Amir Taaki

Amir Taaki
Taaki in Bratislava, 2012
Born	(1988-02-06) February 6, 1988 (age 29) London, United Kingdom
Nationality	British
Occupation	Hacker, Programmer, Revolutionary
Known for	bitcoin, OpenBazaar, Crystal Space, Game development

Amir Taaki (born 6 February 1988) is a British-Iranian revolutionary, hacker, and programmer who is known for his leading role in the bitcoin project, and for pioneering many open source projects. Forbes listed Taaki in their top 30 entrepreneurs of 2014. Taaki driven by the political philosophy of the Rojava revolution, travelled to Syria serving in the YPG military, and worked in Rojava's civil society on various economic projects for a year and a half.

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

After briefly attending three British universities, 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.

In 2006, Taaki became heavily involved in Crystal Space development under the pseudonym of genjix. 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. Taaki was also a participant in the Blender project Yo Frankie!.

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

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 was a principal developer, which was closed after their UK bank account was restricted following an investigation by Metro Bank.