
S17 E20: Talking Privacy with Amir Taaki, Harry Halpin & Christopher Cialone
From Bitcoin Takeover Podcast by Vlad Costea
April 23, 2026 · 2h 42m · Season 17 · Episode 20
About this episode
The episode discusses privacy with prominent advocates Amir Taaki, Harry Halpin, and Christopher Cialone.
Amir Taaki is one of the first Bitcoin developers to join the project and today he stands out as one of the most prominent cypherpunks and privacy advocates. Currently, he is working towards building DarkFi. Harry Halpin is one of the most prominent privacy advocates in academia, and an entrepreneur who focuses on maximizing human rights. Today, he is the CEO of Nym and he works towards normalizing privacy. Christopher Cialone is a big privacy advocate whose current focus is to free the Tornado Cash devs (especially Roman Storm) and the Samourai Wallet devs. In this episode, we talk about everything privacy. Time stamps: 00:01:13 –Introducing Amir Zaki, Harry Halpin, Christopher Cialone 00:02:17 – Harry Halpin discusses Palantir CEO Alex Karp's advocacy for a corporate-state surveillance apparatus and automated AI weapons to ensure US dominance. 00:05:05 – Halpin critiques the Silicon Valley mindset that glorifies war and surveillance, contrasting it with the harsh realities of authoritarian regimes. 00:07:30 – Why programmers should build privacy-enhancing technologies to resist the rise of authoritarianism and mass surveillance. 00:18:26 – Vlad questions whether the US must…
People in this episode
Host: Vlad Costea
Guests: Amir Taaki, Harry Halpin, Christopher Cialone
Topics covered
- privacy
- cypherpunks
- surveillance
- technology
- human rights
- decentralization
Keywords
- Bitcoin
- privacy
- cypherpunk
- surveillance
- human rights
- decentralization
- Tornado Cash
- Samourai Wallet
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Nym, Tornado Cash, Samourai Wallet
Places: US, China
More episodes of Bitcoin Takeover Podcast
- S17 E27: Kieran Mesquka on Railgun & Building Privacy · June 1, 2026 · 1h 43m
- S17 E26: Steve Thurmond, Calin Culianu & The Phenomenal Big Blockers · May 27, 2026 · 8h 15m
- S17 E25: Milan De Reede on Nano GPT, AI & Vibe Coding · May 19, 2026 · 1h 24m
- S17 E24: Zach Herbert on AI & Hardware Wallets · May 15, 2026 · 2h 36m
- S17 E23: Hunter Beast & Mark Karpelès on Bitcoin's Quantum Upgrade · May 10, 2026 · 1h 4m
- S17 E22: Jeremy Rubin on CTV, Char & Building on Bitcoin · May 6, 2026 · 1h 23m
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