Amir Taaki was one of the earliest dedicated Bitcoin developers and perhaps the most sadly focused on maintaining confidentiality and freedom from authority.
In 2014, Forbes Taaki is on its “30 Under 30” list of technology stars for the creation of Dark Wallet, the first Bitcoin privacy-focused wallet to include a CoinJoin blender. The same year, Taaki received an even greater notoriety because Dark Wallet was named twice in the report of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) on the potential risks of money laundering and terrorist financing posed by crypto -currencies.
In 2015, Taaki traveled to Rojava, Syria, to serve with the YPG Military, a component of the Syrian Democratic Forces fighting the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). After months of fighting on the front lines, he spent more than a year working with the Rojava Economic Committee.
Taaki also created Libbitcoin and Bitcoin’s BIP proposal system as well as DarkMarket, the prototype of what eventually became OpenBazaar, an open source protocol for e-commerce. Aside from his development work, Taaki also founded the anarchist group UnSystem, which included Cody Wilson, creator of a 3D printable pistol, and Mihai Alisie, co-founder of Bitcoin magazine and Ethereum.
Now Taaki has returned as a contributor to several projects, many of which have yet to be revealed to the public. Although not ready to fully reveal his hand, the dissident technologist expressed strong appreciation for members of the crypto community, as well as a loss of confidence in his leadership and overall direction.
Technology open to all
For Taaki, what has become a lifetime commitment to build technology without authoritarian intervention began with an interest in what draws many people to Bitcoin: the promise of open source development to break away from authority.
“It turns out that I was 16 when I discovered the open-source movement, which, for me, was absolutely incredible that there are people in the world who build this technology … which plays a role fundamental to our infrastructure and our Internet, “said Taaki. Bitcoin magazine. “I sort of decided, I’m going to dedicate my life to realizing this dream. And it’s something that has captivated me for the next decade.”
From his open-source involvement, Taaki found other technologists who were deeply concerned about politics. Among the many ideologies to which he has been exposed, he found anarchy particularly interesting. This led him to ask questions about the nature of the company and the hierarchy and how to create a richer and more sophisticated society. He saw Bitcoin as an unstoppable force for this purpose.
“[At] my first speech on Bitcoin in Amsterdam was the EPCA conference… I said, look guys, this is radical technology. Now that we’re here, you can’t stop us, ”recalls Taaki. “This is what we are going to do for you.”
Sometimes his strong anti-middleman position put him in direct conflict with the other early Bitcoin developers – another group he saw as an obstacle to free and open development as he defined it.
“Gavin Andressen contacted me and said,” I really didn’t like the way you talked at the conference. I think you should stop talking publicly about Bitcoin, “said Taaki. “Gavin preceded the establishment of roadblocks for me to participate in the development of Bitcoin – to get away from Bitcoin. Whenever I tried to validate code for the Bitcoin Core project, it was stuck and I realized that it was impossible for me to work with these people. This is why I started working on Libbitcoin, to rewrite the source code of Bitcoin to have an alternative implementation. “
Taaki’s work on the BIP revision system was originally intended to establish some standardization for implementation and public review of changes to the code. But he now sees the system as an obstacle to the development of Bitcoin that promotes the status quo over technological progress.
“The problem is that the culture that we initiated at these beginnings has completely gone beyond the mental space of Bitcoin,” said Taaki. “It was not the original intention. Originally, the intention was to make Bitcoin a conservative against change. But that didn’t stop any progress from happening inside Bitcoin. It is very badly designed. It is very ineffective. The cryptographic developments that are happening right now will lead to a system that will eventually replace Bitcoin. “
Thinking back to the Bitcoin community of which he was a part in the early 2010s, Taaki sees the distance between the philosophies that first drew him to technology and the philosophical camps that have been established today.
“What we have seen happen since then is that these simplistic ideologies, which initially converged around Bitcoin, could not really guide us,” he said. “And so we have seen a diversification of these ideologies … There is this bizarre, regressive or reactionary Bitcoin culture … and it is opposed to any kind of change or progress or development or advancement.”
Taaki also noted concerns about the cryptocurrency space to which it belonged years ago and which is now “co-opted” by outsiders – corporate or government groups wanting to take technology out of their hands idealistic cypherpunks who worked with Satoshi. to usher in the era.
“We are in this very strange place inside the cryptographic culture where we are confronted with important challenges for technology, this being co-opted by external actors, by actors who do not necessarily have a vision or a philosophical goal that we originally had. in mind, “he said. “Maybe I’m talking about people like ConsenSys, or maybe I’m talking about digital currencies from central banks or Facebook… Bottom line: The only way to overcome these challenges is to have a consistent analysis, a organizational system and some kind of narrative so that we can develop something that is coordinated. “
The reality of dissident technology in Syria
After leading technological development and ideological conversation around Bitcoin for almost five years, Taaki traveled to Rojava, an autonomous region in northern Syria where forces were trying to build and defend a direct democracy based on libertarian, socialist and anarchist principles which promoted decentralization, gender equality, environmental sustainability as well as religious, political and cultural tolerance and diversity.
Despite the search for a technological development role, Taaki spent his first year in Rojava serving on the front lines of a war with ISIS.
“It was crazy,” said Taaki. “I was literally sent to war, I handed over a Kalashnikov on the way to the front line and I said, ‘Don’t worry, if you don’t die in two weeks, you will know everything you need to know about fighting in a war. It was a crazy time. It was chaos, but I managed to get out of this position after a few months. “
Taaki returned to Syria in 2019, this time in the role of reviewing technical projects for the region.
“I was looking for open source solutions, like how to build a mobile phone network,” he said. “I also looked at how we could deploy cryptocurrencies. The so-called leaders I contacted were very limited in their thinking and did not offer much support… There is so much to consider and if your goal is to create the infrastructure for five million people, c is so different from making individual accounts for an application-based market that you can download. “
If this seems like an opportunity for one of the most prominent Bitcoin developers to implement the technology in a region that could clearly benefit from it, Taaki pointed out that this was not the case.
“The reality is that if an administration around the world says that it wants to deploy Bitcoin in a region of its country, there is no group that has the software infrastructure ready to set up a reliable financial network” said Taaki. “For example, if in Hong Kong there is a guy who has Bitcoin, he can extend a line of credit to Syria, and he can cash out of a local pool of dollars. Or people in Syria who have assets like oil can issue futures or higher finance instruments on this asset so they can get investment to build their infrastructure. There is very good application of this technology, but we just don’t think of this level. “
Taaki lists frequently rented use cases in places like Venezuela, Cyprus, and Iran as distractions that keep the Bitcoin community from really preparing the technology to help distressed places around the world before they’re too much far.
“These were lost opportunities,” he said. “It’s sad, it’s our failure as a community. And these future opportunities should be what we choose to face and engage in our market in order to develop better technology. But we don’t do it for Instead, it’s a group of technologists playing with blockchain technology. I don’t see any practical basis in the reality of what we’re doing right now. “
Building the dissident future
In addition to his work of promoting a freer society in Syria, Taaki establishes an academy in Barcelona which incubates new technological projects and offers training in the development of cryptocurrency. He is also working on Nym, which he described as an alternative to Tor. Of course, its mission to strengthen privacy and the lack of authority inherent in technologies like Bitcoin is also an ongoing goal.
“I am also working on the anonymization of cryptocurrencies and products,” said Taaki. “The same technology that I am developing will be a platform or library that we can use to build other products like decentralized exchanges, markets and also a generalized platform for issuing anonymous and smart contracts. ‘other financial instruments … Many people ask for a new version of Dark Wallet, but I’m not going to release a bad product. CoinJoin is broken but I’m going to develop something better. “
Ultimately, Taaki is a professional life devoted to building tools in the hands of dissidents – those who seek to communicate and transact without interference from political authorities, who hope to establish a better and freer society.
“The heritage of the civilization in which we live is a state civilization based on a hierarchical system of control and specialization of work, which leads to all the modern problems we have,” said Taaki. “We want to create a different, free type of society, where people have freedom and the natural wealth of people’s creative energies is developed and nurtured. The emerging field of cryptography offers us a power that we can use to create new financial instruments and networks that can be used as a tool to stop state power and control, and create a space where marginalized communities can operate outside of state control. “
An extended version of this conversation will be published on Bitcoin magazine podcast.
The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.