Hal Finney must have accumulated a ton of bitcoin.
What ever happened to them?
After his death, have they been sold?
They sold a lot of it to pay for his medical treatment in the years before his death, plus teh costs of cryonicly freezing him:
https://www.wired.com/2014/08/hal-finney/Finney never quite got rich from his early bitcoin involvement, according to Fran. Much of their savings went toward his health care as his condition deteriorated. They traded the majority of his bitcoins for dollars long before the currency's spike in value late last year.
After my story on Finney's life and work, bitcoiners donated 25 bitcoins to Finney and his family, a sum that's worth close to $12,500 today. Initially, Fran Finney tells me, the family intended to spend that money to buy Finney a new computer interface that would use an electromyographic (EMG) switch to read electric signals from surface muscle, allowing him to better control his voice and writing software. But the interface was incompatible with the few muscles Finney still controlled, leaving him locked in a body that increasingly prevented him from communicating at all.
So instead, the bitcoin donations will now go toward Finney's cryonic procedures, along with a life insurance policy the Finneys have maintained for years to prepare for Alcor's substantial fee. "Once we realized that Hal wasnt going to be able to use the EMG switch, this was our next choice," says Fran. "The bitcoins will cover a large fraction of the cost."
He died in 2014, so they sold back then (way before bitcoin started to surge in price). They got about $12,000 for the lot.
Yep. Heard he had to pay lots for medication.