The Birth of the Bitcoin Era: Opening the Convention Center to Bitcoin Business in the 21st Century and Celebrating the Centennial Gala
Trapped amid what meager audience had made it past the screenings thus far, I attempted to make the best of the situation by listening in on panels I had planned on skipping. The tenor of the conversations was more politicized than the event descriptions had led me to believe. A panel that was ostensibly about the risks and rewards of public mining companies gave way to discussions of President Joe Biden’s “whole-of-government attack” on cryptocurrency, as Jason Les, the CEO of the Bitcoin mining company Riot Platforms, put it. On the flip side, President Trump has been very positive.
The morning after, almost everyone I saw at the Nashville airport had a hat or tote bag or shirt or wristband identifying them as a Bitcoin Conference attendee. Everything felt weird even though we were back in reality. As I made my way to my gate, I walked past a man wearing a FREE ROSS VOTE TRUMP shirt who looked curiously like Martin Shkreli. It was the pharma bro himself, seemingly delighted to have been recognized. He walked away when I asked if he wanted to talk about the conference.
Politics was not talked about in the convention center. “Under a Trump administration, we’re going to see Bitcoin mining flourish,” Thiel said. “Under a Harris administration, we have no idea what the energy policies are going to be.” Les said that it was important for the community to have the right pro-Bitcoin politicians in office. One side of the aisle had sent its presidential nominee and several sitting members of Congress to court Bitcoiners. The sole representative for the Democratic Party was Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), who had come to make the “progressive case for Bitcoin.” And then there was Robert F. Kennedy Jr., representing both and neither.
Still, they were hooked. Everyone had been waiting for Trump to announce a plan for a strategic Bitcoin reserve. He got close, danced right up to the line, and said that under his presidency, the US would never, ever sell its Bitcoin holdings. The room erupted in applause when it broke out. People stood up. They were ready to take pictures when their wealth doubled or tripled. Scott Walker said from a small stage that he was going to announce it. For a split second, the price of Bitcoin went up, but then came back down. And then it was over.
Trump moved on. The audience at the conference roared when he promised to commute Ross Ulbricht’s sentence. The crowd at DNA House cheered, but the vibe in the room had changed and there was no applause. People had put their phones away.
The house had a promise of something different. I went to the party there the night before after a short chat with some of the people at the Meetup for $EGIRL, a reactionary meme coin that was Musk-esque and related to the mechanical bull. I was surprised to see a crowd of finance types and bros at DNA House. The first man I met that night rattled off a list of his accomplishments: founder, chairman, cofounder, and so on. If I understood the auditor correctly, he told me and the reporter about his project, which involved using hydrogen cells. People danced awkwardly to electronic dance music and added each other on a professional networking website. Everywhere I went there were very few women.
The things we talked about in Amsterdam were different than what I’d talked about elsewhere. The last time, the topic was about how the game is rigged but we can’t leave,” Snowden said. He said the amount of political representation at this year’s conference was wonderful but it was cause for concern. “Cast a vote, but don’t join a cult,” he told the audience. They are not our tribe, they have their own values, interests, and things they are chasing.
“These guys represent an ideology that is fundamentally hostile to anything like traditional religion and anything like an organic, as we would know it, existence for human beings,” Allen told me later. He took a realist view on the perverse and satanic. In the long term, I think we’re opposed. Politics is dirty business in the short term.
Secret Service Protection at the Bitcoin Conference: How President Scott walked into the Public Lobby and listened to the Propagation of Cryptocurrencies
Snowden received far less applause when the speech ended, possibly because the crowd didn’t appreciate him killing the vibe, possibly because 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 said the people in this room are going to get rich, and everyone who did not get on board would be left behind. Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) took the stage with Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) to talk about their love of country and Bitcoin and the liberatory power of cryptocurrency. (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.) “Free at last, free at last,” Scott proclaimed, seemingly evoking Martin Luther King Jr.
The line had been even longer before the no-bag rule took effect. Unlike other events with Secret Service protection that I’d covered in the past, the Bitcoin Conference had no dedicated media entrance. There was a makeshift press room downstairs stocked with free coffee, tea, and water, but there was no expedited entry for journalists who wanted to see the show on the main stage. 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. As we walked past the hundreds of people who had waited — were still waiting — for hours to get in, I asked if the rumors about the no-bag policy on Saturday were true. She wasn’t sure. What about laptops? Also not sure.
This attitude was tracked. A group of attorneys complained to me regarding SEC regulations at the party hosted by T.J. Miller andCrypto Megan. The government makes up any rules they want to go after you in case there are no laws, so that’s the problem with crypto law, they said between rounds. The oldest said that the fact that Trump embraced cryptocurrency wasn’t a positive development. We were not here to talk politics. One of the lawyers gave me a golf club and instructed me to swing it.
What about the vice president? (She had been invited to the conference but declined to attend.) Harris hasn’t commented, but her political perspectives have historically been more to the progressive side than President Biden, according to the CEO of Marathon Digital. What do Bitcoiners want? “We don’t need anything,” Les said. We just need an active campaign to not fight against us.
Outside food or drinks were not allowed by guards at the door. A quartet of well-coiffed women demanded to be let in with their handbags, security rules be damned — they had Secret Service clearance, they said. They were told to get someone involved with the campaign or the conference to vouch for them. One of the guards barked at a woman that asked if she could bring in a sandwich. There are tote bags, half-full water bottles and coffee cups on the sidewalk outside the glass building.
At the press desk, a crypto beat reporter was indignant to learn he wouldn’t be getting a “green pass,” the mysterious, higher-tier credential that conference organizers were giving to select reporters that allowed them to skip to the front of the Secret Service line. He told me that they had both been snubbed, and that he was a small fry. After a flurry of calls and emails from different editors, I was finally granted one of these passes. 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. According to the Secret Service, the issuance of media credentials and the distribution of media credentials were handled by the conference staff. As far as I could tell, the publications that were getting the press pass fell into two buckets: big names like The New York Times and right-wing media. It felt these outlets were being prioritized over the trade publications that had been covering Bitcoin for years. Was the Bitcoin Conference even a Bitcoin conference anymore?
The staffers behind the help desk were trying to find out whether the Secret Service was responsible for the cancellation or if it was just a miscommunication. He was told the Secret Service probably took it during their security sweep; maybe he could check the lost and found?
The Secret Service canceled bitcoin yoga when Trump was scheduled to speak. I was told that yesterday’s yoga class had occurred, but it wasn’t on the schedule for today, because I was too tired from golf to get there on time.
One of the proposals Trump floated is a bitcoin reserve where the US would stash and HODL billions of dollars’ worth of tokens, a scheme that experts consider of dubious value to taxpayers—but might jack up the value of the currency to the enrichment of the Nashville crowd. The values of the blockchain revolution are not compatible with this type of manipulation. Another promise made by Donald Trump was to pardon Ross Ulbricht, the Silk Road owner who is currently serving a life sentence in a federal prison. Being tough on crime isn’t very useful anymore.
Legitimate question: Does the current White House “hate crypto,” as the industry and Trump seem to believe? I poked around a bit and learned that in the early days of the administration, crypto policy—which, to be sure, was a relatively low priority during a pandemic—was indeed up for grabs, with some officials viewing it as a scammy technology. A course was set by the administration which tries to balance innovation in the field and enforcement of securities law.