Hal Finney’s Twitter account sees new activity in attempt to preserve a piece of bitcoin’s culture

Hal Finney’s Twitter account, an important part of bitcoin culture and its community, is seeing new activity to avoid being deleted from the platform.

Finney died in 2014, and his dormant account has been a part of bitcoin’s early history many have fought to keep alive.

The activity on Finney’s account was flagged in a tweet by prominent bitcoin advocate and Casa CEO Jameson Lopp, who was unsure if the account had been compromised. Finney’s widow, Fran, confirmed she began tweeting from the account to prevent its deletion.

Twitter CEO Elon Musk tweeted last week the platform would soon start deleting around 1.5 billion inactive accounts.

"If @halfin (Hal Finney’s twitter) is automatically deleted in some blanket-rule sweep, it will be extremely sad. Lots of history will be lost with this rule,” tweeted UpOnly podcast host Cobie.

This isn’t the first time Finney’s account has faced possible deletion. In 2019, former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey made an exception for Finney’s account when Twitter began removing accounts that were inactive for more than six months.

Finney is a notable person in the bitcoin community for being the first to receive a bitcoin transaction from Satoshi Nakamoto, the cryptocurrency’s pseudonymous creator.

Finney also identified early on two of the biggest challenges, which have now come to fruition, bitcoin would face during its lifespan, tweeted Messari founder Ryan Selkis. These challenges he predicted were adding more anonymity to bitcoin, and reducing its CO2 emissions.