up distance running. I'd run several half marathons, and I was starting to train for a full marathon.” A lot of weight lost, several half marathons in his legs, the first marathon training begun. His wife said later that he had been training towards a Boston qualifying time.
So in the same year in which the network started running, Hal Finney was running himself. And in the same year he stopped.
August 2009: the diagnosis
“My body began to fail me”, he wrote. Slurred speech, less strength in his hands, legs that would not recover any more. In August 2009 he got the diagnosis: ALS, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. A disease that destroys exactly those nerve cells that control the muscles. First the legs, then the arms, then speech, at the end breathing. The mind stays clear. You watch yourself go.
Eight months earlier he had been training for a marathon.
Four months after the diagnosis he stood at the start of the first Santa Barbara International Marathon anyway. He walked the last two miles with a cane, his wife Fran beside him, around him the team “South Coast Fights ALS”. The fundraiser had been Fran's idea; the money went to local ALS research. For the year after, the plan was for him to reach the finish line in a wheelchair.
“Bitcoin and me” — the text from 2013
On March 19, 2013 Finney published a post in the BitcoinTalk forum titled “Bitcoin and me”. In it he wrote about the early days, about Satoshi, about RPOW, about his illness. It is one of the few documents in which a Bitcoin pioneer speaks about himself.
The most sober sentence in it is the heaviest: “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.”
What comes after it is remarkable. He kept programming. Not until his hands failed, but beyond that: with his eyes, by his own estimate around fifty times slower than before, on software for storing Bitcoin safely. His own coins, he wrote, were in a safe deposit box, his children technically capable enough. The last sentence of the text reads: “I'm comfortable with my legacy.”
August 28, 2014
On August 28, 2014 Hal Finney died in Phoenix, Arizona. He was 58 years old.
The network kept running. In its whole history it has had exactly two outages, 2010 and 2013 — both in Finney's lifetime, both repaired within hours. Since then it has run without interruption, including on the day one of its first operators died. That is exactly the thought that carries on this date: Bitcoin is built so that it needs nobody. Not him either.
We remember him anyway. Not out of nostalgia, but because otherwise the early years shrink into an anecdote. Bitcoin was built by people who risked something at a time when there was neither money nor recognition in it.
What became of the two words
After Finney's death the sentence could have stayed a quotation. It did not.
Since January 2022 there has been the Running Bitcoin Challenge: a running event in early January, led by Fran Finney and hosted by the ALS Network. The classic distance is the half marathon — Hal's favourite distance — shorter routes work too, walking or rolling. Whoever takes part collects donations for ALS research, paid in Bitcoin. The fifth edition started in January 2026. According to Fran Finney, runners from over 50 countries have started in his name since then.
A status message turned into an annual movement that raises money against exactly the disease its author died of. That is, if you like, the most honest form of Proof of Work: you claim nothing, you do it.
The man who bet on the longest horizon
There is a footnote to Hal Finney's story that says a lot about him. After his death he was cryonically preserved by the Alcor Life Extension Foundation — frozen, in the hope that a later medicine can do what today's cannot.
You do not have to consider that realistic. But you should see the attitude behind it. All his life Finney bet on things whose return lay far in the future: encryption, when hardly anyone needed it. Digital money, when there was none. And in the end on a medicine that does not exist yet.
Anyone who wants to know what Low Time Preference means taken to its conclusion — doing something today whose benefit only arrives much later — will find in Hal Finney the most complete example that Bitcoin's history has to offer.
Was Hal Finney Satoshi Nakamoto?
The question has kept coming up for years, and you understand why: he was a cryptographer, with RPOW he had built the closest predecessor, he lived for years in the same small town as a man called Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto, and he was one of the very first to start the software.
None of that is proven. Finney denied being Satoshi during his lifetime. Something else is proven, and it is entirely enough: he was the first recipient of a Bitcoin transaction, one of the first miners, an early bug finder and for years one of the clearest minds around the project. You do not have to make him Satoshi to find his role big.
Wearing the sentence
Because this story matters to us, it is on two shirts here — not as decoration, but as a quotation with an origin.
The Bitcoin Running Shirt Running Bitcoin carries the two words typographically on the back, quiet and clear. The Bitcoin Running Shirt Hal Finney shows them as a large motif with a runner, plus the year 2009 and his name — the second meaning, made visible.
Both are the same light performance shirt: 135 g/m² of 100 % polyester, moisture-wicking, with mesh ventilation and UV protection factor UPF 40+, in Black, Charcoal and White from S to XXL. Made for running. What else, with a sentence like that. You will find everything else in our Bitcoin sports equipment.
And if you run the Running Bitcoin Challenge in January: you now know why it is called that.
Frequently asked questions about Hal Finney and “Running Bitcoin”
What does “Running Bitcoin” mean?
The sentence comes from Hal Finney, who published it on January 11, 2009. It meant that the Bitcoin software was running on his computer — he was one of the very first to start it at all. Because Finney was a runner himself, the sentence has taken on a second meaning that he never intended.
Who was Hal Finney?
A US-American cryptographer (May 4, 1956 – August 28, 2014). He worked on the encryption software PGP, developed the predecessor system RPOW in 2004 and, by his own account, was the first person besides Satoshi Nakamoto to run the Bitcoin software.
When was the first Bitcoin transaction?
On January 12, 2009. Satoshi Nakamoto sent Hal Finney ten Bitcoin as a test. The transfer is recorded in Block 170 of the blockchain.
Was Hal Finney Satoshi Nakamoto?
It is suspected, but it is not proven, and Finney denied it during his lifetime. What is proven is that he was the first recipient of a Bitcoin transaction, mined early on and corresponded with Satoshi by e-mail in the first days.
What did Hal Finney die of?
Of ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis). He got the diagnosis in August 2009 and died on August 28, 2014 at the age of 58.
What is the Running Bitcoin Challenge?
An annual running event in early January that has existed since 2022. It is led by Fran Finney, the widow of Hal Finney, and hosted by the ALS Network. Participants run a half marathon or a shorter distance and collect donations for ALS research, paid in Bitcoin.
Keep stacking sats,
Tobi & Henry
