8 entries
Wei Dai's original announcement of b-money on the Cypherpunks mailing list. Notably, b-money was mentioned as a secondary item alongside PipeNet 1.1 — an anonymous routing protocol that was Dai's primary focus. The b-money proposal that would later inspire Bitcoin was introduced in a single sentence at the end of this post.
Wei Dai's reply to Adam Back on the Cypherpunks mailing list, discussing b-money's practical limitations. Dai acknowledged that 'b-money will at most be a niche currency/contract enforcement mechanism' and revealed a shift in his political views, stating 'I now tend to think that the government monopoly of force is a net benefit.'
Adam Back confirms the Hashcash citation and suggests Satoshi look at Wei Dai's b-money proposal. This referral led Satoshi to contact Wei Dai and cite b-money in the Bitcoin whitepaper.
Satoshi emails Wei Dai asking about the correct citation for b-money, revealing that he learned of b-money from Adam Back's reference. The email included a link to the pre-release draft 'Electronic Cash Without a Trusted Third Party' (ecash.pdf) hosted at upload.ae.
Hal Finney responds positively to Bitcoin, becoming one of the first supporters. He raises questions about the computational cost and suggests potential improvements.
Wei Dai's comments on the LessWrong 'Making money with Bitcoin?' thread. He clarified that he did not create Bitcoin but 'only described a similar idea more than a decade ago' and that Satoshi independently reinvented the concept. He revealed purchasing a Radeon 5870 GPU for mining after this thread, and warned that 'not many other cryptographers have analyzed its security.'
Wei Dai's comments on the LessWrong post 'Bitcoins are not digital greenbacks,' in which he argued that Bitcoin has 'failed with regard to its monetary policy' due to price volatility, and revealed that he never responded to Satoshi's 2008 email asking for comments — regretting that he 'could have dissuaded him (or them) from the fixed supply of money idea.'
Wei Dai's reflections on Satoshi Nakamoto and on why b-money was never implemented, from a LessWrong Q&A thread. Dai stated that Satoshi 'didn't even read my article before reinventing the idea himself,' and later explained that b-money 'wasn't a complete practical design yet' and that he had 'grown somewhat disillusioned with cryptoanarchy' by the time he finished writing it up.