- What are the implications?
Certainly he is not.
If Hal was Satoshi, that would be a big fraud.
Hal Finney was the recipient of the first bitcoin transaction. That would be a big fraud and very egocentric for Satoshi to just create a new account and send the bitcoin to himself and say that it was the first bitcoin transaction.
When Satoshi announced the first release of the software, I grabbed it right away. I think I was the first person besides Satoshi to run bitcoin. I mined block 70-something, and I was the recipient of the first bitcoin transaction, when Satoshi sent ten coins to me as a test. I carried on an email conversation with Satoshi over the next few days, mostly me reporting bugs and him fixing them.