The man in the focus of our story today is this lovely chap below, Wei Dai.

Wei Dai is a world-renowned computer scientist and cryptographer (surprise, surprise). One of the most important aspects all throughout his studies and career has always been privacy.

During his studies he became fascinated with the crypto-anarcho scene and it was only natural that he quickly became a part of the legendary cypherpunk scene (read the explainer at the end of this article if you want to know more about this super duper important mailing list)

You might just find yourself asking right now “What the hell is crypto-anarchy?!”. Let me reassure you that this isn’t the digital equivalent of anarchist who want to get rid of the government and replace it with cryptographic technology.

Rather, it can be understood as a set of ideas that help individuals to maintain their privacy.

Crypto-anarchists are individuals who utilize cryptographic software and privacy-enhancing technologies to evade persecution while propagating their political freedom, financial sovereignty, and perpetuating their privacy. — Usman Chohan

For a thorough explainer on the ideas behind crypto-anarchy, check out this interesting blog post!

But back to Dai now.

He was not only drawn to broad range of cryptographic and privacy-focused subjects of the mailing list, but also became one of the most active and important contributors to it!

And in 1998 he eventually sent a truly ingenious idea out into the group of crypto-anarchists:

“…a scheme for a group of untraceable digital pseudonyms to pay each other with money and to enforce contracts amongst themselves without outside help”. — Wei Dai

If you’re thinking “Hmm, that sounds pretty much like every cryptocurrency out there today.” then you’re not mistake. Wei Dai’s proposal for b-money was the first postulation of a truly decentralized digital currency ever made.

It doesn’t come as a surprise then, that Wei Dai is also one of the few people referenced by Bitcoin’s mysterious creator(s), Satoshi Nakamoto, in his whitepaper in Bitcoin.

Dai actually didn’t propose only one, but two ideas of how b-money could look like. We will go through each one together below.