“I am fascinated by Tim May's crypto-anarchy. Unlike the communities
traditionally associated with the word "anarchy", in a crypto-anarchy the
government is not temporarily destroyed but permanently forbidden and
permanently unnecessary. It's a community where the threat of violence is
impotent because violence is impossible, and violence is impossible
because its participants cannot be linked to their true names or physical
locations.”
Insert Photo Here
Can't find One
Okay, so he’s not really ignored. He does appear frequently in those “Who is Satoshi?” speculations, but not nearly as often as Hal Finney, Adam Back or Nick Szabo. The above quote is from his 1998 paper introducing b-money, which Satoshi referenced in the bitcoin whitepaper. Damn, that's a great quote. It should be referenced more often. It would have been nice to include a photo of Mr. Wei, but I couldn't find one. His @nemo-ness is legendary.
B-Money
B-money included the following ideas, which were incorporated in bitcoin a decade later:
Described as "money which is impossible to regulate", Dai's b-money described the core concepts later implemented in Bitcoin[13] and other cryptocurrencies:
• Requires a specified amount of computational work (aka Proof of work).
• The work done is verified by the community who update a collective ledger book.
• The worker is awarded funds for their effort.
• Exchange of funds is accomplished by collective bookkeeping and authenticated with cryptographic hashes.
• Contracts are enforced through the broadcast and signing of transactions with digital signatures (i.e., public key cryptography).
You can read more about b-money here.
Pen Pals
Satoshi and Wei Dai emailed each other before the bitcoin whitepaper was published. Watch this video if you want to learn more about their communcations.
According to the bitcoin wiki on bitcoin.org:
Wei Dai and Adam Back were the first two people contacted by Satoshi Nakamoto as he was developing Bitcoin in 2008[2] and the b-money paper was referenced in the subsequent Bitcoin whitepaper.[14] In a May 2011 article, noted cryptographer Nick Szabo states: Myself, Wei Dai, and Hal Finney were the only people I know of who liked the idea (or in Dai's case his related idea) enough to pursue it to any significant extent until Nakamoto (assuming Nakamoto is not really Finney or Dai).[15]
Wei Dai is a private guy, but you can read more about his career here.