The community is divided on the issue of President Donald Trump
A Day in the Life of a Blockchain Prosperity: When Trump and I Metastasized at a High-Z Cryptocurrency Conference
Most people I spoke with were not at the conference for the fringe player. They went to see Trump because they wanted to know if he was a supporter of cryptocurrencies. An hour before Trump was scheduled to speak, I got an email inviting me to watch the speech at the DNA House, a pop-up event space hosted by an asset management fund. The email stated that you can have a drink and bring a bag. Between the suffocating crowds, the harsh austerity of the Nakamoto stage, and the reported Secret Service seizures of other reporters’ backpacks, the invite was very tempting. I left.
A bullet had narrowly missed Trump’s skull at a rally two weeks prior, so security was extra tight. The line to enter the Music City Center spilled out the door and around the block after 8AM, hours before Trump was scheduled to speak. The hats I was wearing were red, orange, and memecoin, and were given to me for free by a platform that gave them away for free. There were shirts that said DONALD PUMP, shirts that showed Trump in the aftermath of being shot, his fist in the air, that said FIGHT! FIGHT!, and shirts that said FREE ROSS VOTE TRUMP that, like the orange hats, had been given away for free.
TheBitcoiners were prepared for Trump, but he was prepared for their votes. The conference was struggling to handle the logistical aspects of having a former president and his retinue at it.
Clearly Trump doesn’t. That didn’t stop him from making promises that only someone who deeply misunderstood bitcoin both technically and philosophically would ever make. He compared the digital currency to the steel industry of a century ago, showing how little resemblance there is to the modern digital world. Then he promised to make the United States the “crypto capital of the planet and the bitcoin superpower of the world.”
Trump moved on. The audience at the conference roared when he promised to commute Ulbricht’s sentence. There was a smattering of applause from the crowd at DNA House, too, but the mood in the room had shifted. People had put their phones away.
In the light of day, DNA House was more intimate, though the crowd was no less male. One man told me this was where the “whales” were; another invited me to a private afterparty at “Taylor Swift’s recording studio.” There was a catered lunch — grilled salmon, broccoli, a rice pilaf situation — and an open bar, one screen set to the livestream of the conference, another displaying the live price of both Bitcoin and the $MAGAA memecoin. The people at DNA House were more subtle in their statements than those at the convention center. I overheard a bearded man tell someone he works with Young Americans for Liberty. A person told me that he and others had attended a $3,000-a-person event at the Westin Hotel rooftop the night before, hosted by the $MAGAA coin developers, which also featured Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump Jr.
Grant, a 31, from Arizona told me before Trump spoke that decentralization, freedom, and getting to the source ofBitcoin is what it is about. Neither side, he said, is going to stop printing money; the right is “pandering to voters” by taking a pro-Bitcoin stance, but it’s better than what the Democrats are doing. Like many of the other conference attendees, he proudly displayed his ideology on his shirt, which read STOP SUBSIDIZING VEGANS. He explained the shirt was from CrowdHealth, an insurance platform that helps people break free from corporate run sick care. As we spoke, a woman approached us and asked how exactly we were subsidizing her vegan lifestyle. They found a common ground, both of whom will cast their votes for RFK Jr. in the presidential election.
Allen told me that these guys represent an ideology that is fundamentally hostile to anything like traditional religion and anything that might be thought of as organic. He takes a pragmatic view of the perverse and satanic. I think we are against in the long term. Politics is dirty in the short term.
The Bitcoin Conference: Where Is the Power of Bitcoin? What Am I? Where Are I? How Will I Get There, When Will I Be?
It is possible that the crowd didn’t appreciate him killing the vibe, or that the audience knew he couldn’t hear them. Then it was time for RFK Jr. — introduced as “the next president of the United States” — who told the Bitcoiners that they have it all right.
I got in without issue, somewhere near the middle of Bitcoin evangelist Michael Saylor’s diatribe about the power of holding your coin. Saylor spoke with messianic fervor: the people in this room would get rich, would stay rich, while everyone who failed to get on board would be left behind. Cynthia Lummis and Tim Scott talked about the power ofcryptocurrencies and their love for country. (Lummis, who unveiled a draft bill that would require the Treasury secretary to establish a network of Bitcoin storage facilities across the country, was supposed to be joined by former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, who was taken off the program at the last minute.) Scott evoked the memory ofMartin Luther King Jr., proclaiming that he was free at last.
On Friday, lines were longer before the no-bag rule took effect. There was no dedicated media entrance at the Bitcoin Conference, unlike other events with Secret Service protection. There was a makeshift press room downstairs that had tea, coffee, and water but it wasn’t fast enough for journalists to see the show. Vivian Cheng, the media liaison, escorted me to the front of the Secret Service line on Friday and told me not to count on her help again; after this, I was on my own. I inquired about the rumors about the no-bag policy as we walked past the hundreds of people who waited for hours to get in. She was not sure. And laptops? Also unsure.
This attitude tracked. At a party hosted by the poker player Crypto Megan and actor T.J. Miller, a group of attorneys complained about SEC regulations. The problem with crypto law, they told me between rounds, was that there were no laws, so the government just makes up whatever rules it wants to go after you. One of them said the fact that Trump had embraced cryptocurrencies was not a positive development. But we weren’t here to talk politics. One of the young lawyers handed me a golf club and told me to take a swing.
And what about the presumptive Democratic nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris? (She had been invited to the conference but declined to attend.) Harris hasn’t commented, but her political views have historically been more to the progressive side than President Biden. What do the people who use the digital currency want? Les said they didn’t need anything. We need an active campaign to not fight against us.
The guards at the door said no bags or outside food or drinks were allowed. The well-coiffed women had Secret Service clearances and demanded that they be allowed in with their handbags. They were told to find someone inside with the campaign or the conference who could vouch for them. “This is not a regular day,” one of the guards barked at another woman who asked if she could bring in a sandwich. Banal contraband piled up outside the glass building like offerings before a temple: tote bags, half-full water bottles and coffee cups, the remnants of breakfast.
The reporter that was angry at the press desk was not given a green pass that would allow him to skip the front of the Secret Service line. He told me he was a small fry and was snubbed by the other reporters at the party. I was denied one of these passes but it could only be a problem because of a flurry of phone calls and emails from multiple editors. The press desk staffers told me the distribution of the passes had been decided by the Secret Service and said there was nothing they could do to get me on the list. A Secret Service spokeswoman told me that the responsibilities for issuing media credentials and the distribution of media credentials did not fall under their purview. The publications that got the press pass were big names like The New York Times and the right-wing media. The outlets were being prioritized over trade publications that have been covering the issue for years. Was the Bitcoin Conference even a Bitcoin conference anymore?
The staffers behind the help desk were trying to figure out if the Secret Service was involved in the cancellation or if it was just a miscommunication. The Secret Service told him that it may have been taken in their security sweep, and that he could check it out.
On the day that Trump was due to speak, the Secret Service canceled an event. I had to leave Topgolf early because I was too tired to make it to yoga on time, and I didn’t get to do it until a few minutes before the session was to start.
One of the ideas Trump floated was a scheme where the US would hold billions of dollars worth of coins in a reserve, which experts consider dubious value to taxpayers, but could still jack up the value of the currency to the Nashville crowd. The values of theBlockchain revolution are not compatible with the government’s manipulation of the system. Silk Road owner Ross Ulbricht is currently serving a life sentence in a US penitentiary for his role in an illegal narcotics and money-laundering operation. So much for being tough on crime.
There is a legitimate question: Does the White House hateCrypto as the industry and Trump think? During the first year of the administration, it became apparent to me that the administration was looking at tHe technology as a scammy technology, and that it was up for grabs. The administration tried to walk a line between encouraging innovation in the field and making sure securities law is followed.