From the Cypherpunks mailing list (cypherpunks@cyberpass.net), December 1998:
Subject: Re: Wei Dei’s “b-money” protocol
Wei Dai answered Adam Back’s critique of the b-money protocol in two parts, sent on consecutive days. On December 7, he addressed the computational-cost-inflation point, arguing the protocol already accounted for it, and proposed a Chaumian payment-mix to break transaction linkability. The following day, replying to Back’s point about the resource waste of a monopoly-free system, Dai revealed a shift in his own political thinking:
Quote from: Wei Dai on December 08, 1998, 12:12:21 AM UTC“I now tend to think that the government monopoly of force is a net benefit.”
On b-money’s likely scope, he was modest:
Wei Dai“I think b-money will at most be a niche currency/contract enforcement mechanism, serving those who don’t want to or can’t use government sponsored ones.”
Dai raised questions about what would be needed for broader adoption, including price stability, business cycles, and optimal inflation rates — the same monetary-policy questions the archive’s analysis of Bitcoin’s fixed supply against adjustable-money designs revisits a decade later.
These 1998 reservations — that b-money would remain a niche mechanism, and Dai’s growing distance from crypto-anarchy — are the contemporaneous trace of a doubt he would only name explicitly years later, in his 2014 LessWrong retrospective on why he never carried b-money to implementation, and again in his 2013 critique of Bitcoin’s own monetary policy.
