S12 E2: Amir Taaki on the Early Days of Bitcoin

Amir Taaki is a free open source advocate and developer who joined the Bitcoin space in late 2010. In the beginning, he was a professional poker player who saw potential in using BTC for online gambling. But in the upcoming years, he spent a lot of time building both open source tools and businesses.

Under the pseudonym of genjix, Taaki signed up to the Bitcoin Talk forum on October 18th 2010. Ten months later, on August 19th 2011, he conceptualized the BIP system. This was a bona fide attempt to filter good proposals from potentially destructive contributions. It added extra reviewing filters and laid an indispensable foundational brick for the “don’t trust, verify” ethos. Since BIP 0001, Bitcoin development became much more adversarial and cautious.

Admittedly, this was an attempt to slow down the rate at which the Bitcoin code was being changed. As Amir Taaki reveals in this interview, contributors such as Gavin Andresen were merging code without thorough scrutiny. The fact that proposals such as Jeremy Rubin’s BIP 119 (Covenants) and Paul Sztorc‘s BIP 300/301 (Drivechains) are so controversial and require so much debate before even seeing a final draft. Some may argue that the process is political and elitist, since SegWit (BIP 141) and Taproot (BIP 341) received support with greater ease – the mere existence of SegWit2X as a proposal was an admission of the BIP’s worthiness.

Arguably, the BIP system is Amir Taaki was his most influential and significant contribution to Bitcoin. Mostly because it’s something that will live for as long as the project itself, and is a framework which best describes the existing Bitcoin culture of scrutiny.

Had he stopped here, Amir Taaki would have been worthy enough of praise. But he kept on building and developing more projects. Another notable success is Libbitcoin, the first alternative Bitcoin client. It was developed by a team of coders led by Amir, and its first commits date back to May 18th 2011. Written in C++, Libbitcoin sets to achieve three important goals: privacy, scalability, and integrity. It’s also worth noting that Libbitcoin is not a port of Bitcoin Core, but a complete rewriting which works according to the network’s consensus rules.

As described by current project maintainer Eric Voskuil during our 2010 interview, Libbitcoin is currently useful to miners, features certain storage optimizations, and features no graphical user interface. Though Satoshi Nakamoto famously expressed skepticism in regards to having a second compatible implementation, clients such as Libbitcoin and Bitcoin Knots (created and maintained by Lukedashjr and used by wallets such as Wasabi) play important roles in the ecosystem.

Amir Taaki also contributed to the popularization of Bitcoin as a bona fide advocate. As the founder of Britcoin (Britain’s first Bitcoin exchange) and its successor Intersango, he spoke at a conference in 2012 to explain to a crowd consisting of bankers and finance sector employees how Bitcoin works. His performance was not appreciated by the likes of Gavin Andresen and Mircea Popescu (who wrote a blog post to criticize the initiative and followed up with a dismissal of the idea of conferences in general), but Amir was certainly ahead of his time and understood Bitcoin better than many public speakers of the post-2017 era.

Contrary to the claims that he makes today in regards to adding OP codes to Bitcoin and capturing the capital that flows into Ethereum, back in December 2010 he was expressing the views for which today’s “toxic maximalists” always argue: that Bitcoin is a monetary project of great importance, and other interesting use cases are mere distractions from the bigger mission.

In 2013 and 2014, Amir Taaki introduced two new ambitious projects: a privacy wallet (DarkWallet) and a peer to peer marketplace (DarkMarket, which later got forked into OpenBazaar). DarkWallet was a response to the Bitcoin Foundation’s corporate approach to promoting Bitcoin, and featured a team of developers which included Amir Taaki, Vitalik Buterin, Janislav Malahov, Cody Wilson, and Pablo Martin. From a technical point of view, the privacy wallet was running on the Libbitcoin backend, using the SX command tools, and operating on a blockchain architecture called Obelisk.

Much like later projects such as JoinMarket and Wasabi, DarkWallet was using Tor for network-level anonymity and it was employing Chaumian mixing. Unfortunately, it was never released in a final version – which led to some community criticism from those who donated money to the project. In his defense, Amir always stated that he spent all the money on paying development and never kept any bitcoins for himself.

As for DarkMarket, it never took off. Back in 2014, it was touted as “the Silk Road that the FBI can’t seize”. But Taaki and his Airbitz team couldn’t take it too far. In the true spirit of open source, another group of developers picked up the code and turned it into OpenBazaar. It wasn’t until 2016 that version 1.0 of OpenBazaar saw the light of day, but its focus shifted from being an unstoppable Silk Road to becoming a competitor for Amazon, eBay, and Alibaba. The project announced its closure in January 2021 due to lack of funding, and it’s most likely a matter of time and demand until another prominent fork emerges.

Amir Taaki’s involvement in some exchange projects also made him controversial. Back in 2012 when he was working as a developer for Bitcoinica, Amir faced some accusations which culminated in a lawsuit from Kraken CEO Jesse Powell and pressures from Roger Ver (who allegedly was holding 24000 coins on the exchange). However, it’s not up to me to judge these actions and I’ve decided to focus my interview on the parts that make the best use of Amir Taaki’s time.

Though I wish I could get another 30 minutes from Amir, I’m happy with the outcome. He speaks his mind as candidly as ever, he never shies away from controversy, and he reminds us what the early Bitcoin spirit was all about: fighting for decentralization and sovereignty at all costs, and without compromise.

Listen to Amir Taaki on Spotify, Apple Podcasts & YouTube!

If you choose to use any of these platforms, then please consider subscribing. Not only that it helps me brag about my stats, but it also helps others find the content more easily. Search engines tend to conflate popularity with quality, so I’m doomed to participate in this game of convincing other people to click a button after listening to my interviews.

But if you hate these corporate platforms and would rather use an option which doesn’t require any kind of registration or internet identity doxxing, then I recommend using this free player. Not only that you can open it in Tor browser, but it also enables you to download the audio for offline listening sessions. If you want to dust off your old iPod Nano for your morning jogs, then you have a way to get the episode and listen to it during your session without requiring an internet connection.

If you can submit feedback, I’m always happy to read it and respond.

Time stamps:

02:03 – How was Bitcoin in the early days?

04:04 – Amir’s first contributions to Bitcoin

06:06 – Many of today’s Bitcoin ideas were discussed in the early days

07:30 – The first conflict in the history of Bitcoin

10:26 – Amir did the first presentation on Bitcoin, Gavin Andresen reacted

17:25 – What is Bitcoin, anyway?

19:50 – The Bitcoin code is dogshit

22:30 – The problem of misaligned incentives 

24:30 – Bitcoin’s economic ideology 

25:25 – What is Bitcoin?

30:30 – Monetising free software

32:00 – SegWit proved that users control Bitcoin

32:15 – Privacy vs economic incentives

36:00 – Bitcoin got big because of the Silk Road

36:30 – Bitcoin is captured by influencers

38:15 – How can you follow Amir?

Bitcoin Takeover Podcast Is Sponsored By Vaultoro & Wasabi Wallet. Maison MAACHI Provides The Clothing!

Vaultoro is the hard money exchange which helps you beat inflation with instant swaps between the best stores of value known to man: gold and bitcoin. Unlike most exchanges, Vaultoro understands the importance of transparency and security. All gold holdings are secured in top tier swiss private vaults and fully insured against theft, fire and more.
Maximize your purchasing power today by going to vaultoro.com/bitcointakeover. This is not financial advice, but gold has been humankind’s most reliable store of value in the last 6000 years. Do your own research! Use the promotion code takeover for a one time bonus of 1 gram of gold for the first 50 new customers buying gold with bitcoin.

Are you concerned that your friends, neighbours, or KYC exchange might know how much bitcoin you own? It’s time to take your financial privacy seriously with Wasabi wallet: a free and open source wallet solution which makes use of mega CoinJoins to mix your coins with those of hundreds of other strangers.

Thanks to the groundbreaking Wabisabi engine, your coins get divided in smaller untraceable units which grant you great anonymity for both HODLing and spending. Download Wasabi wallet 2.0 today at wasabiwallet.io and take advantage of the mega CoinJoins.

What are you gonna wear when Bitcoin hits $1 million? Same old $20 t-shirt? Try Maison MAACHI, designer clothes made in Paris by bitcoiners for bitcoiners.

They’re not your average mass-produced sweatshop clothes: MAACHI will ask for your measurements and tailor every piece of clothing according to the shape of your body, so you will always look and feel great in your t-shirt, hoodie, or dress. And it’s all made in French by real artisans who also happen to be bitcoiners.

Get a Maison MAACHI t-shirt or hoodie today, it might even help you find a girlfriend. And once you get a girlfriend, you can also buy her a Maison MAACHI dress too.

Stop having fun looking poor and check out maisonmaachi.com.