What is Amir Taaki's stance on the 20MB fork ?

[BitUsher]

As an early adopter and a believer of bitcoin, there must be a huge stash of bitcoin with him that would probably valuate his wealth more than a million now...

There are many early adopters who have lost most or all their bitcoins due to scandals like MtGox, investing in P&D alts or other risky investments, giving it away , or buying into scams like cloud mining.

I'm sure Amir has a small personal stash ... but he certainly lives and works selflessly from what I have seen.

This topic does raise an interesting question of how to balance the privacy of an individual and offer some safeguard to them by letting the greater community know if you have been kidnapped or killed. Perhaps a deadmans switch would be helpful under such scenario.

[eerygarden]

Was this the chap that was on the bbc trying to promote bitcoin to the old grey haired chap that didnt agree with him?

[tokeweed]

We have heard of the opinion of many bitcoin celebrities. Would like to know what the man behind DarkWallet thinks about it. Especially because I heard DarkWallet is going to be a client written from scratch...

He'll be on the opposite side vs Gavin A., just because.  That's how he rolls...

[Soros Shorts]

They are drifting about. Sleeping on couches.

And eating bad muesli with cheap milk.

[tokeweed]

Is he holding some bitcoins tho?  I think he's living that way by choice.

[AGD]

Amir Taaki hasn't been heard from in months.

With the recent BBC FUD I wonder if he ever returns.

[SpanishSoldier]

Amir Taaki hasn't been heard from in months.

With the recent BBC FUD I wonder if he ever returns.

Can you please point to the source ?

[gentlemand]

Amir Taaki hasn't been heard from in months.

With the recent BBC FUD I wonder if he ever returns.

Can you please point to the source ?

Maybe this?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-29283124

[AGD]

Amir Taaki hasn't been heard from in months.

With the recent BBC FUD I wonder if he ever returns.

Can you please point to the source ?

Maybe this?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-29283124

Exactly. If you google for Amir you will find more stuff, that is making him look like a terrorist, an outlaw or an anarchist. This BBC story is a good reason for either Amir to hide or for the 3 letter guys to check him profoundly. Maybe both.

When reading only the beginning, its clear in which direction this article is going. I would be pretty careful if I was him.

What if the software you developed ended up being used by extremists?

Amir Taaki is one of the key programmers behind a tool which could potentially hide the identity of people using the crypto-currency Bitcoin.

Along with Cody Wilson, the man who caused headlines for creating a 3D-printed gun, he has made the Dark Wallet.

The aim of the Dark Wallet is to make transactions done with the crypto-currency Bitcoin almost impossible to trace.

The US government and European Banking authorities are looking at regulating the use of the crypto-currency, and are particularly concerned about how the Dark Wallet could be used as a money laundering tool.

edit: They even live like terrorists:

Sitting on the floor on one of the cushions is Peter Todd, one of the main developers of Bitcoin.

On the walls is scribbled an address to an old Silk Road site, which has now been shut down.

When questioned Taaki indicates he is comfortable with the possibility of his software being used by extremists in conflicts in Iraq and Syria.

[RussianRaibow]

Sitting on the floor on one of the cushions is Peter Todd, one of the main developers of Bitcoin.

On the walls is scribbled an address to an old Silk Road site, which has now been shut down.

When questioned Taaki indicates he is comfortable with the possibility of his software being used by extremists in conflicts in Iraq and Syria.

WoW! Peter Todd is also behind DarkWallet. I did not know that. Then, I guess, Amir Taaki will share the same view regarding 20MB fork as of Peter Todd, i.e. he is against the 20MB raise.

[bitnanigans]

Who is Amir Taaki and why should we care about his stance on the fork?

[Muhammed Zakir]

Who is Amir Taaki and why should we care about his stance on the fork?

Amir Taaki is a know Bitcoin developer. He was behind DarkWallet.

Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amir_Taaki#Bitcoin
Bitcointalk profile: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1931

[Westin Landon Cox]

Who is Amir Taaki and why should we care about his stance on the fork?

Amir Taaki is a know Bitcoin developer. He was behind DarkWallet.

Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amir_Taaki#Bitcoin
Bitcointalk profile: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1931

Nothing against Amir Taaki, but my impression is that he was in front of DarkWallet. I mean, he was the main person promoting it, while other people were doing the coding. Of course, I could imagine the people doing the coding liked it that way.

I'm also told by someone whose programming skill I trust: never trust your security to JavaScript code. That makes me raise an eyebrow at the whole idea of DarkWallet.

I don't know what Amir Taaki thinks of the block size limit. It would be unusual to see him and Mike Hearn on the same side. But forking makes strange bedfellows.

[neurotypical]

Amir Taaki hasn't been heard from in months.

https://github.com/darkwallet/darkwallet

Latest modifications on there have been from months ago too. Is it safe to assume Darkwallet is abandoned at this point? It sucks because Bitcoin's anonymity needs a lot of work.

I think they'll start working on it again eventually. They are drifting about. Sleeping on couches. Doing multiple projects.

What other multiple projects? Did they abandon Darkwallet to work in Samourai or are those different dev teams? it seems both wallet intended to do exactly the same thing.

[BitUsher]

Nothing against Amir Taaki, but my impression is that he was in front of DarkWallet. I mean, he was the main person promoting it, while other people were doing the coding. Of course, I could imagine the people doing the coding liked it that way.

This isn't true and you can follow all of his code contributions to both darkwallet , libbitcoin(which darkwallet is dependent on, and other project here:

https://github.com/genjix

As you can see he is involved in coding for many projects and one of the principle creators of darkmarket which openbazaar is based upon.

He has been noticeably silent for a couple months though.

[AGD]

https://lists.dyne.org/lurker/message/20150505.125747.df78f1c6.en.html

[pereira4]

https://lists.dyne.org/lurker/message/20150505.125747.df78f1c6.en.html

Glad to see he is still alive and well. It was starting to look like Satoshi 2, forever disappeared

[RussianRaibow]

https://lists.dyne.org/lurker/message/20150505.125747.df78f1c6.en.html

Glad to see he is still alive and well. It was starting to look like Satoshi 2, forever disappeared

Here is him in a latest news and a recent video...

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/the-anarchist-hacker-bitcoin-would-rather-not-talk-about

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJaMGua9GfU

[goregrind]

Amir Taaki on blocksize: https://bitcoinmagazine.com/17005/bitcoin-technology-worth-nothing-interview-dark-wallet-front-man-amir-taaki/

You don’t really see Bitcoin as a payments-innovation, do you?

No, it’s not very good for that. The Bitcoin-network is currently subsidized through inflation, meaning transactions cost about thirty dollars each. This vision of Bitcoin as a faster, cheaper and better payments-network is simply not tied to any technological grounding of what Bitcoin is really about. If we want to make Bitcoin a competitor to Visa or MasterCard, we would need to increase the blocksize and centralize mining so much that it is basically the same as existing payments networks. And even then, at some point, we’ll reach a limit where Bitcoin is just not cost-efficient. We don’t need to have all these miners crunching numbers just so people can buy a coffee. That’s insane.

If we do not increase the blocksize, however, Bitcoin would merely be able to handle seven transactions per second, meaning its scalability is rather limited…

Scalability, be very careful with that word. If we increase the blocksize limit, the bloated blockchain would make it harder for people to run full nodes. You’d need bigger hardware to store all of the required data, so in that sense it wouldn’t scale nicely at all.

But if we keep the blocksize limited people can always use Bitcoin for payments, they’d just have to pay a bigger fee. This doesn’t need to be a problem, in particular for the functionality of Bitcoin as an instrument to settle debts. The way banks work today is not that every transaction done between two parties is sent directly from one bank account to the other. Instead, they add up all transactions between the different banks, and settle the debts at the end of the day.

In a similar way, Bitcoin could grow to become the backbone of a whole new financial paradigm, as opposed to a payments network that merely papers over the cracks of the existing monetary infrastructure.

[AGD]

"transactions cost 30$ each" wtf?