Wei Dai publishes the b-money proposal on the cypherpunks mailing list, describing for the first time a system of electronic cash that cannot be regulated by governments. The proposal outlined two protocols for maintaining a distributed ledger of account balances using proof of work.
b-money was cited as the first reference in the Bitcoin whitepaper. Satoshi Nakamoto emailed Wei Dai before publishing the paper, and the smallest unit of Bitcoin's predecessor currency was named after him in spirit.
Read the b-money proposal