Amir Taaki

Amir Taaki (Persian: امیر تاکی‎; born 6 February 1988) is a British-Iranian anarchist revolutionary, hacktivist, and programmer who is 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] Driven by the political philosophy of the Rojava revolution, Taaki traveled to Syria, served in the YPG military, and worked in Rojava's civil society on various economic projects for a year and a half.[5]

Amir Taaki
Taaki in Bratislava, 2012
Born (1988-02-06) 6 February 1988
London, United Kingdom
NationalityBritish
OccupationProgrammer
Military career
AllegianceRojava
Service/branchYPG
Years of service2015
Battles/warsSyrian Civil War
Websiteamirtaaki.org

Biography

Amir Taaki was born 6 February 1988[6] in London, the eldest of three children of a Scottish-English[7] 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.[8]

After briefly attending two British universities,[7] 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.[9]

In 2006, Taaki became heavily involved in Crystal Space development under the pseudonym of genjix.[10] He also developed a number of video games making use of free software, including the adventure game Crystal Core[11] and the futuristic racer game Ecksdee.[12] Taaki was also a participant in the Blender project Yo Frankie!.[13]

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

In 2009 and 2010, Taaki made his living as a professional poker player.[8] His experience with online gambling attracted him to the bitcoin project.[14] 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,[15] which was closed after their UK bank account was restricted following an investigation by Metro Bank.

In 2014, together with Cody Wilson, he launched the Dark Wallet project after a crowdfunding run on IndieGoGo which raised over $50,000.[16][17][18] Taaki, along with other developers from Airbitz, a bitcoin software company, created a prototype for a decentralised marketplace called "DarkMarket" in 2014, at a hackathon in Toronto, which was forked into the OpenBazaar project.[19]

As of 2013, he resided in an anarchist squat in the former anti-G8 HQ building in London, England.[20][21]

In 2015, Taaki went to Rojava (Syrian Kurdistan) to offer his skills to the revolution, and served the YPG military.[22] He had no training, but spent three and a half months in the YPG military fighting on the front. He was then discharged and worked in the civil society for over a year on various projects for Rojava's economics committee.

In February 2018, Taaki created a group in Catalonia dedicated to leveraging blockchain technology to help national liberation causes such as the Catalan independence movement.[23]

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. "Forbes 30 Under 30". Forbes. Retrieved 4 October 2018.
  4. "Meet the world's next billionaires - from Mashable's Pete Cashmore to Bitcoin renegade Amir Taaki". The Independent.
  5. Susannah Butter. "Tech enigma Amir Taaki on Forbes and fighting Isis in Syria". Standard.co.uk.
  6. "Amir Taaki". Companies House. Retrieved 4 October 2018.
  7. 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.
  8. "Speakers 2011," 11th International EPCA Summit, European Payments Consulting Association, www.epcaconference.com/ Retrieved 11 October 2011.
  9. "SDL_Collide". SourceForge. 8 January 2015. Retrieved 4 October 2018.
  10. "Blender & CrystalSpace" in Blender Conference 2006, Youtube.
  11. "Pablo Martin Moreno and Amir Taaki," Archived 19 May 2011 at the Wayback Machine Blender Conference 2006 Proceedings, Blender
  12. "Conference 2006". Crystal Space. Retrieved 4 October 2018.
  13. Yo Frankie developer list, www.yofrankie.org/
  14. James Ball, "Bitcoins: how do they work?" The Guardian, 22 June 2011.
  15. "About Us: Personal Statements," Intersango, britcoin.co.uk
  16. Del Castillo, Michael (24 September 2013). "Dark Wallet: A Radical Way to Bitcoin". The New Yorker. Retrieved 15 May 2014.
  17. Greenberg, Andy (31 October 2013). "Dark Wallet Aims To Be The Anarchist's Bitcoin App of Choice". Forbes Online. Retrieved 15 May 2014.
  18. Greenberg, Andy (29 April 2014). "'Dark Wallet' Is About to Make Bitcoin Money Laundering Easier Than Ever". Wired. Retrieved 15 May 2014.
  19. Greenberg, Andy (24 April 2014). "Inside the 'DarkMarket' Prototype, a Silk Road the FBI Can Never Seize". Wired. Retrieved 23 August 2014.
  20. Siddique, Haroon (11 June 2013). "G8: riot police enter central London building occupied by protesters". Retrieved 8 July 2015.
  21. Copestake, Jen (19 September 2014). "Hiding currency in the Dark Wallet". Retrieved 8 July 2015.
  22. Greenberg, Andy (29 March 2017). "How an anarchist Bitcoin coder found himself fighting ISIS in Syria". Wired. Retrieved 4 October 2018.
  23. Volpicelli, Gian (6 March 2018). "Amir fought Isis in Syria, now he's enlisting an army of hacker monks to save bitcoin from itself". wired. Retrieved 3 October 2018.

Further reading
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