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:
Dai recalled that Satoshi had reached him directly, and that he let it pass:
“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.”
The small stake he eventually put in had grown enormously:
“That approximately $200 investment (plus maybe another $100 in electricity) is also worth around six figures today.”
He drew a broader lesson from the episode:
“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?”
Asked why he had not acted in 2009, Dai pointed to his orthodox monetary views (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.”
And he conceded that twice stumbling into outsized returns had shaken his faith in 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.”
Dai’s regret over this missed contact echoes his 2013 critique of Bitcoin’s monetary policy, where he reflected that replying to Satoshi’s 2008 request for comments on the draft paper might have let him dissuade the fixed-supply design.