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Amir Taaki

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Amir Taaki
Taaki in Bratislava, 2012
Born (1988-02-06) February 6, 1988 (age 36)
London, United Kingdom
NationalityBritish
Occupation(s)Hacker, Programmer
Known forBitcoin, OpenBazaar, Crystal Space, Game development

Amir Taaki (born 6 February 1988) is a British-Iranian computer programmer who is best known for his leading role in the bitcoin project, and for pioneering many open source projects. [1] [2] Forbes listed Taaki in their top 30 entrepreneurs of 2014.[3][4][5]

Biography

Early years

Amir Taaki was born 6 February 1988 in London, the eldest of three children of a Scottish-English[6] mother and an Iranian father who is a property developer. From an early age Taaki took an interest in computer technology, teaching himself computer programming.[7]

Free software

After briefly attending three British universities,[6] Taaki gravitated to the free software movement. Taaki assisted in the creation of SDL Collide, an extension of Simple DirectMedia Layer, an open source library used by video game developers.[8]

In 2006, Taaki became heavily involved in Crystal Space development under the pseudonym of genjix.[9] He also developed a number of video games making use of free software, including the adventure game Crystal Core[10] and the futuristic racer game Ecksdee.[11] Taaki was also a participant in the Blender project Yo Frankie!.[12]

Taaki was a speaker at the 2007 Games Convention in Leipzig.

Bitcoin

In 2009 and 2010, Taaki made his living as a professional poker player.[7] His experience with online gambling attracted him to the bitcoin project.[13] He founded a UK bitcoin exchange called "Britcoin", which was succeeded in 2011 by a new British exchange called Intersango, in which he was a principal developer,[14] which was closed after their UK bank account was restricted following an investigation by Metro Bank.[15]

In April 2011, Taaki and Donald Norman established the Bitcoin Consultancy, a group focused on bitcoin project development.[16]

Taaki created the first full reimplementation of the bitcoin protocol named libbitcoin,[17] worked on the bitcoin client Electrum[18][19] and created other command line utilities around bitcoin and the network.[20] The bitcoin standardisation procedure (Bitcoin Improvement Proposals or BIPs) was started by Taaki.[21][22]

In 2014, together with Cody Wilson, he launched the Dark Wallet project after a crowdfunding run on IndieGoGo which raised over $50,000.[23][24][25] Taaki, along with other developers from Airbitz, Inc. (producers of a bitcoin business directory and mobile bitcoin wallet) created a prototype for a decentralised marketplace called "DarkMarket" in 2014, at a hackathon in Toronto,[26] which was forked into the OpenBazaar project.[27]

Activism

Taaki has been outspoken in favour of Internet activism such as Anonymous, likening them to modern day freedom-fighters.[28] A long-time contributor to free software, he advocates total data freedom.[16] Taaki has labelled censorship policies as being a wedge towards ever-increasing censorship.[28] He proposes a shift away from specialist thinking towards a creative society of generalist knowledge workers.[29]

Taaki is a speaker of Esperanto, which he promotes as an auxiliary country-neutral international language to preserve local languages. He writes that Esperanto serves to break down barriers and help the flow of media across cultural boundaries.[30]

Amir Taaki formerly lived in an anarchist squat in Barcelona, Spain.[31] He now resides in an anarchist squat in the former anti-G8 HQ building in London, England.[32][33]

Taaki criticised the involvement of Robin Kassab at the London Anarchist Bookfair. He alleged that Kassab supports 'fascist Islamist groups'. [34] However Leila Al Shami, another speaker at the event, wrote that he had demanded speaking time and behaved in a bullying fashion. This culminated in Taaki and his friends refusing to leave the stage, thus preventing the planned speech from going ahead.[35]

References

  1. ^ J.J. Colao. "Amir Taaki, 25 - In Photos: 2014 30 under 30: Technology". Forbes.
  2. ^ "Hacktivists in the frontline battle for the internet". The Guardian. London. 20 April 2012. Retrieved 20 April 2012.
  3. ^ "Meet the world's next billionaires - from Mashable's Pete Cashmore to Bitcoin renegade Amir Taaki". The Independent.
  4. ^ "The UK entrepreneurs on Forbes list of people likely to join ranks of mega-rich - Daily Mail Online". Mail Online.
  5. ^ Sadie Nicholas. "Britain's under-30s tipped to be the nation's next billionaires". Express.co.uk.
  6. ^ a b Herrmann, Joshi (29 January 2014). "Silicon Roundabout's not for him: meet super-hacker, master coder and Bitcoin boy Amir Taaki in his Hackney squat". Retrieved 30 June 2015.
  7. ^ a b "Speakers 2011," 11th International EPCA Summit, European Payments Consulting Association, www.epcaconference.com/ Retrieved 11 October 2011.
  8. ^ SDL Collide, Sourceforge, sourceforge.net/
  9. ^ "Blender & CrystalSpace" in Blender Conference 2006, Youtube.
  10. ^ "Pablo Martin Moreno and Amir Taaki," Archived 19 May 2011 at the Wayback Machine Blender Conference 2006 Proceedings, www.blender.org/
  11. ^ 2006 Crystal Space Conference Report, Crystal Space, www.crystalspace3d.org/
  12. ^ Yo Frankie developer list, www.yofrankie.org/
  13. ^ James Ball, "Bitcoins: how do they work?" The Guardian, 22 June 2011.
  14. ^ "About Us: Personal Statements," Intersango, britcoin.co.uk
  15. ^ "Intersango Status Update" bitcointalk.org.
  16. ^ a b "Amir Taaki Answers Your Questions About Bitcoin," Slashdot, 22 June 2011.
  17. ^ "spesmilo/libbitcoin · GitHub".
  18. ^ "Commits · spesmilo/electrum-server · GitHub".
  19. ^ "Commits · spesmilo/electrum · GitHub".
  20. ^ "subvertx command line utilities (proof of concept using libbitcoin)". bitcointalk.org.
  21. ^ "Bitcoin Improvement Proposals". bitcoin.it.
  22. ^ "BIP 0001". bitcoin.it.
  23. ^ Del Castillo, Michael (24 September 2013). "Dark Wallet: A Radical Way to Bitcoin". The New Yorker. Retrieved 15 May 2014.
  24. ^ Greenberg, Andy (31 October 2013). "Dark Wallet Aims To Be The Anarchist's Bitcoin App of Choice". Forbes Online. Retrieved 15 May 2014.
  25. ^ Greenberg, Andy (29 April 2014). "'Dark Wallet' Is About to Make Bitcoin Money Laundering Easier Than Ever". Wired. Retrieved 15 May 2014.
  26. ^ "DarkMarket Team Win Toronto Bitcoin Expo Hackathon". CoinDesk.
  27. ^ Greenberg, Andy (24 April 2014). "Inside the 'DarkMarket' Prototype, a Silk Road the FBI Can Never Seize". Wired. Retrieved 23 August 2014. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  28. ^ a b YouTube. youtube.com.
  29. ^ "N-1". n-1.cc.
  30. ^ n-1.cc Archived 11 November 2011 at the Wayback Machine Esperanto page
  31. ^ "Amir Taaki and the Dark Wallet". IHB.
  32. ^ Siddique, Haroon (11 June 2013). "G8: riot police enter central London building occupied by protesters". Retrieved 8 July 2015.
  33. ^ Copestake, Jen (19 September 2014). "Hiding currency in the Dark Wallet". Retrieved 8 July 2015.
  34. ^ https://www.reddit.com/r/Anarchism/comments/59ts0d/the_main_speaker_tomorrow_sat_at_the_uks_largest/?st=iuxp2h0r&sh=dded18b2
  35. ^ https://leilashami.wordpress.com/2016/10/29/london-anarchist-bookfair/
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