Wei Dai published b-money on the cypherpunks mailing list in 1998. The proposal combined digital pseudonyms, broadcast transactions, computational cost and collective record-keeping; Satoshi Nakamoto cited it in the Bitcoin whitepaper.
b-money described two protocols rather than a deployed network. Participants would be identified by public keys and collectively maintain balances or delegate record-keeping to servers that posted deposits.
In the first protocol, every participant tracks accounts after verifying broadcast messages and computational work. The second uses a subset of servers, economic deposits and periodic publication of commitments to reduce universal storage.
The original text and its mailing-list context are the primary evidence. Bitcoin’s whitepaper lists b-money as reference one, establishing an intellectual link but not proving that Bitcoin copied the design wholesale.
b-money left difficult details unresolved, including robust consensus, Sybil resistance and practical incentives. It did not use Bitcoin’s longest valid proof-of-work chain, fixed issuance schedule or running implementation.
Its importance is historical and conceptual: it shows that scarce digital money without a conventional issuer was being explored before Bitcoin. Comparing the texts reveals both inherited goals and Bitcoin’s distinct engineering choices.
For the clearest picture, read this entry together with b-money, Cypherpunks, Proof of Work, Satoshi Nakamoto. The reverse links also lead from b-money.