In this third email of the chain, Satoshi thanked Adam Back for pointing him to Wei Dai’s b-money proposal and made a historically significant admission:
Thanks, I wasn’t aware of the b-money page, but my ideas start from exactly that point.
This statement is important for two reasons: it establishes that Satoshi developed Bitcoin’s core ideas independently of b-money before learning of Dai’s work, and it confirms that b-money was added to the Bitcoin whitepaper’s references only after Back’s suggestion.
Satoshi also described the technical approach of his system:
[Satoshi explained how the system uses proof-of-work for coin generation and network timestamping, describing the chain of hash-based proof-of-work to create self-evident proof of the majority consensus.]
Following this exchange, Satoshi contacted Wei Dai directly on August 22, 2008, initiating a separate correspondence that would lead to b-money being cited as reference [1] in the Bitcoin whitepaper.
[Source: Filed as exhibit evidence in the COPA v. Craig Wright trial, London, February 2024. Adam Back’s Second Witness Statement (document C/21, dated November 7, 2023) included the complete five-email chain. Published in Bitcoin Magazine.]