For Taaki, what became a lifelong dedication to building technology free from authoritarian intervention started with an interest in what draws many people to Bitcoin: the promise of open-source development for breaking from authority.
“I happened to be 16 when I discovered the open-source movement, which, for me, was absolutely incredible that there are people around the world who build this technology … which plays a foundational role in our infrastructure and our internet,” Taaki told Bitcoin Magazine. “I kind of decided, I’m going to devote my life to make this dream happen. And it was something that captured my mind for the next decade.”
From his open-source involvement, Taaki found other technologists who were deeply concerned with politics. Of the many ideologies he was exposed to, he found anarchy especially interesting. It led him to ask questions about the nature of society and hierarchy and how a richer and more sophisticated society could be created. He saw Bitcoin as an unstoppable force to this end.
“[At] my first talk about Bitcoin in Amsterdam, it was the EPCA conference … I said, look guys, this is a radical technology. Now we’re here, you can’t stop us,” Taaki recalled. “This is what we’re going to do for you.”
Sometimes, his strong anti-middleman stance put him in direct conflict with other early Bitcoin developers — another group he saw as a roadblock to free and open development as he defined it.
“Gavin Andressen reached out to me and said, ‘I didn’t really like how you were talking at the conference. I think you should stop talking about Bitcoin publicly,’” Taaki said. “Gavin preceded to put up roadblocks for me to participate in developing Bitcoin — to sideline me from Bitcoin. Every time I tried to commit code to the Bitcoin Core project, it was blocked and I realized it was impossible for me to work with those people. That’s why I started working on Libbitcoin, to rewrite Bitcoin source code to have alternative implementation.”
Taaki’s work on the BIP review system was originally intended to establish some standardization for implementations and public review of changes to the code. But he now sees the system as a hindrance on development in Bitcoin that favors the status quo over technological progress.
“The problem is that the culture we initiated in those early days has completely overtaken the mindspace of Bitcoin,” explained Taaki. “That was not the original intent. Originally, the intent was to have Bitcoin be a conservative against changes. But it wasn’t to stop any kind of progress from happening inside of Bitcoin. It’s very poorly engineered. It’s very inefficient. The developments in cryptography that are happening now are going to lead to a system that’s eventually going to supersede Bitcoin.”
Looking back at the Bitcoin community he had been a part of in the early 2010s, Taaki sees distance between the philosophies that first drew him to the technology and the philosophical camps that have been established today.
“What we’ve seen happen since then is that those simplistic ideologies, which initially converged around Bitcoin, haven’t really been able to guide us,” he said. “And so we’ve seen a diversification from these ideologies … There’s this weird, regressive or reactionary Bitcoin culture ... and it’s opposed to any kind of change or progress or development or advancement.”
Taaki also noted concerns about the cryptocurrency space he had been a part of years ago now being “co-opted” by outsiders — business- or authority-focused groups who want to take technology out of the hands of the idealistic cypherpunks who worked with Satoshi to usher in the era.
“We’re in this very strange place inside of crypto culture where we’re facing significant challenges to the technology, of it being co-opted by external actors, by actors who don’t necessarily have a philosophical vision or goal we originally had in mind,” he said. “Maybe I’m talking about people like ConsenSys, or maybe I’m talking about central bank digital currencies or Facebook … Bottom line: The only way that we’re going to overcome these challenges is by having coherent analysis, a system of organization and some kind of narrative so that we can develop something that’s coordinated.”
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