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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 umafuckitt on Thursday September 04 2014, @06:03PM

    by umafuckitt (20) on Thursday September 04 2014, @06:03PM (#89431)

    One could say (just as you did) that some "people are exceptionally intelligent" and should be revived so that they can continue their service to humankind.

    This is the big lie of the cryopreservation people. To do the sort of thing you're hinting at we will have to revive people *and* make the younger *and* cure them of what killed them. Not going to happen.

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