Hal Finney's spouse is hosting a Bitcoin fundraiser.

She explained that the purpose of the fundraiser was to help those who have been affected by ALS.

Hal Finney's wife Fran has announced a fundraiser for those with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Finney, in a Twitter post about the event, urged Bitcoin users to run a half marathon and document their experience online between January 1 and January 10, 2023, in order to raise money for research into the disease.

Fran Finney made the announcement through Hal Finney's verified Twitter account. She had previously reactivated the account to keep it from being deleted along with other inactive accounts during Twitter's periodic cleanups.

Named after Hal Finney's first Bitcoin tweet, which he sent just days after Bitcoin went live in 2009, "Running Bitcoin" benefits the Golden West Chapter of the ALS Association. Its website states that it helps people with ALS by lending them equipment and providing them with resources.

The charity has announced that it plans to use the event to raise money by giving away official Running Bitcoin T-shirts and rare Hal Finney collectibles to certain donors.

Hal Finney was a forerunner in the cryptocurrency industry. He developed the Reusable Proof of Work (RPOW) protocol in 2004 so that people could keep spending their Hashcash coins. Popular opinion considers RPOW to be a proto-cryptocurrency, despite the fact that it relied on a centralized server rather than a decentralized network.

In 2008 and 2009, before Bitcoin was released to the public in January 2009, Finney also contributed code to the Bitcoin codebase. Satoshi Nakamoto sent him 10 Bitcoins in the first ever Bitcoin transaction.

Before Hal Finney was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis in August 2009, he had been a runner for much of his life. After fighting the disease for years, he was cryogenically frozen in 2014.