There’s a story I can’t get out of my head. On August 28, 2014, one of the most important pioneers of cryptography had his body frozen in liquid nitrogen in Arizona. Hal Finney frozen there, waiting for future medicine to bring him back. It sounds like science fiction, but it is absolutely real.

Why does this matter? Because Finney wasn’t just anyone. He was the first user of the Bitcoin network besides Satoshi Nakamoto himself. Imagine: on January 3, 2009, Bitcoin’s genesis block is born. Nine days later, Satoshi sends 10 bitcoins to Finney. Done—the first transaction in history. At the time, the entire network literally had only two people.

What fascinates me is the coincidence of these events. In 2014, when Newsweek published that they had found Satoshi Nakamoto—an American of Japanese origin named Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto in Temple City, California—it was later discovered to be a complete mistake. But here’s the detail: Hal Finney also lived in Temple City, just a few blocks away. Some speculated whether Finney might have used the neighbor’s name as a pseudonym. Does that make sense? Maybe not. But it’s intriguing.

Finney was a real cryptographer. He worked with Phil Zimmermann on PGP back in the 90s, when the U.S. government still classified strong cryptography as armament. He rewrote the core algorithm of PGP 2.0, making it faster and more secure. Then, in 2004, he created RPOW—a system that solved exactly the problem Bitcoin would come to solve: preventing double spending without a central authority. That was four years before Satoshi’s whitepaper.

When Satoshi published Bitcoin on the cypherpunks mailing list in October 2008, Finney immediately saw the potential. He downloaded the software, becoming the first full node besides Satoshi. He exchanged emails with him, reporting bugs that Satoshi corrected. Two minds working together silently, somewhere on the internet.

But then, in 2009, the same year Bitcoin was born, Finney was diagnosed with ALS—amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. The disease progresses gradually, stealing control of the muscles until total paralysis. Five years later, in 2014, he died. And he chose to be cryogenically preserved. One form of payment? Bitcoin, of course.

Now think about this: Satoshi Nakamoto disappeared in 2011. His millions of bitcoins have never been moved. Some say it’s proof that he didn’t create it for personal gain. Meanwhile, Finney frozen in Arizona, his body preserved, waiting for a future that may never arrive.

Speculating whether Finney was Satoshi? Probably doesn’t make much sense. He denied it during his lifetime and showed exchanged emails with Satoshi. But what really matters is that these two were the first to believe it was possible. Without witnesses, without applause—just two computers working.

Finney left a line that still moves people today: “Computing technology can be used to free and protect people, and not to control them.” He wrote this in 1992, 17 years before Bitcoin existed. And even fully paralyzed at the end of his life, operating the computer only with an eye-tracker, he continued contributing code to the system he helped create.

If one day medicine manages to wake Finney up, what would he think seeing today’s crypto world? Nobody knows. But regardless of whether he was or wasn’t Satoshi, Hal Finney frozen in history is a living monument to what it means to be a true pioneer. Without him, perhaps Bitcoin would never have left the paper.