LessWrong post “Look for the Next Tech Gold Rush?”, July 19, 2014:
Wei Dai — creator of the b-money proposal (1998) and cited as reference [1] in the Bitcoin whitepaper — described how he nearly missed Bitcoin entirely:
On Satoshi’s direct outreach:
“In early 2009, someone named Satoshi Nakamoto emailed me personally with an announcement that he had published version 0.1 of Bitcoin. I didn’t pay much attention at the time (I was more interested in Less Wrong than Cypherpunks at that point), but then in early 2011 I saw a LW article about Bitcoin, which prompted me to start mining it.”
On his return from mining:
“That approximately $200 investment (plus maybe another $100 in electricity) is also worth around six figures today.”
On the broader lesson:
“Clearly, technological advances can sometimes create gold rush-like situations… it’s possible to stumble into them without even trying. Which makes me think, maybe we should be trying?”
On why he didn’t act in 2009 (comment, July 23):
“My monetary policy views were firmly mainstream, which considers rapid unpredictable changes in prices… to be a really bad thing for a currency.”
On updating beliefs about market efficiency (comment, July 19):
“EMH is the reason I didn’t bother looking… But after stumbling into assets with returns in the 100x-1000x range (or 100% to 500% annualized), twice, it seems time to update a bit.”