LETS TALK BITCOIN

Episode 111 Building Cathedrals with Cody Wilson & Amir Taaki


Participants:

Adam B. Levine (AL) Host
Cody Wilson (CW) Crypto-anarchist and founder of Defense Distributed
Amir Taaki (AT) - Core Bitcoin developer, creator of Libbitcoin, core collaborator at Dark
Wallet & CoinJoin


Today is May 20
th
2014 and this is Episode 111.

This program is intended for informational and educational purposes only.
Cryptocurrency is a new field of study. Consult your local futurist, lawyer and investment
advisor before making any decisions whatsoever for yourself.


AL: Welcome to Lets Talk Bitcoin, a twice weekly show about the ideas, people and
projects building the digital economy and the future of money. My name is Adam B. Levine
and todays episode is a little different. Episode 111 of Lets Talk Bitcoin is all about Amir
Taaki and the movement of thought that he embodies.

We start todays show with Cody Wilson, a proud anarchist in his own right who,
over the last year, has spent more and more time with Amir. At Bitcoin Expo
Toronto, Cody gave a wide ranging talk called Light and Dark that provides his
perspective. I dont know Cody personally but his demeanor strikes me as that of an
anthropologist whos discovered a hidden culture that has its own norms and rituals
and simply decided that he likes that better and never gone back

Then, I sat down with Amir for an intimate chat about discovering lifes meaning,
about the honor and duty of having the skills to perform good work at a time when
its needed and more

Thanks to Brave the World and CanAwareness for these recordings and the Bitcoin Alliance
of Canada for putting on the event. Enjoy the show! [1:23]


__________________________________________




Cody Wilson at Bitcoin Expo, Toronto April 2014


Chair: ...cryptoanarchist and the founder and director of Defense Distributed, the non-
profit digital publisher behind the infamous 3D printed gun, Bitcoin Darkwallet. Cody was
recently listed, informs the Forbes 30 under 30, as the face of printable firearms and was
named by Wired as one of the fifteen most dangerous people in the world. (Laughter)
(Applause) Judge his mainstream reputation for yourself. As youll see Codys motives are
positive. With great moral character and determination, his work is respected as having
great positive influence in a most disruptive and controversial space. Thanks Cody. [2:08]

CW: (Applause) Im really glad, by the way, this isnt like a thousand people. We can have
something more conversational, yeah? I have some quick notes. I threw out everything I
was going to... Did any of you guys come to the Hackathon yesterday? Did you catch Amir
Taakis Darkmarket presentation? Fantastic. Im going to start with that and move to other
discussion points. The title of this speech is Light and Dark not that titles matter but I
think its something that we can start with. There has been a kind of duality finally
recognized by the mainstream accounts of Bitcoin trending toward. Its something we were
trying to help to get towards with our announcement like something about the Darkwallet
that there would be this understanding of Bitcoin. Theres the legitimate factors of Bitcoin
and then there are the black markets. There is a white market Bitcoin that were all trying
to work together for and then there is the black market Bitcoin which is an anomaly kind
of outside of things, something that was like an accident of history, shouldnt have been
allowed to happen and weve ended up moving past it. Thank God. This is how the senate
hearings on the Silk Road were formulated. After the Silk Road, right? Post Silk Road. Kind
of wishful, magical thinking were dispelling the ghosts. Whatever that was, who knows why
that happened but now that its over, lets talk about how we can work together and kind of
unionize and synthesize this wonderful technology, which of course has great social import.
How can we work together to make this thing a good thing for everyone? This is a form of
light thinking. Der Spiegel did it the best after South by Southwest, they said Ehrsam of
Coinbase now represented... he was the great hope of Bitcoin. The United States its light
side. Everything else was the kind of barbarian hoard threatening to pull Bitcoin back into
the dark. Of course, this is the very thematic we wanted to establish with our presentation
of the Darkwallet, which I should go ahead and say its something like KryptoKit, which is
just kind of doing Bitcoin in the browser but didnt express its (??). It means to be anarchist.
What do we mean by anarchist? Well, pseudonymity, anonymity for the user and basically
obfuscatory techniques to prevent law enforcement trying to find out who you are and what
youre doing. Basically, the idea is well, if there is this potential for Bitcoin to become an
anonymous digital cash of the future and to really plunge everything into dark markets, then
it should be kind of developed in this direction and no one is really taking this challenge on
because of the threats of FINCEN in the United States. No one can give venture capital for
expressing this kind of attention. Oh look... its filling up. You know whats crazy is that
during the 3D printed gun saga, which Im sure isnt quite over yet, it was like March of last
year, I was at this huge 3D printing conference in New York packed with travellers,
businessmen, venture capitalists, it was just packed with thousands of people. I did this
report on the 3D printer gun and no one actually knew it was kind of possible at that point.
I had this giant room all to myself and there were just like 16 people and me and I was like
Well, theres going to be a 3D printed gun in two weeks and everyone was like yeah, great,
interesting. (Laughter) It made no... ships in the night man... no one even knew I was
there... kind of in and out. (Laughter) [5:21]

I want to be a little serious though. Light and dark - what do I mean? Were trying to set up
these thematics between legitimacy god, a token word of all things Bitcoin, especially
since the summer. How do we make Bitcoin legitimate? What is legitimacy? What is
sovereignty? How do we encourage adoption? How do we break ourselves and remove
ourselves from this history of illicit illegitimate activity on this kind of separation or, if you
will, white markets and black markets or, if you will, as I like to do we can establish these
ideas in people. The first person Ill hold up to you is Charlie Shrem. Charlie Shrem is
basically the founder or co-founder of the Bitcoin Foundation. Let me tell you a little bit
about him. He believed in advocacy for legitimacy for Bitcoin. He believed in what I call and
what we theorize as a State science, a State philosophy, a philosophy of stability, of models,
of rigidity, of fixity, of templates. He thought if we could encourage the State to give us a
processional model, we could all recognize a kind of platonic form of Bitcoin but if we could
move towards that wed all have a kind of consensus about what Bitcoin was and we could
all each have a life in the kingdom and (??) go there together. Charlie Shrem went into that
kingdom and he thought very much he could and they would welcome him in... what did he
do? (??) rhetoric about the legitimacy of Bitcoin, Charlie Shrem conceives of this concept of
the BitLicence, what a pernicious name the BitLicence. Were so used to naming bit
everything, the regulators themselves, granted this is from Charlie Shrem, but they even
kind of fold in their own pernicious regulatory activity into like this sweet lozenge of Bitcoin
(??)... aahh the BitLicence. Its evil. Its deeply, deeply troubling. Are we conditioned to
kind of accept it? Well, Ive got my BitExchange and my BitLicence... its operating on you
without you even knowing. He goes to (??) New York DFS and for two years he suggests and
they tell him... by the way, I visited him in Brooklyn. Im not making this up about him. Its
the conversation that we had. He said The Chinese really want to regulate Bitcoin; how do
we do that? Can we regulate the software? No, no, it doesnt work that way. Heres what
you can do. You can regulate the businesses, you can make sure you have a gateway by
which all businesses have to pass through, everyone can (??) here in New York because, you
know, New Yorks got to get its cut as its always going to be a part of finance. Heres what
we can do. We can set up a kind of regulatory framework that all people will contribute to.
Coinsetter youve heard of Coinsetter? What Coinsetter is is the first kind of bank of
betrayal. This is like something out of Kafka. They mostly didnt tell us what the BitLicence
would be. He asked for Bitcoin businesses to propose directly to him what they thought a
BitLicence should be. Coinsetter made the first application. They wrote it down, they
suggested the policy framework by which they would like to be regulated but not just the
framework, they suggested what even the content of the four corners of the document of
the BitLicence would be and they submitted that to the FS. My criticism in the Darkwallet
video was simply not to say Oh, the Foundations evil. Its that youre doing it to
yourselves. By participating in the State philosophy, by giving it that already default position
of legitimacy youre saying number one we can maintain independence from a regulatory
process but also participate in it, but at the same time, youre doing it to yourself. In the
end, the regulators didnt decide, they didnt kind of look him up, operationalize everything
and kind of tell you what to do. The community itself, like when in Space(??) are deciding to
(??) in space, they go Wait a minute, we cant just fly in space, weve got to ask someone if
we can do this. They literally created a regulatory framework for themselves because they
felt naked under the open sky. Do you know what I mean? The same thing with Bitcoin.
[9:23]

Lets contrast that position of Charlie Shrem to Amir Taaki. Amir Taaki gave his presentation
at the Hackathon yesterday for the Darkmarket. In thirty hours, he developed a distributed
Silk Road. Silk Road being a great, monumental market place for the selling of Bitcoin and
distribution of drugs. Its only flaw was that it was centralized and eventually they were able
to uncover where it was, find its administrator, allegedly. Hes now facing trial; hell be
facing trial in November. His name is Ross Ulbricht. If you havent thought of supporting Mr
Ulbricht and to see if hes worthy of your support, you can go to FreeRoss.org check it out
today! The thing is, we can think of this literally Amir Taaki, if you dont know him by
reputation, let me tell you. Amir Taaki is a nomad and the rest of my remarks come from an
essay by Gilles Deleuze called Nomadology. Amir Taaki travels, hes an itinerant, he
doesnt have a fixed location, no permanent address, he cant get paychecks, hes not
interested in having a job and being localized in one point. My thought is now that Amir
Taaki isnt just an artist, although this is how he presented Darkmarket after this huge
speech and showing me what he did, Ill describe Darkmarket in a minute. His final
statement was Software is art. He doesnt think of what hes doing as hard times. He
thinks about it as a conversation, as dynamic, as a pure artistic... not just technique, but
expression. Contrast this to Charlie Shrem. The State wants things sedentarized, if you will,
in one place and localized. Whats always threatening the State is whats exterior to it.
Think of Defence Distributed Omg! Where are they? Theyve got 3D printers and theyre
printing guns. What are they doing? They need to be in one place. In order to make guns,
an element of the war machine in the United States, you have to have a permanent address,
you have to be somewhere, somewhere we can come get you and find you and know where
you are or tell you where you should be. In Charlie Shrems case, this is taking it to the
absolute, right? After theyd kind of gotten everything from him about regulating Bitcoin,
they put him under house arrest at his parents house. Hes stuck; he showed me his ankle
bracelets. He goes a step past his door; a SWAT team. Hes localized, hes fixed, fixity and
he has to obey. This isnt just the idea of cages and jails and everything else, its this idea of
stability and fixity. Amir Taaki doesnt even kind of abide by his own social expectations.
Where is he? Hes gone. Whats he doing? Hes in Austria. They go on a segway tour. He
doesnt understand the idea. He just goes off on his segway. Eveyones like Wheres
Amir? Amir, are you here? Of course hes not here, right? Why would he come to a
scheduled event? (Laughter). You know what Im saying? Its ridiculous that he would even
appear. Do you think he would have a name tag? No, of course not. Theyre looking for
Amir and he sees some girl giving away free hugs and jumps off the segway to give her a hug
but, of course, segways dont stop they keep going. The segway keeps going and crashes
into a tree. The segway is now broken. Amir is afraid of the authority that runs the segway
tour. This women... shed be very upset so he hears shes coming. He runs away and they
dont see him for the rest of the day. This segway woman now has to ride her segway and
the second segway... (Laughter) You know, hes not just this kind of goblin; hes not just like
this weird cherub of the digital blackmarkets. He really understands something or lives a
certain kind of model of thought or we should say a kind of approximate knowledge or
nomad science, is what Im calling it. Lets give you a more concrete example, its about
light and dark. Theres this world of hard forms, Royal science, rigidity, stability and
templates and then theres something like the Gothic journey. Building cathedrals centuries
ago when they used to travel around, they were itinerant and they had their monk, masons
who would follow them around and they didnt learn and they didnt really practice
Euclidean geometry. They were all about expressing... what did they want? They wanted to
build bigger; they wanted to build dynamically. If you look back at these Gothic
journeyman, they didnt leave blueprints or if they had them, they were nothing like the
finished forms that you saw. They were just interested in projection and expression by
taking a form or taking an original place and just with like an Archimedean kind of intuition
project the building out, creating this dynamically improvisation on the spot. They took
what was around them, they took a kind of sense and intuition from the things around them
and built incredibly expressive buildings. The thing about this is, of course, some of these
collapsed in the 12
th
century and after or beyond, especially in France. The State always
eventually comes in the name of something like safety or in the name of something like (??
reusability). It starts to regulate the construction sites of these great cathedrals. Im using
cathedral on purpose here. Open source, itself, as a cathedral. The great expressive
features are these itinerant craftsmen are slowly kind of cut away in the interests of
something else. Something in like a rigid, stable form. I believe, the analogy is clear, this is
whats at stake in something like Bitcoin. Why does it help us that we kind of have to ask for
a procession of models from authority figures? Yes, of course we have to live in the world,
we have to make money but what were sacrificing is something like a kind of intuition.
Something like Amir Taakis Darkmarket. Now, Ill talk about it more. [14:45]

Darkmarket is the fastest response to the problem of Silk Road. Its a peer to peer Silk Road,
if you will. It solves all the problems of distributed identity, reputation, decentralization,
stealth identity, escrow, Bitcoin, all this stuff. Theyve showed it, the proof-of-concept is up.
You can go to BitCredits.io and see the results of their work, if not today then tomorrow.
They showed it in real time a distributed Silk Road. Now, there is not one node of failure,
there is not a choke point. This was done in 30 hours. This is the fundamental question
mark for something like Bitcoin (??) and it was done in 30 hours by an artist who doesnt
have a stable paycheck. He did it out of pure artistic expression and will. [15:37]

Audience member: Darkmarket is on Github. [15:41]

CW: Oh thanks. Darkmarket Github if youd like to see the rehub and youll see all the
commits. All the commits were done literally in the last 48 hours during that thing. [15:49]

Chair: Maybe if you want to ask a question, maybe we could have some people start lining
up at the microphone when you are ready to answer those questions? [15:55]

Cody: I think Ive really made most of the points then right? This is a form of State thinking.
Let me give you one more little story with some questions. There is light and dark again,
light and dark, correct? There is State science, royal, fixed, templates and then nomad
science. I give you this as a heartbreaking but like an essential kind of story. Ehrsam, of
Coinbase, is now thought to be a kind of real thought leader. The man, who the mantle of
the future of Bitcoin is now going to be placed on his shoulders and the people of San
Francisco come to me and theyve declared victory. Gox is dead, the Foundation is
essentially dead and so now San Francisco will take the helm and lead Bitcoin into this bright
paradise. Charlie Shrem just has to hold on now. Ehrsams got this panel on SXSW and the
first person to come up to the microphone to ask him a question after his very consensus,
blas presentation about Bitcoin, whatever corporate Bitcoin, is Ross Ulbrichts mother, Lyn.
How did she get in there? Well, we smuggled her in to the SXSW panel. (Laughter) About
$600 to pay for it. She got to the microphone. The mother of the man who basically
engendered Bitcoin. Theres this smarmy (??) reporter who thinks he made Bitcoin happen
because he reported on the Silk Road, right? Ross Ulbricht was, in so many spiritual senses,
the father of Bitcoin, its shepherd into something like the mainstream. Its proof of all the
dark things that we think of and are still to come and he did it first and he made Bitcoin and
he gave it that kind of essential touch. It worked the black market. It worked against the
investigative procedures and the interceptive will of the State. It worked and we all got
excited about it. Ross Ulbricht did that. She asks, Ross Ulbrichts mum, she asks Ehrsam
What would you say to my son? Dont you think that what he did was... Cant we say
something about what he did? Dont you think work like his is important to the future of
Bitcoin? Keeping in mind this idea of fixity and models and rigidity, State science has
turned someone like this Ehrsam character, himself into a kind of caricature. He, by this
pressure above him, these venture capitalists, the pressure on his business as the kind of
sole point for exchange and his relationship with Silicon Valley and Im sure with his
relationship with the regulators, he couldnt say a thing. He stumbled. He had nothing to
say. He knew he couldnt say anything. Who knows and it doesnt matter if hes an
anarchist at heart, like some of these guys I met the other day. Anarchism is not a feeling.
He was rendered impotent by the State science. The mother of one of the great nomad
scientists, right? The guy, with full abandon and recourse to his own efforts, built this
beautiful marketplace in total secrecy, without rules of the road. His mother asks Ehrsam to
say just one thing and he cant. Its embarrassing. Thats an impotent, model ladies and
gentlemen, that will never (??) [18:53]

Im happy to take questions. Thank you for thinking of this duality with me when we come
up with a certain kind of (??) Bitcoin. Dont be afraid of the dark. Darkmarket. (Applause)
[19:05]


______________________________________________


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CW: Thanks for listening. Im happy to take questions. [20:17]

Audience questioner: I really enjoyed the presentation, thanks. The Darkwallet was
funded, was crowd-funded. What do you think would be the best way to crowd-fund
Darkmarket? [20:29]

CW: I dont know. Again, Amir would tell you that Darkmarket was just like pure proof-of-
concept and its not production ready. Its amazing what he was able to show, ladies and
gentlemen. Google this if you can. Ill get Amir to get a production site up and maybe well
do video in DD. I think that since the code is already publically available, its alright for
people to kind of make something more stable and just throw it out there. I dont think we
necessarily need to crowd-fund. Maybe we should. I feel like I cant right now. We just
crowd-funded Darkwallet maybe six months ago and we got a nice amount of money and
even though Bitcoin is falling a bit in price and capital as well, I feel I cant ask for money
until weve really developed Darkwallet in an alpha and then a beta that you can enjoy and
see it as kind of proof of your generosity as youve collectively funded Darkwallet. I
recommend that anyone try but whats interesting is that this is almost like Athena its
already fully formed and out there, its just its up to intrepid people to give it something like
a stable release. If we dont see something like that coming, Im happy to back it myself
with... I dont know... credit cards (laughter). I hope we find someone willing to kind of take
the helm here. If you guys went to unSystem.net, I recommend you go on the unSystem
mailing list which is just a crypto mailing list but everyones very excited about it. The
wheels are turning and everyones talking about it. It had been thought for a while there
would be an open transaction version of this, soon to come but heres the problem of the
possible, right? Its not possible until its already here, so were stuck with Omg, its
already here, Jesus, the future is now. Its amazing and I recommend you check it out. I
guess that was my answer to your question. [22:11]

Audience questioner: It was, thank you. [22:12]

Audience questioner: For the newbies, distinguish between KryptoKit and Darkwallet and
what have you threatened KryptoKit with so theyre stuck on just one extension for one
browser? [22:23]

CW: Threatened? Well, Anthony here (laughter) thinks that somehow Darkwallet is a
competitor to KryptoKit. I dont think we really are. Heres the thing. Back when we crowd-
funded Darkwallet, mercifully and thankfully there wasnt Bitcoin really in the browser. It
had been kind of a suggestion KryptoKit wasnt out and neither was Sparecoins and these
other things so we were able to crowd-fund on this. If we were like a month later, we
wouldnt have been able to do it. It already exists KryptoKit. The thing is, that ones a
business basically or operated by a business and you can think of it as a service. Youd never
find it in the United States with the native CoinJoin that wed like to run which of course,
lets say it, is a form of money laundering. You should be able to play around with native
CoinJoin in your browser with Bitcoin. I believe the only kind of critical difference between
Darkwallet and KryptoKit is that KryptoKit doesnt offer native CoinJoin. Thats not me
accusing it of kind of whatever, Im just saying its interested in giving you Bitcoin easily, as a
layered web experience, helping you do things like encrypt your traffic, manage your
currency easily. It has one of the best ways of doing PGP PGP is kind of clumsy still but
KryptoKit has actually done very well importing and exporting keys. I think its a beautiful
thing and proof that that space is ripe for development. That space I mean, Bitcoin in the
browser. Darkwallet is, at its heart, purely open source and not run as a business or service.
Basically, it has to be that way because any other kind of way of trying to run it, especially
trying to monetize it makes us vulnerable to State interdiction and, of course, wed have to
spend more time in cages. Id have to Skype then, like Charlie Shrem.

Audience questioner: Whats CoinJoin?

CW: CoinJoin is how we talk about manipulating Bitcoin transactions, mixing inputs and
outputs. Its kind of like... youve heard of Bitcoin mixing before? Basically, its like a way of
mixing and obfuscating identities and inputs. The way we do this CoinJoin and the way its
still being done is you see a transaction but youre kind of... its basically a total fudge of
what happened in that transaction... then theres the blockchain but youve confused what
inputs and outputs (??). Thats the best I can say. Im certainly not technical enough. If
Amir was here he would (???) [24:44]

Chair: Sorry but were running out of time. One more question? [24:48]

Audience questioner: How do you get people on both an individual level as well as the
underlying pipeline level to get to this idea that everything should be encrypted, everything
should be secured by default so that way the act of, lets say, sending a PGP encrypted
message isnt itself an invitation to be suspected of something? If we communicate securely
and everyone communicates securely then that becomes the default. How do you get
people to that level that they would actually want that? Not only want it at an individual
level but be willing to build it into their products. [25:32]

CW: Great question. Everywhere... and this is going to render me an optimist and Im not
but... (laughter) everywhere, except in the United Kingdom, there has been a certain sea-
change in public opinion, at least in the West, about privacy as a default, a kind of condition.
Maybe something of a general terror about the idea of Oh right, there is no such thing and
I really should have some. Theres kind of been a cottage privacy industry pop back up after
Mr Edward Snowden did the Lords work (laughter). It was great. If you werent aware of it
before (??) and all of those people in the 90s and the due diligence carriers of all things
awful and NSA, they had been kind of reminding us By the way, you live in a totally unfree
kind of situation but Snowden, at least, delivered that to us in a such a potent way and we
should thank (??) and thank (??). I think, actually, that there is a real appetite now for
privacy as a default position as kind of built into the core for our applications and our web
experience and a lot of companies are responding to this. Now Im like a soothsayer about
the efforts of Google and Yahoo and these people know, of course, theyre told trade is (??)
Ive been really excited to see (??), I think Darkwallet, weve had a very kind of off the cuff,
ad hoc crowd-fund strategy we raised $100k. I think really, it comes down to someone
kind of declaring their will to give you that kind of privacy in a package and everyone whos
done that so far, at least coherently, has been rewarded monetarily via a project, via a
chance to give that into the market. People want it and wanting it is rife and demand is
almost the entire battle, so while people are conscious and demand it, we should give them
great software and I think its happening. In the cryptowars there was this huge fascination
with PGP. I met with Sheldon Richman the other day; he lives Arkansas. I go to Arkansas
and meet like Sheldon Richman and all these other great new left anti-war people. He was
saying he did PGP but this is the story I stopped and then something like Web 2.0
happened and Bitdata happened and it wasnt important any more. Its important again
and while its important again, its going to have to be people like you man, developing just
need software for people that just takes care of it by default because we need it that way.
Were not going to take those extra steps, it kind of has to be built for us but it seems to be
happening. [27:57]

Chair: Ladies and gentlemen, Cody Wilson. (Applause) [28:02]


__________________________________________


(Ode to Satoshi song played)


VERSE 1
Well, Satoshi Nakamoto
thats a name I love to say
We dont know much about him
but he came to save the day
When he wrote about the way things are
and the way things ought to be
He gave us all a protocol
this world has never seen

CHORUS:
Oh Bitcoin as youre going into the old blockchain
Oh Bitcoin I know youre going to reign, gonna reign
Till everybody knows, everybody knows,
Till everybody knows your name

VERSE 2
Down the road it will be told
about the death of old MtGox
About traders trading altercoins
and miners mining blocks
But them good old boys back in Illinois
and on down to Tennessee
See they dont care to be a millionaire
theyre just wanting to be free

CHORUS:
Oh Bitcoin as youre going into the old blockchain
Oh Bitcoin I know youre going to reign, gonna reign
Till everybody knows, everybody knows,
Till everybody knows your name

VERSE 3
From the ghettos of Calcutta
to the halls of Parliament
While the bankers count our money out
for every government
Oh Bitcoin flies on through the skies of Virtuality
A promise to deliver us
from age old tyranny

CHORUS:
Oh Bitcoin as youre going into the old blockchain
Oh Bitcoin I know youre going to reign, gonna reign
Till everybody knows, everybody knows,
Till everybody knows your name
Till everybody knows, everybody knows,
Till everybody knows your name
Give me some exposure
Till everybody knows your name

Singing Oh Lord pass me some more
Oh Lord before I have to go
Oh Lord pass me some more
Oh Lord before I have to go


___________________________________________


Adam B. Levine interview with Amir Taaki

AL: Amir, the first time I saw you speak was, I think, was on BBC. You were wearing what
looked like school uniform and your hair was nicely groomed. (Laughter) What changed?
[30:54]

AT: (Laughter) Nothing. I run many businesses in my life and... yeah. (Laughter) [31:05]

AL: I mean, weve talked a couple of times over the last few days and one of the things that
youve said, a few times, is youve told me a story about your friend who makes marmalade
from expired food, basically. The thing that I keep wanting to ask, and I havent had chance
yet, is there any circumstance under which you think that its good to have government
regulations, or its good to have standards and regulations that restrict people from doing
things, or is it just across the board, no? [31:31]

AT: Im not thinking that we should nuke the planet and go back to living in caves, destroy
everything that weve built and come towards but certainly we can put our minds together
and think how we would like things to be and find a way that we can move in that direction.
[31:54]

AL: When I look at the work that youve done with Libbitcoin and a variety of the other
projects, Darkwallets another example, its obvious that you have an ideological take on
this and that the purity of that ideology is very important to you. Can you kind of articulate
why it is that you live the life that you do and do the work that you do? [32:16]

AT: As technologists, our job is to build tools for people to use and we now find ourselves in
an empowering position because of the legacy left to us by many people over history who
built the technology and a set of ethics and morals in mind. As someone with a huge
amount of skill, we have a responsibility to carry that legacy onwards. There is a revolution
in our time, perhaps as important as the invention of DNA itself. The potential for a global
consciousness is emerging with another system that spans the entire globe. The internet is
something that really has a lot of potential to change the things the way that we assemble
as human beings, the way that we do things. I spend a lot of time, since I was very young,
living in different communities, in different squats and places and seen the people who try
to find other ways that they can live better and change the situation around them and
observe what are the issues or problems that they have and think, that in my work, how I
can build better tools to serve those people to be able to better construct something that
can allow us to thrive as free people. [33:53]

AL: Youve spent a lot of time in Calafou, which is sort of a post-capitalistic... [34:01]

AT: They call it a techno-industrial eco-village. [34:05]

AL: A techno-industrial eco-village. [34:06]

AT: Calafou is very interesting because Ive seen a lot of different eco-villages and so on.
One of the things that theyre doing with Calafou is investing energy and resources into
technology and industry with a proper economic model behind it. When you see some of
the squats, sometimes especially like in London, the people are moving a lot from week to
week in different places. When youre in a place where youre not going to be a long time,
youre less inclined to invest your time and your energy to build something nice and when
you only think youre going to be there for a few days, you might not keep the place clean
and people even become destructive and a lot of tensions between the people arise. When
people are in a place where they know they have the opportunity of that place that they can
make something, people really become constructive, especially where you give the
opportunity for people to pursue their own visions or their dreams. The difference is
between a guy, like when people used to get slaves and tell the slaves to pick the cotton and
you really cant get them to do anything much more complex than picking cotton and the
only way that you can scale up or improve it is to double the amount of people doing that
manual labor. Its the same thing really with the incentive structures where you have
employees working on something but if people do the projects but its the project that they
want to do and its their passion, they do it with a lot more creativity and a lot more drive.
The money goes a lot further. We see this in all the open source projects. With Calafou,
they think to get a place that they find a way that they can buy this land, like a massive piece
of land with many different buildings all around and reconstruct an old industrial complex
with diversity of use of the space. They have hackers, they have a bio lab, mechanics,
people doing wood and metal, there is an enterprise that makes furniture, people with
agriculture, all different people and really thinking about the things with the technology.
My friends go and they occupy a big, big forest like one hour from outside London and the
people there start to construct houses nice houses. There are like log cabins with wooden
planks on the floor and the walls and everything. There is some girl who built this house
with two floors and a balcony all by herself and you really start to think... you give a few
basic things to these people like industrial tools that they can have the bricks and they will
build really nice houses... or the technological tools... like, in the winter, its very cold
outside and its a lot of hard work to pick the firewood and do all the things and its very
muddy outside. Theres a big space so a lot of people are trecking to the other side to go
and talk to the people and its very difficult for a community to self-organize together and
be self-managed but you put the internet in all the houses and the people can have a room
and a chat room and coordinate through IRC or forums and suddenly things can work a lot
better. Basic infrastructure like gas, that people can use to cook and make meals. Even just
thinking economically about how we do the things to do them smarter. In Calafou, there is
a kitchen and any time you want you can go and cook some food and there are the
ingredients there and make something but I noticed in the squats, sometimes people were
buying these snacks. You buy these snacks and they are more expensive, when you eat
them youre always hungry and its crappy food, its not really giving you energy or anything.
If you buy the basics, like the potatoes and the rice and those things and you cook proper
meals. For instance, in Calafou, everybody tries to cook a meal at least once a week with
two or three other people and if everybody in the community does that, then you can have
a warm meal three times a day and eat better and live better. Just thinking about how you
do these things, there are a lot of different things that we can see how we can do together
to make the things better and to live in a place where you own and have sovereignty and
own something. A lot of the times, going through our life, were renting and working for
years and years with a mortgage and, at the end, a lot of people have nothing. They are
living off credit, off debt and thats not a way to live. For instance, with the open source,
ecology is a project to construct the 40 basic machines that you need to make a self-
sustainable town or village in such a way that these machines are easy to build DIY, low cost
and with each of the parts modular. If you have the industrial base, you can reuse the parts
in different machines so things like the brick press or the tractor or the trencher... things
that save on labor. Its not the same as a hundred years ago. We have the technology and
the tools now and we can live better and localize and connect also more closely our
consumption with our production. We have now optimized our production so much that
the real cost is in the distribution of a lot of the things. Weve moved production to these
centralized nodes. I think, one of the biggest changes in the market was around the 70s
when they decided to sell different kinds of tomato soup. Before, the people used to do the
studies and say OK, how much sugar should we put? How much salt? What consistency
should we make it? Then, getting the averages and making the single product the best
tomato soup for the market. Some physicist came along and he actually propose that we
should make different kinds of tomato soup. Some people like it lumpy, some people like it
spicy and it was all different and customized for each people. Thats part of the revolution
with 3D printing that we can actually build the things for ourselves, as we need them
ourselves, better serving us. Thats the same thing with the production and the
consumption. Move the things locally and use the tools so we can better connect the
consumption with the production. Not only that things can be better, that youre eating
better, that youre consuming local produce that is made by local farmers. Were more
aware of the hidden costs in our consumption because there are a lot of things in the way
that were living and the way that were doing things now that is on a trajectory that isnt
really sustainable and is causing massive amounts of unseen damage and the effect on our
lives is not very good. We look to someone and we yearn for someone who will care for us
and forgive us of our childish mistakes. The reality is that we are the custodians of lifes
meaning, we search for a purpose but we make our own purpose. (Applause) [42:14]


_________________________________________


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AL: Lets talk about what the world looks like in ten years. We were talking with Andreas
and Jeffrey when they were up here and they were talking about the world of post national
currencies and denationalized currencies. They were talking about it as if this was
something that, perhaps, was fifty years out but, I think, that in practice weve seen that
when change happens, it tends to happen quite fast. Im curious... you know... I suspect
youve thought about this. What do you think happens if we win? [44:02]

AT: Im not into Utopia and stuff. Im past dogma and Im not really into ideologies. I think
there is too much of this labelling and categorizing. I think we should elevate the discussion
and more talking about values and ethics. What kind of values do we want to promote in
the society? Its one thing to talk about we should be like this, it should be like that but the
only way that people are going to adopt the things is if theyre better than what... if the
alternatives are better than what is already provided. Thats how we have to start thinking.
We have to start thinking and being resource-oriented about what we need. Its one of the
biggest tragedies of our modern era the great waste of human talent that we couldnt or
wouldnt use. If we can somehow think to apply that that people are often working in jobs
or doing things that is against their self-interest but for money. At some point, you get to
your life and you start to think OK, how am I going to pay for this? How am I going to have
the healthcare or do this? To take that worry away from people and the people can do the
things that matter and then think How can I make that sustainable? How can I use the
market or the power of these tools to grow how I want to see the things? If we were all
doing this together, the more of us there are, the stronger we are. Fundamentally, people
are good. There are a lot of people I see here today striving for good things and looking
forward to the future with the way that the things are heading with the exponentially
increasing... it doesnt matter what the roof on the resources is but theyre exponentially
increasing use of resources, the population is increasing, the rest of the world wants to also
match our energy use, combine all these together and were going to hit that roof sooner or
later. The police are being given more and more powers every day. More and more laws
and legislation that they can use to... how they want to enforce their vision of the world.
The surveillance state is getting absolutely enormous. When the Snowden revelations first
came out, it was... [46:38]

AL: Isnt this good? I mean, from the perspective of... youre saying that these systems can
only take hold if they are so obviously better than the alternatives that we have before us.
Isnt that good from the perspective of now, its much more likely that these alternatives
will be attractive relative to normal? [46:56]

AT: Thats like saying war is good because its spurs innovation. (Laughter) The Snowden
stuff came out and in the beginning it was like Wow, this is cool. Hackers have been
saying this for a long time. If I can download a piece of software off the internet in a couple
of hours and start tracking peoples faces, you can bet that in London, with all the CCTV
everywhere, that its already being done and logged in massive databases. With every
revelation, it gets more and more crazy... like mind-blowing, like the scale of this. This is not
targeted surveillance, this is dragnet surveillance, flying drones over in entire
neighborhoods, entire communities of people and harvesting all of their communications
and data, logging 60m phone calls in one month in France alone, 70m in Spain. This is usual,
you know. [48:03]

AL: Again, its that always the darkest before the dawn sort of thing. In order for the
alternative to emerge, again, if everything was great, why would these systems be
appealing? [48:11]

AT: Things are polarizing a lot more. For a lot of people, its going to get very, very bad.
The thing is were in an economic downturn with the massively burgeoning, bureaucratic
state and all the red tape. Meanwhile, for the normal person, theyre working 9-5 doing
jobs they increasingly hate for less and less pay and for what? For a box in the city? [48:43]

AL: Again, this just seems like all of these things that youre saying, these are reasons why
people arent invested in the current paradigm. If they were successful with their job, if
they were happy with the place that they lived... [48:55]

AT: A lot of people are continuing to do the things the same way and they will continue.
[49:00]

AL: What are the alternatives? This is the thing is that these people... anyways. [49:03]

AT: The future is not going to be like a sudden crash or some apocalypse. Its going to be
like the things declining and getting a lot more oppressive and a lot more harder to live with
all the scarcity of the resources as well. Meanwhile, thats why weve got to put our minds
together and think OK, how can we build something for the future? We, as free people,
can survive and thrive and grow as a culture. Its not only about making this project or that
project, but about the idea because once you make something that shows that its possible
and that the imagination is there. You do it a couple of times more here and then people
start to reproduce with the documentation on the internet these are the steps you need
to take. Then people go and they start to replicate it and thats how you grow as a culture
and take the things over. [50:03]

AL: OK, we just have another couple of minutes but I want to talk to you about Libbitcoin.
[50:09]

AT: Ah yeah. [50:09]

AL: Am I pronouncing that right? [50:10]

AT: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [50:11]

AL: OK, great. Libbitcoin. The second time I heard you speak was on Plan B show back in
maybe August or September and you explained that you were working on libbitcoin, an
alternative implementation of the Bitcoin specification because, right now, the world that
we live in with only the Satoshi client as the primary implementation is a world like one
where you only have Internet Explorer. [50:35]

AT: Yeah, one of the biggest threats to Bitcoin is centralization of development. Now, its
not enough that the source code is open source. There are a lot of decisions, deep down on
the technical level that only very few people understand, like Peter Todd or a handful of
other people. When youre faced with that decision between A or B, if your motive is
slightly corrupted, maybe youre working for some corporation, maybe you might take the
choice B which slightly favors corporations over black markets. Next time, it happens again
and again. Its not like some sudden big backdoor put in by the government, its the sum of
many small steps that slowly morph Bitcoin into something very different from the Bitcoin
with the principles of Satoshi encoded into there. It becomes a Govcoin or a Corpcoin and
its no longer serving the interests of the people - a Bitcoin for small businesses, for peer to
peer transfers, for the black market. Its not only about the protocol or certain consensus
development decisions, its also about features, about where do we, as a people, invest our
time and energies because just like the internet, there are people who develop technologies
to trap people, to surveil people, to censor people, to limit peoples freedom. It doesnt
even have to come from corporations, it can come from ourselves, from Bitcoin
corporations that say We need to protect our liability, we need to protect our interests
and going and implementing features like the blacklists or triangulation of transactions or
any number of different features that we cant foresee right now. In the future, there will
be that pressure and that inertia to develop those things. We need people who are
developing Bitcoin in the spirit or with the integrity of what Bitcoin was intended for a tool
to serve people, to serve a market which empowers everybody. Its very important that we
have a voice in that development circle. Were not going to get that voice by going to the
Foundation and asking to be part of their inner circle. The way that were going to get the
voice is by forcing the issue, by making software thats better and that people want to use.
The way that its going to be better is by playing on our strengths. What strengths do we
have? We have software that is equitable, that everybody can use and that everybody can
transact with their anonymity intact, that they can use crypto-features unencumbered with
one another and that is what we have to do with Bitcoin. Moving away from this image of
Bitcoin as a tool to buy a drink in a bar, as something to make it easier for you to shop in the
supermarket Yeah, Ive got my iPhone, using Bitcoin... Im not criticizing that but there is a
bigger reason for Bitcoin. Bitcoin brings us new tools that we can exploit and everybody can
use these tools. We can use it to really construct something different that hasnt ever been
imagined before possible and is better than what exists, like the crypto-features. With the
Darkwallet, we want to bring these features out to the people for the young entrepreneurs,
the tools of trade and business of the future. It goes beyond just new finance. The
blockchain is an amazing new data-structure that we can use and it goes into things about
resource management. How can communities or groups of people... it used to be that we
had small communities before but now we have the technology to link up these
communities and actually make them scale on a bigger level for people to be able to
organize together on a much larger scale. Tools of governance... Ive spent a lot of time in
communities seeing how do the people govern and each one has a different culture just like
every open source project has a different culture. There are different models with different
tradeoffs that serve different people. Thats the problem with having one government
enforced by one state. Maybe there could be start up governments like what the CIC is
doing in Catalunya. There are using the legal structure of a cooperative... [55:35]

AL: Let me give you a lightning question here because were just about out of time. Amir
this has been great. OK, so at the beginning of this conversation, I said that you have
ideology thats important to you. In the middle of this conversation, you told me that you
dont identify with ideology anymore and that its about values. In less than a minute, can
you articulate what you think the most important values are for you? [55:55]

AT: I have a list somewhere. (Laughter) I met this Jeff Berwick guy last night and he was
telling me about his plan to get some African nation pay off the government and the
politicians and divide it up into shares and sell the country out. I was like What if some
guy buys up half the country and hes like Well its private property. I was like Who
enforces that and he goes You have the right to enforce that. That, for me, is so fucked
up. (Laughter) (Applause) Some rich, white **** buys half the country, puts his mansion
there and says This is my space with the guns and the military... so, another mafia. Thats
not for me. [56:47]

AL: No more mafias. [56:48]

AT: No mafias, no. Its not about I want my sovereignty, **** the other guy. No, its like
I want my sovereignty. We want our sovereignty. Im going to link with my friends and do
the things together. What is better to live with your friends working on cool projects with
swimming pools, a gym, boxing gym, hack club, cinema all for yourselves and you own the
land together... like a massive space where you can have big parties and nice girls around
and live free and do what you want and have all your friends come and visit you - not only
100 people, 10,000 or a million and all having fun and being free. Thats the way to live.
[57:30]

AL: Ladies and gentlemen, Amir Taaki. (Applause) [57:33]


____________________________________________


CREDITS:

Thanks for listening to Episode 111 of Lets Talk Bitcoin.

Content for this episode was provided by Brave the World and CanAwareness
This episode was edited by Adam B. Levine
Music for this episode was provided by Jared Rubens and the boys from
Bitcoinsandgravy.com with their Ode to Satoshi

Thanks for listening. [58:02]