Below is a “signal-only” short-list of independent Bitcoin writers who publish under their own names (or long-standing pseudonyms), fund their work with donations, book sales or consulting—not intrusive ads—and are widely respected across the technical and economic corners of the ecosystem.
| Blogger (site / feed) | What you’ll get | Typical cadence | Funding model & ad footprint |
| Nic Carter – “Bits About Money”niccarter.info/blog · RSS/Substack | Deep dives on Bitcoin-adjacent monetary policy, energy markets and proof-of-reserves. Carter mixes on-chain data with classic finance history. | 1-2 essays / month | Donation links & premium research tiers; no ads. |
| Lyn Alden – lynalden.com/blog | Macro-investor viewpoint: liquidity cycles, bond markets and how they intersect with Bitcoin. Highly cited by institutional allocators. | Monthly flagship letter + timely notes | Paid research memberships; public posts are ad-free PDFs. |
| Der Gigi – dergigi.com | Philosophical & technical essays (“Bitcoin Is Time”, “Bitcoin Is the Rediscovery of Money”) under CC-BY license; zero hype. | Irregular, but evergreen | 100 % reader donations & book sales; no tracking. |
| Jameson Lopp – lopp.net/articles | Op-sec, self-custody primers, data-rich annual reports (“Bitcoin by Numbers”). Maintains open-source resources. | Every few weeks | Self-funded; site is static, ad-free. |
| Matt Odell – Citadel Dispatch | Hour-long audio + show notes on privacy tools, Lightning, Nostr; audience-funded, “no sponsors, no paywalls.” | Weekly livestream / podcast | Value-4-value sats; zero ads. |
| Parker Lewis – “Gradually, Then Suddenly” series (Unchained blog) | 40-part plain-English curriculum that converts skeptics by tying Bitcoin to everyday economics. | Archive finished; occasional new posts | Published by Unchained Capital; article pages carry only house ads. |
| Marty Bent – “Marty’s Ƀent” / TFTC.io | Daily ~400-word dispatch flagging censorship, mining policy, OSS releases; companion podcast Tales from the Crypt. | Daily | Donation links; light house ads for TFTC merch/events. |
| Matt Corallo (“BlueMatt”) – bluematt.bitcoin.ninja | Core-dev perspective on protocol governance, dev-funding and mining decentralization debates. | Sporadic, but timely during controversies | Entirely personal blog; no ads. |
How to keep the noise low
- Use RSS or Nostr relays for these writers instead of Twitter/X to avoid engagement-bait.
- Set up an offline reader (e.g., Miniflux or Read-You) so you never load the surrounding site chrome.
- For long-form PDFs (Lyn Alden, Parker Lewis) download once and archive—links rarely change.
These eight authors collectively cover protocol engineering, macro strategy, privacy, philosophy and day-to-day news without the click-bait or adware that plagues most crypto media. Subscribe to two or three whose angle matches your interests and you’ll capture nearly all independent “signal” in the Bitcoin space.