Sounds like it didn’t cover applied cryptography.

I think the timeline roughly fits to when Levichen and Theil started PayPal and not too far away. Levichen was I believe a cryptographer and they got started (if I remember correctly) because he wanted to create “internet money” which was a popular topic among cryptographers during that time period it seems. They just created a centralized one.

It’s the first chapter of Founders at Work by Livingston. Great book.