Short answers, pulled from the story.
Wei Dai graduated from the University of Washington with a degree in computer science. This academic foundation arrived just before he published his first major work on digital cash systems in 1998.
Dai wrote the original code for Crypto++ in 1995. Community members continued maintaining the project after Dai stepped away in June 2015.
An anonymous distributed electronic cash system appeared in a paper titled b-money during 1998. The scheme described untraceable digital pseudonyms paying each other without outside help.
Critical security flaws emerged in SSH2 protocols due to Cipher Block Chaining vulnerabilities that Wei Dai identified. He also discovered the Browser Exploit Against SSL/TLS known as BEAST.
Satoshi Nakamoto contacted Wei Dai and Adam Back first during the development of Bitcoin in 2008. The b-money paper received direct reference in the subsequent Bitcoin whitepaper released that same year.
Nick Szabo stated in May 2011 that speculation regarding Satoshi Nakamoto included Wei Dai himself. No official confirmation exists linking him directly to the creation of the world's largest cryptocurrency.