January 17-2014
. . . future billionaire?
Forbes magazine has named a British-Iranian who was once expelled from school for hacking as a talented computer wonk who may be one of the world’s next billionaires.
Amir Taaki, 25, who was born in London of an Iranian father and a Scottish-English mother, is one of 30 under 30 Britons that business magazine Forbes has picked as smart and talented enough to become billionaires in the near future.
Forbes describes the software developer as a “technology anarchist,” a term he has proudly adopted.
Since 2010, he’s been heavily involved in the Bitcoin growth. Not “real” money, it’s an online currency in the form of tokens that can be used to pay for goods and services at a steadily growing number of places where it’s accepted. It’s a sort of underground-but-legal currency and its value has rocketed of late, with Taaki credited with leading Britain’s first Bitcoin exchange.
More recently he’s led the Dark Wallet project, which will enable people to trade Bitcoins anonymously, avoiding detection by governments around the world.
The folks behind Dark Wallet think the community that has evolved around Bitcoin has become a bit too friendly with the Establishment around the world.
Dark Wallet says it allows Bitcoin users to spend and receive the currency just like other services but that unlike some “wallets” it is designed to preserve the status of Bitcoin as an anonymous, hard-to-trace currency.
“Many prominent Bitcoin developers are actively in collusion with members of law enforcement and seeking approval from government legislators,” says Dark Wallet on its website. “We believe this is not in Bitcoin user’s self interest, and instead serves wealthy business interests that make up the self-titled Bitcoin Foundation… “We don’t need to cooperate with control freaks. Disobedience is the only way.”
From an early age Taaki took an interest in computer technology, teaching himself computer programming. At high school, Taaki became involved in computer hacking, an activity which led to his expulsion.
After briefly attending several British universities, Taaki gravitated to the free software movement. He assisted in the creation of SDL Collide, an extension of Simple DirectMedia Layer, an open source library used by video game developers.
He also developed a number of video games making use of free software, including the adventure game Crystal Core and the futuristic racer game Ecksdee.
In 2009 and 2010, Taaki made his living as a professional poker player. His experience with online gambling attracted him to the Bitcoin project. He founded a UK Bitcoin exchange called “Britcoin,” which was succeeded in 2011 by a new British exchange called Intersango, in which he is a principal.
In April 2011, Taaki and Donald Norman established the Bitcoin Consultancy, a group focused on bitcoin project development.
Taaki has been outspoken in favor of Internet activism such as Anonymous, likening them to modern day freedom fighters. He self-identifies as an anarchist, but believes that ideologies should not remain fixed against evidence. He says beliefs should not be a matter of contention when ideas change all the time due to new knowledge and information.
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.