Wei Dai is a Chinese computer engineer and University of Washington alumnus who worked for the Cryptography Research Group at Microsoft in the late 1990’s and early 2000's.

Two different cryptocurrencies have been named after him, the “Dai” coin used by the Maker organization, and the “Wei”, which is the smallest unit of the Ether currency. While at Microsoft, he was involved in the study, design and implementation of cryptographic systems. Prior to that he was a programmer at TerraSciences in Massachusetts.

In 1998 he released an informal whitepaper titled “B-money, an anonymous, distributed electronic cash system”, on his personal website WeiDai.com

https://medium.com/the-capital/history-of-blockchain-part-3-wei-dai-1998-1195ab5a4e08