Entries tagged with this topic. Spans across types and sources — explore connections between people, events, and themes.
15 entries
Wei Dai announces b-money on the Cypherpunks list as a brief addendum to PipeNet 1.1, pointing readers to his eskimo.com page — the proposal later cited as reference [1] in the Bitcoin whitepaper.
Adam Back reposts the full text of Wei Dai's b-money proposal to the Cypherpunks list, with comments to follow — the message that opened the December 1998 b-money design discussion.
Adam Back's first reply: the Hashcash citation looks fine, and Satoshi should look at Wei Dai's b-money proposal as somewhat related work.
b-money is whitepaper reference [1], his Crypto++ shipped inside Bitcoin v0.1, and he was the second person Satoshi contacted. The evidence for Wei Dai as Satoshi, weighed.
Adam Back replies to Wei Dai on Cypherpunks, identifying seven monetary-design issues in b-money and proposing Hashcash as the minting mechanism — a substantive analysis ten years before Bitcoin.
Bitcoin v0.1 reuses one cypherpunk primitive (PoW from Hashcash), borrows general CS components (Merkle trees, linked timestamping, ECDSA), and synthesizes the rest (UTXO, mining, 21M cap, P2P).
Satoshi thanks Adam Back for the b-money reference and reveals he was not previously aware of Wei Dai's proposal. Historically significant line: 'my ideas start from exactly that point.'
Wei Dai announces b-money on the Cypherpunks list as a secondary item alongside PipeNet 1.1, his primary focus. The proposal later cited in Bitcoin appears in a single sentence at the end of the post.
On LessWrong, Wei Dai clarifies he did not create Bitcoin — "only described a similar idea more than a decade ago" — buys a Radeon 5870 to mine, and warns Bitcoin lacks cryptographer security review.
Wei Dai replies to Adam Back on Cypherpunks, conceding b-money would be at most a niche mechanism and revealing his shift toward viewing the government monopoly of force as a net benefit.
Wei Dai LessWrong comments: Bitcoin's monetary policy has failed due to volatility, and he never replied to Satoshi's 2008 review email — regretting he could have dissuaded the fixed-supply choice.
Wei Dai's LessWrong Q&A reflections: Satoshi did not read the b-money paper before reinventing the idea, and Dai had grown disillusioned with cryptoanarchy by the time he wrote it up.
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 for the correct b-money citation, revealing he learned of it via Adam Back. The email linked the pre-release draft 'Electronic Cash Without a Trusted Third Party'.
Hal Finney responds positively to Bitcoin, becoming one of the first supporters. He raises questions about the computational cost and suggests potential improvements.