Aaron van Wirdum is the technical editor for Bitcoin Magazine. With a background in studying the historical influence of society-shaping technologies, he’s been covering Bitcoin and related projects since 2013. He is known for his ability to explain highly-technical subjects to a layman audience and specializes in topics including Bitcoin’s history, scaling and privacy technology.

Mark is the founder, CEO and chief investment officer of Morgan Creek Capital Management. He is also the managing partner of Morgan Creek Digital Assets. Morgan Creek Capital Management was founded in 2004 and currently manages close to $2 billion in discretionary and non‐discretionary assets. Prior to founding Morgan Creek, Mark was CIO and founder of UNC Management Company (UNCMC), the endowment investment office for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC). Before that, he was senior investment director for the University of Notre Dame Investment Office. Mark has been at the forefront of institutional investing throughout his career. An early investor in alternative asset classes at Notre Dame, he brought the endowment model of investing to UNC, which contributed to significant performance gains for the endowment. The endowment model is the cornerstone philosophy of Morgan Creek, as is the mandate to invest in innovation. Mark is again at the forefront of investing through Morgan Creek Digital Assets, which was formed in 2018. Morgan Creek Digital is an early-stage investor in blockchain technology, digital currency and digital assets through the firm’s Venture Capital and Digital Asset Index Fund. Mark received a BA with honors from the University of Notre Dame and an MBA in accounting and finance from the University of Chicago.

Ray Youssef is the CEO and co-founder of Paxful, one of the world’s leading peer-to-peer bitcoin marketplaces. Paxful gives people a simple, fair and secure avenue for trading bitcoin. With over 300 payment methods accepted on the platform, Paxful is one of the most accessible and user-friendly bitcoin marketplaces available today.

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Aside from making cryptocurrencies accessible, Ray also launched the #BuiltWithBitcoin charitable initiative that aims to show the humanitarian capabilities of bitcoin. He’s a New York City native and has been a serial entrepreneur since 2001.

Amiti is a Bitcoin Core contributor at Xapo. She started her career working at startups around San Francisco and joined Coinbase in 2018. She attended the 2019 Chaincode Labs Summer Bitcoin residency. She is contributing to Bitcoin Core by redesigning how transactions are broadcasted to improve privacy. Her other passions include off-trail backpacking, ice climbing, yoga and meditation.

Jimmy Song is a Bitcoin educator, developer and entrepreneur. For the majority of his 20-year programming career, Jimmy has worked as a software developer for a wide array of companies in different fields, including entertainment, healthcare and e-commerce. He began exploring Bitcoin in 2011 and was contributing to open-source Bitcoin projects by 2013. In 2014, he joined Monetas, where he led the development of Bitcoin integration with open transactions. ​After managing the development of a business-friendly bitcoin wallet for Armory Technologies, Jimmy became the principal architect for Paxos, creating blockchain solutions for institutional entities. In 2018, Jimmy joined Blockchain Capital ​as a venture partner. In addition, he runs Programming Blockchain, a company that trains students around the world in blockchain programming and development techniques.

Charlie is host of http://UntoldStories.com. In 2011, at the dawn of the crypto era, Shrem founded BitInstant, the first and largest Bitcoin company. In 2013, he founded the Bitcoin Foundation and served as its vice chairman. Since then, Charlie has advised more than a dozen digital currency companies, launched and managed numerous partnerships between crypto and non-crypto companies and is the go-to guy for some of the world’s wealthiest entrepreneurs. He recently started http://Crypto.IQ, a premier advisory firm providing expert research, education and advice in the world of crypto assets.

Anthony Pompliano is a co-founder and partner at Morgan Creek Digital, an investment firm seeking to provide wider access to blockchain technology and digital assets like bitcoin. Pompliano is widely known on Twitter as an advocate for the decentralized ecosystem, specifically focusing on Bitcoin. He may be best known for coining popular phrases like “Long Bitcoin, short the bankers.” Prior to joining Morgan Creek, he worked at Facebook and Snapchat as a product manager and a growth leader, respectively. Pompliano also writes a daily newsletter, Off The Chain, analyzing crypto news for institutional investors, and hosts a podcast of the same name.

Andrew Poelstra is the director of research at Blockstream, one of the foremost institutions that provide funding and support for the development of Bitcoin Core. He has been working as a cryptographer in the Bitcoin and cryptocurrency space for the last six years, contributing to the improvement of scalability and the development of privacy technologies such as Confidential Assets, Bulletproofs, Taproot and Mimblewimble. Most recently, he has become known for his off-brand use of digital signatures in the form of “scriptless scripts.”

Rodolfo is the co-founder of Coinkite, a company that has been developing Bitcoin solutions since 2012. His work has been focusing on the hardware side and he has long been fascinated by the idea of creating a physical bitcoin solution that was actually trustless. Rodolfo is also an avid believer in online freedom of expression.

Cory Klippsten is the founder of SwanBitcoin.com and GiveBitcoin.io. He also serves as an advisor to Unchained Capital, Riot Blockchain (NASDAQ: RIOT) and Adaptive Capital, and is a partner in PurposeLab and Bitcoiner Ventures. As an advisor, he has supported more than $250 million of fundraising since 2016, and as an angel has funded 20-plus early-stage startups. Before working with these startups, Klippsten worked for Google, McKinsey, Microsoft and Morgan Stanley, and earned an MBA in finance and entrepreneurship from the University of Chicago. He grew up in San Francisco and Seattle, split 15 years between New York City and Chicago, and now lives in Los Angeles with his wife and daughters. His hobbies include Bitcoin, history and travel (Istanbul and Barcelona are favorite cities).

Diego Gutiérrez-Zaldívar was one of the pioneers of web development in Argentina and all of Latin America in the mid-’90s and has had a leading role in fostering Bitcoin and blockchain technology in Latin America since 2012. He is the CEO of IOVlabs and its platforms RSK and RIF. Rootstock (RSK Labs) is the first open-source, peer-to-peer, smart-contract platform and payment network with a two-way peg to Bitcoin that also rewards miners via merge-mining. RSK’s goal is to add value and functionality to the Bitcoin ecosystem by enabling smart contracts, near-instant payments and high scalability. Gutiérrez-Zaldívar became familiar with Bitcoin in 2011 and since 2012 has devoted himself to the creation of Argentinean grassroot Bitcoin communities. He is one of the founders of the Argentinean Bitcoin Community, which has over 2,000 members registered via Meetup and 20,000 members in its online community.

Alex Gladstein is the chief strategy officer at the Human Rights Foundation. He has also served as vice president of strategy for the Oslo Freedom Forum since its inception in 2009. In his work, Alex has connected hundreds of dissidents and civil society groups with business leaders, technologists, journalists, philanthropists, policymakers and artists to promote free and open societies. Alex's writing and views on human rights and technology have appeared in media outlets across the world, including The Atlantic, BBC, Bloomberg, CNN, Fast Company, The Guardian, NPR, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, TIME and WIRED. He has spoken at universities ranging from MIT to Stanford, presented at the European Parliament and U.S. State Department and serves as a faculty member at Singularity University and as an advisor to Blockchain Capital. He currently lives in the San Francisco area, and you can reach him at alex@hrf.org. He co-authored "The Little Bitcoin Book" in 2019 and frequently speaks and writes about why Bitcoin matters for human rights.

Edward is the Director of Business Development at Slush Pool and Braiins. He stumbled upon Bitcoin while working in Shanghai and was quickly drawn to Bitcoin mining. Now in Prague, his work focuses on mining pool services, Braiins OS mining tools and open-source initiatives

Brian Estes is the CIO and managing partner at Off The Chain Capital; plus he is a general partner at Polychain Capital. Brian helped finance, build and mentor four blockchain companies whose combined value is over $10 billion today. Prior to his involvement in blockchain technology in 2014, Brian was a leading endowment and foundation asset manager who was ranked in the top one-tenth of 1 percent of Morningstar asset managers between 2004 and 2014. Brian has his bachelor's degree from the University of Illinois and master's in business administration from Washington University. Brian also studied at Cambridge University and the London School of Economics. For fun, Brian has been an instrument-rated private pilot for 30 years and has over 2,100 flight hours in his single-engine Cessna Cardinal. He also enjoys spending time with his wife of 27 years.

"Rockstart Dev" is a serial startup CTO turned open-source developer in the Bitcoin ecosystem. He joined Zap to help launch LN_Strike. He is also a core member at BTCPay Server, as well as a Twitter thought leader.

Leigh Cuen is a tech reporter covering blockchain technology for publications such as Newsweek Japan, International Business Times and Racked. Her work has also been published by Teen Vogue, Al Jazeera English, The Jerusalem Post, Mic and Salon. Leigh does not hold value in any digital currency projects or startups. Her small cryptocurrency holdings are worth less than a pair of leather boots.

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A physics graduate from MIT, Sam was a trader on Jane Street Capital's international ETF desk. He traded a variety of ETFs, futures, currencies and equities, and helped design its automated OTC trading system. Sam left Jane Street Capital in late 2017 and started a quantitative hedge fund and liquidity provider called Alameda Research. After trading on dozens of exchanges and identifying multiple issues, he decided to launch FTX International in early 2019 and plans to launch FTX USA in Q2 2020.

As the co-founder and chief executive officer of BTC Inc, David Bailey is an industry leader and evangelist for the decentralized future. Since 2013, BTC Inc has grown to offer critical intelligence, brand-building expertise and technical incubation specialized for the blockchain and cryptocurrency ecosystem, as well as industry-leading projects like Po.et. Under Bailey’s direction, the company now operates in multiple countries and has raised $35.5 million in aggregate across its businesses.

Bailey is also a member of the board for the Blockchain Education Network; serves on the board of directors for the publicly-traded digital publishing company Maven (MVEN); sits on the board of advisors for the University of Alabama; is a managing partner at 402 Digital Partners, one of the earliest crypto funds; and is an active angel investor for emerging blockchain-based projects.

Isabela has been part of the free software community and an activist for democratization of information since the late 1990s. She joined the Tor Project as project manager in 2015 after working as product manager for international and growth at Twitter for four years. Prior to Twitter, she worked with the Brazilian Federal Government on digital inclusion and other free software projects from the Ministry of Communications as well as the Presidential Palace of Brazil. Isabela became executive director of the Tor Project in 2018.  

wiz is a self-sovereign bitcoin miner and organizer of the Tokyo Bitcoin Hackers meetup. He also runs his own ISP and contributes to various Bitcoin-related projects such as Bisq, BTCPay Server, mempool.space and bitcoin-only.com

Pavol Rusnák, or Stick, is the co-founder, CTO, core developer and cryptographer at SatoshiLabs. He is leading the development of software and hardware projects such as Trezor, the first hardware wallet. Along with his regular work, he is also interested in artificial intelligence and cognitive science in general. In his spare time, he works on award-winning new media interactive installations.

Slush is co-founder and CEO of SatoshiLabs — the creator of the world's first hardware wallet, Trezor. Marek has been in Bitcoin since 2010 and founded the world’s first bitcoin mining pool. He is well known to the cryptocurrency community all over the world as an industry visionary and innovator.