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posted by n1 on Friday August 29 2014, @05:24PM   Printer-friendly
from the welcome-to-the-world-of-tomorrow dept.

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.

http://www.wired.com/2014/08/hal-finney/

 
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  • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Saturday August 30 2014, @03:46AM

    by kaszz (4211) on Saturday August 30 2014, @03:46AM (#87456) Journal

    If one can solve the issue of an anti-freeze that humans can safely drink. One can probably make use of cryo-preservation. If frogs etc can do and some arctic fish. That's a hint that there might be a molecular path to the solution.

    For those already frozen, nanotech is likely the only viable path.

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