// forensics . 2011
Wei Dai's Bitcoin public key
In 2011, Wei Dai slipped a Bitcoin address into his site's footer, right after the last-modified date. And his PGP key, still online.
Wei Dai never said much about Bitcoin in public, but he left a discreet trace of it. On the version of his weidai.com home page captured on 12 October 2011, the signature line at the bottom ends with an unexpected string, right after "Last modified: 10/12/2011":
bitcoin address1AkqxLJn8H6Cg5VAaYijzj7hQUSeM2LJ3r
It is a Bitcoin address (P2PKH format, prefix "1"), that is, the fingerprint of a public key. Placing it in the footer of a personal site, in 2011, is the gesture of a man following very closely the project born of the document he was the first to sketch. This is the "Bitcoin public key" people mean when they talk about Wei Dai and Bitcoin.
For ordinary encryption, his page also linked to a PGP public key (pubkey.txt), reproduced below. The block's internal identifier gives the e-mail address weidai@weidai.com.
Written by: Wei Dai Last modified: 10/12/2011 1AkqxLJn8H6Cg5VAaYijzj7hQUSeM2LJ3rarchive → https://web.archive.org/web/20111028052026/http://www.weidai.com/
-----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK----- Version: PGP 8.0 mQCNAi1dYM0AAAEEALtKBUNfRff6AHC7fKAcNG9S2uYz49QBK7hQ8TtS8tJvCu1I QhiHYdO5qRvCviS+ZSJWXlv67igxUa+JEcrvb7AFNK1sDbinS3TM/aM110OfJiJu OxgbYW6RPEyml4CpYH04jWM4g1uxIUoTAz68AB/dDa7Z7drhhzl0sXKgdnV5AAUR tBtXZWkgRGFpIDx3ZWlkYWlAd2VpZGFpLmNvbT6JAJ8EEAECAAkFAj5J8PsCGQEA CgkQOXSxcqB2dXl2wwP9Emjman84TFr2vD3o7VZagYfx/bKEniE5Kn3Fp+2FqeYm q4/aF+k3dUeKGyTn6OvL5Deeoh09NxzXHYBU+s0zm9OkgSS72lmNzIa3SXqtCvZW bp+fHJrafu9/5jepZNObghLQsyvBi/d5ZRQXDV9ELIYMo5i0PvaMLrROZ3eXE7E= =PDSI -----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----archive → https://web.archive.org/web/20111028052026/http://www.weidai.com/pubkey.txt