Aaron van Wirdum

Explaining the technical side of Bitcoin

Van Wirdum has covered Bitcoin since 2013. His reporting has focused on subjects that can be difficult to follow from headlines alone: privacy, scaling, software releases and the trade-offs behind proposed changes.

At Bitcoin Magazine, his work included reporting and technical editing before he took on editorial leadership. The publication announced his appointment as Editor-in-Chief in August 2024 and noted that he had previously held that position from 2021 to 2022.

More recent public descriptions identify him as a former Editor-in-Chief, a career history that is distinct from any current position rather than an older job title carried forward.

Looking at the ideas behind Bitcoin

A protocol update and a historical argument require different kinds of explanation. Van Wirdum’s work has covered both.

His technical reporting examines how Bitcoin operates and changes. His historical writing looks further back, at the efforts to create digital money and the debates about privacy and control that helped shape those efforts.

This gives readers two ways into the subject: understanding the software itself and understanding why people wanted to build it.

On Bitnxt, the Bitcoin asset page tracks market data for the network, and the Bitcoin halving explainer covers the issuance schedule written into the protocol.

The Genesis Book

The Genesis Book: The Story of the People and Projects That Inspired Bitcoin follows the intellectual and technical background to Bitcoin. It brings together earlier work on digital cash, cryptography and monetary ideas.

Bitcoin Magazine Books lists its release date as January 3, 2024, and the publisher describes it as his first book.