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Some bitcoin enthusiasts have used their cryptocurrency to travel around the world. Others have spent it on a trip to space. But the very earliest user of bitcoin (after its inventor Satoshi Nakamoto himself) has now spent his crypto coins on the most ambitious mission yet: to visit the future.
Hal Finney, the renowned cryptographer, coder, and bitcoin pioneer, died Thursday morning at the age of 58 after five years battling ALS. He will be remembered for a remarkable career that included working as the number-two developer on the groundbreaking encryption software PGP in the early 1990s, creating one of the first “remailers” that presaged the anonymity software Tor, and—more than a decade later—becoming one of the first programmers to work on bitcoin’s open source code; in 2008, he received the very first bitcoin transaction from Satoshi Nakamoto.
Now Finney has become an early adopter of a far more science fictional technology: human cryopreservation, the process of freezing human bodies so that they can be revived decades or even centuries later.
(Score: 4, Informative) by deimtee on Saturday August 30 2014, @01:24AM
You are probably referring to the chatsworth incident. It wasn't a scam, just an overly optimistic view of the future.
The guy had the best of intentions, but to minimize up-front payments he set it up so that the families of the patients had to pay the ongoing costs.
He didn't get anywhere near the number of patients he expected, and after a while most families stopped paying, and the system collapsed.
That is why all cryonics organisations now require payment in advance, not only for the suspension process, but also sufficient funds that are placed in an investment trust to maintain them indefinitely.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Saturday August 30 2014, @09:33AM
Yes, that was it! But I don't see this as any kind of mistake, or accident, or excessive optimism. If you take people's money on the premise that you freeze them, and then, in the future, they are reanimated by some technology that does not yet exist, you are committing fraud, and the sort of fraud that has only been exceeded by the Catholic Churches program of Indulgences! (For those who need a review, pay us now, we put in a good word with the man upstairs, and you get to go to heaven! No customers ever asked for their money back!) Remember Benny the Dog? In another life, when we are both cats? Except I really think that anyone who has themselves frozen, their soul has already been collected by the basement cat, for the sin of wanting to live forever. And of thinking you could use bitcoin to do it. One is born every minute, so I guess that means one dies every minute, too? Scam. Whole thing makes me lose my faith in humanity. I think I will just go and freeze myself now.