NASHVILLE — Charlene Brown arrived at the Music City Center convention center on the first full day of Bitcoin 2024 with two signs in her hand: “Orange Man Good” and “Bitcoin Don.”
Similar symbols of a recent and sudden shift in bitcoin politics could be seen elsewhere in the Nashville crowd. “Make Bitcoin Great Again” hats — not to mention counterfeit “Make America Great Again” hats that were eventually confiscated by organizers for violating conference rules. — stood in the convention hall as the biggest bitcoin event of the year got underway.
Brown, publisher of Tokens Magazine, a pro-cryptocurrency publication, was perhaps the most visible supporter of Trump’s bitcoin at the Nashville rally.
“I think it’s great that we now have a president who supports Bitcoin,” Brown said, referring to former President Donald Trump. “Now everyone is jumping on the bandwagon,” she said.
Interviews with other attendees revealed clear, if less visible, support for the former president.
Bitcoin Conference, a long-running event centered around the most popular cryptocurrency, has gained national significance almost overnight thanks to Trump’s recent embrace of bitcoin. The schedule, which starts Friday and runs through the weekend, is packed with GOP power players.
Trump is expected to deliver a speech on Saturday, just weeks after officially making support for cryptocurrencies an official part of the GOP platform. He will be preceded by one current and three potential Republican elected officials: South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, Pennsylvania Senate candidate Bernie Moreno, Nevada Senate candidate Sam Brown and Massachusetts Senate candidate John Deaton.
Many other notable Republicans will speak, including former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy and senators. Marsha Zwartbrand, Bill Hagerty and Cynthia Lummis. Representative Ro Khanna of California was the only prominent Democrat on the agenda.
The speaker lineup reflects the growing cabal in the crypto space and tech in general that has taken a hard rightward turn. Other prominent crypto investors now backing Trump include Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, co-founders of the Gemini crypto exchange; and Elon Musk, a longtime crypto fan who has also begun aggressively backing the GOP candidate.
The conference also welcomed Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a third-party candidate for president who pledged to build a reserve of 4 million bitcoins — worth about $272 billion as of Friday — if elected.
Some members of the Republican Party have also floated the idea of creating a U.S. bitcoin reserve, presenting it as similar to the government’s strategic oil reserves and other precious commodities.
Silicon Valley also played a key role in Trump’s choice of J.D. Vance as his running mate; the Ohio senator revealed in 2021 that he owned $100,000 worth of bitcoin, calling crypto “one of the few sectors of our economy where conservatives and other freethinkers can operate without pressure from the social justice crowd.”
The crypto community has historically been skeptical of politicians and institutions, thanks in part to its roots in the cypherpunk community, which embraced the technology as a way to use the internet to embrace decentralization. But with the perception among many in the crypto community that the Biden administration has stifled the technology, convention attendees told NBC News that Trump would be a step in the right direction.
“With Trump, it’s not even that he’s pro-Bitcoin per se — it’s just that he’s willing to let it exist,” said Adam McBride, a Costa Rican crypto entrepreneur. McBride compared the current administration’s stance to “being held underwater, not being able to breathe.”
Trump also once kept the community at bay, at one point saying he was “not a fan” of crypto.
But last month, he signaled a U-turn when he announced his support for the Bitcoin mining industry, pledged to commute the sentence of the founder of underground online marketplace Silk Road, and outlined his support for crypto in the 2024 GOP platform.
“We will end the Democrats’ unlawful and un-American crypto crackdown and oppose the creation of a central bank digital currency,” the platform document reads, referencing debate over creating a centralized digital token, an idea that has drawn fierce opposition from crypto advocates. “We will defend the right to mine Bitcoin and ensure that every American has the right to control their digital assets and transact freely without government oversight and control,” the document reads.
Crypto enthusiasts say Trump has said all the right things so far, but some conference attendees said they aren’t ready to declare crypto has gone full MAGA.
Garett Curran, an associate at Qubic Labs, a Boston-based organization that backs blockchain and Web3 technology companies, said Trump’s actions showed there was an opportunity to roll back current U.S. government regulations, which many in the crypto space see as too restrictive.
But he also raised the prospect of more positive outreach to the community from Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris, citing recent comments in Politico from Mark Cuban, who said people in the vice president’s orbit have signaled greater openness to crypto.
“The bitcoin community actually has power,” Curran said.
A handful of attendees indicated that despite Trump’s renewed interest in crypto, they still couldn’t support him in good conscience.
Sarai Mora, a multimedia artist known as “Creatress” who performed live at a nearby bar Thursday night, said Trump’s differing views still conflict with her own as a woman of Mexican descent.
“I hope the female candidate wins — it’s time to try something new,” she said. “I’m not saying anyone is perfect, but I think it’s time to try something different.”
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
