An untold story of Hal Finney: the time he test sent 1,000 BTC with Eugen Leitl

I want to share a story about Hal Finney that hasn’t been told before, to honour his legacy.

We all know his “Running bitcoin” tweet, his prediction of future prices, his role in receiving Satoshi’s first TX.

I stumbled on this while digging through old mailing lists as one does. Not the famous cryptography mailing list but the Cypherpunks mailing list.

Buried there was a post from Hal dated Nov 15, 2010.

“Back at the beginning Eugen and I were playing with it and I sent him 1000 coins as a test, and he sent them back.”

He even remarked: “That would be worth $250 now.” Imagine Hal was already amazed at $250 vs the 0$ it would've been worth when they probably did this.

The 1000 BTC transaction probably occurred Jan or Feb 2009 for the test. By Aug 2025, those same 1,000 BTC would be worth ~$110M. Crazy to think about right?

I’d never heard of Eugen Leitl before this. Yet here he is one of the earliest, humblest adopters, quietly experimenting alongside Hal.

What’s more, Hal closes the post by predicting forks, scammers, and government attention. He saw so much of today coming before anyone did.

Source: https://lists.cpunks.org/archives/list/[email protected]/message/GXQYENC74BTC4POK5YTURR5Y6DIBE5U6/

I would encourage you to check out the cypherpunks mailing list and see some amazing takes and also misses for yourself

I also tweeted about this for those on x https://x.com/A_mo1111_/status/1961371599959146834 I would appreciate some interactions.