In the 2nd Quarter 2019 issue of Cryonics Magazine (published by the Alcor Life Extension Foundation), an extensive profile of Hal Finney was published based primarily on interviews with his wife, Fran Finney. The profile was subsequently adapted by Dan Held and republished on 21ideas.org on March 30, 2020.
Fran met Hal during her junior year at Caltech, during “rotation week” in his freshman semester: “I saw him in the middle of being lifted and carried by [upperclassmen].” She recalled: “People would cluster around and get into all these philosophical discussions… When he spoke, what he said was usually worth listening to.”
Hal had run Bitcoin from its first release in January 2009. Their son Jason recalled that his father “was kind of shocked later when it turned out that Bitcoin actually started to have value,” and Hal’s wife agreed that this had been Hal’s perspective as well:
Hal Finney (Cryonics Magazine profile, Q2 2019)This is cool. This is a fun game. Look! This is actually working! Some of my ideas might be useful someday.
The profile places the first signs of his illness in 2009. Hal had his eye on the 2010 Boston Marathon and entered the spring 2009 Los Angeles Marathon to qualify, but around mile 13, on the Sunset Strip, he cramped up badly and had to quit. In July 2009, thirty years after their wedding, he tired before the couple finished their anniversary ride, one mile for each year of marriage. “We should’ve been able to do the 30 miles,” Fran says. “It should’ve been really easy, but he couldn’t do it…One week later he got his official diagnosis.”
On Hal’s ALS and cognitive decline, his wife was direct — complementing Hal’s own chronicle of the disease’s physical progression, first in his October 2009 essay “Dying Outside” and later in his 2013 essay “Bitcoin and Me”:
Fran Finney (Cryonics Magazine profile, Q2 2019)It’s not a normal kind of dementia, but the brain is involved. Hal felt that it was affecting his ability to do his fast thinking, to do his mental math. He felt like he was losing that, and he would lose more.
On Hal’s worldview, she put it simply:
Fran Finney (Cryonics Magazine profile, Q2 2019)He did not believe in God. He believed in the future.
I know Hal wanted to be around. He wanted to experience the future. He was very excited about change… It seemed like he was happier with each and every change. Each change was great! He embraced it, and he was always looking forward to more.
“He was not afraid of death.” Regarding his motivation for cryonics:
Fran Finney (Cryonics Magazine profile, Q2 2019)I think that was a lot of his motivation for getting involved with cryonics in the first place. He just wanted to be able to see what the world turned into, because it was going to be such an amazing, wondrous place.
On Hal as a father, her summary was brief:
Fran Finney (Cryonics Magazine profile, Q2 2019)A very easygoing father.
The profile also records how the end came. The couple had decided that when he could no longer communicate with friends and family, even with his many technological aids, that would be his moment of transition. That time arrived on August 26, 2014: flanked by family, Hal was admitted to the ICU of a Scottsdale hospital, not far from Alcor’s patient storage facility, and two days later he became Alcor’s 128th patient.
This profile is one of the pieces of family testimony weighed in the Hal Finney Satoshi-identity hypothesis.
