While Elon Musk Plans to Purge 1.5 Billion Inactive Twitter Names, Bitcoiners Beg Him to Preserve Hal Finney’s Account

Supporters of cryptocurrencies have worried that Hal Finney, a computer scientist, will be deleted from Twitter. People are worried about Finney’s account being deleted because Elon Musk stated that Twitter will delete 1.5 billion accounts. Musk stated that Twitter will soon begin releasing the name space for 1.5 billion accounts. He wrote Dec. 9, 2022. These are clear account deletions without tweets and with no log-in over the years,’ Musk wrote.

Bitcoin running

– Halfin (@halfin January 11, 2009

The Twitter account @halfin of Hal Finney, an early bitcoiner, hasn’t tweeted in many years. Finney, a computer scientist, was known for being the recipient of the very first BTC transaction on the network. This was confirmed at block height 170. A number of Twitter users asked Musk to keep Finney’s Twitter address after Musk made statements about deleting accounts. One wrote.

@elonmusk must keep Hal Finney’s twitter account. Please DO NOT PURGE!

Musk was contacted by another Twitter user who asked him to not delete Finney’s account. “Please don’t delete Hal Finney’s account. The user petitioned Twitter’s owner to delete one of the most important Twitter accounts in Bitcoin and crypto space. Finney was the first Twitter account that mentioned Bitcoin on the social media site on January 10, 2009 at 10:33 (ET). Finney tweets about “Running Bitcoin” that day. The tweet has over 55,000 likes as of this writing. On December 12, 2022, the @halfin account had more than 69.400 Twitter followers.

Finney tweeted not only about running bitcoin on Jan. 10, but also that he likely mined his first Bitcoin block the next day. Block 78 has been associated with Finney’s transactions and the bitcoins he had mined in that year. It’s very likely that he mined block 78 Jan. 11, 2009. Block 78 is associated with Finney’s 2009 transactions and all of the coinbase rewards. It is also linked to Finney’s first BTC transaction, 10 BTC Jan. 12, 2009 at 03:30 AM (ET), bitcoins originally derived from Bitcoin block 9..

Finney’s tweet about ‘running Bitcoin’ isn’t the only one he has written about the decentralized cryptocurrency network. Finney stated that he was looking at ways to increase anonymity for bitcoin. He made this statement on Jan. 21, 2009. Finney wrote Jan. 27, 2009, “Thinking about ways to reduce CO2 emissions due to a widespread Bitcoin implementation.” Lyn Alden, a bitcoin advocate, tweeted that Finney’s tweet about ‘running Bitcoin’ said she hoped the account of the computer scientist wouldn’t be deleted.

Alden stated that he hoped this account would not be one of those dormant accounts deleted from Twitter. It would be great to have a project that keeps a few hundred accounts around, if they have significant historical relevance.

Some users suggested occasionally re-liking the original tweet to keep it current. @elonmusk should consider the number of followers. If accounts that are otherwise inactive are gaining new followers, they are likely historically significant.’ Another wrote.