Hal Finney’s wife resumes activity on Bitcoin pioneer’s Twitter account to avoid potential purge

Fran Finney, the wife of computer scientist Hal Finney – the recipient of the first transaction on the Bitcoin blockchain from Satoshi Nakamoto – reactivated her late husband’s Twitter account amid concerns Twitter chief Elon Musk may remove content from the social media platform due to inactivity.

Many Crypto Twitter users reported on December 16 that Finney’s account registered activity for the first time in more than 12 years. Some speculated that a hacker may have taken control of the Bitcoin (BTC) pioneer’s account, which has more than 71,000 followers, but Fran quickly stepped in to dispel the rumours.

“I’m tweeting for Hal […] to avoid his account being purged by Elon” so Fran.

I want to keep Hal’s account active, and will occasionally post from his account. When I post, I will continue to tag myself as the poster.

— Fran Finney (@franfinney) 16 December 2022

It is unclear whether Fran Finney’s intervention can save the crypto pioneer’s social media presence. In the midst of Musk’s $44 billion purchase of Twitter, which was completed in October, he did claimed he supported freedom of speech as “the bedrock of a functioning democracy”.

But under Musk’s leadership, the social media platform on December 15 purged a number of accounts controlled by high-profile journalists at institutions including CNN, the New York Times and the Washington Post. Accounts tracking the movements of Musk’s private flights as well as promoting the social networking platform Mastodon – which has attracted many Twitter users since the billionaire’s takeover – were also suspended. The Twitter boss claimed the former “doxxed my exact location in real time.”

Why have journalists had their Twitter accounts suspended? Please explain. And that should have been a GOOD explanation.

— Stephen King (@StephenKing) 16 December 2022

Musk had a net worth of more than $300 billion in October 2021 prior to the acquisition of Twitter, and around the same time, Tesla’s stock price hit an all-time high of $407.36 in November 2021. In about a year, the Bloomberg Billionaires Index showed that Tesla -boss had fallen to the second richest person on the planet, with a reported net worth of $169 billion at the time of publication.

As CEO, Musk oversaw a series of controversial decisions on Twitter that caused many in the business world to question his acumen. He fired many senior executives, including many members of the platform’s content moderation team, and attempted to charge users for “verified” blue ticks — leading to many fake accounts with a veneer of legitimacy. The social media platform also saw an increase in tweets containing hate speech and misinformation about vaccines, putting revenue from advertisers at risk.

Twitter users seemed to largely support Fran Finney’s efforts to show that the account was still active and beneficial to the crypto community. Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey too the germ onto the platform to express their surprise at their account’s reactivation.

“There should be a way to preserve accounts of historical importance,” so Twitter user 0xAphelion on Hal Finney’s account. “But better to be safe.”

Related: Crypto garbage bots fall silent as Musk vows to prosecute fraudsters

Hal Finney was one of the most famous names in the crypto space, having been one of the first to respond to Satoshi’s post on the cypherpunk mailing list. He died of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis – ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease – in 2014 at the age of 58.