S03E03 Aaron van Wirdum – Bitcoin's Origin Story and the Unfinished Fight
From Trust Revolution by Shawn Yeager
February 6, 2026 · 1h 5m · Season 3 · Episode 3
About this episode
Aaron van Wirdum discusses the history of digital cash leading to Bitcoin and the ongoing challenges it faces.
“The cypherpunks who tried to build digital cash before Bitcoin might one day be remembered like America's founding fathers.” Aaron van Wirdum spent five years writing The Genesis Book—and warns the fight for money outside of government control isn't over. EPISODE SUMMARY Bitcoin didn't appear from nowhere. For decades before Satoshi, a scrappy band of cryptographers, privacy activists, and heterodox economists tried to build digital cash that could operate outside government control. They all failed—until one anonymous inventor synthesized their ideas into a system that actually worked. Aaron van Wirdum, author of The Genesis Book and former editor-in-chief of Bitcoin Magazine, traces this lineage from David Chaum's DigiCash in the early 90s through Nick Szabo's Bit Gold to Satoshi's breakthrough: using proof of work for consensus rather than as currency itself. But the origin story doesn't end with invention. Van Wirdum covered the 2015-2017 block size wars in real time—when miners, exchanges, and venture-backed startups controlling 80% of economic activity tried to change Bitcoin's rules and lost to anonymous node runners in basements. Today, the threat has shifted. Mining is…
People in this episode
Host: Shawn Yeager
Guest: Aaron van Wirdum
Topics covered
- Bitcoin
- digital cash
- cryptography
- government control
- privacy
- block size wars
Keywords
- Bitcoin
- digital cash
- cypherpunks
- block size wars
- privacy
- government control
- cryptography
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Bitcoin Magazine
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