At Bitcoin 2024 in Nashville, lines wrap around the block. Delays. The crowd awaits. Rumors swirl. Then the music comes on, and much of the audience stands in awe as Trump walks on accompanied by patriotic music.
“There’s no way Kamala Harris could have come here”, I overhear someone comment.
It certainly seems that Bitcoin — or at least its most ardent and vocal US supporters — has become heavily tilted toward the Republican. Gone are the days when the core of enthusiasts described their project as a politically neutral technology.
This conference features bins of free “VOTE TRUMP” t-shirts and Bitcoin Media CEO David Bailey introduces Trump as “soon to be the 47th President!”
A security breach resulted in a one-hour delay. (Elias Ahonen)
Such partisanship was absent during the 2020 and 2016 elections. So why have libertarian Bitcoiners suddenly embraced Trump, a politician whom many Democrat pundits claim is a “dangerous authoritarian”?
One big hint comes when Trump announces on stage that he’ll put an end to Operation Choke Point 2: an initiative blamed for endless crypto firms being refused banking services.
With palpable emotion, a spectator sitting nearby me jumps up to give a heartfelt standing ovation. Afterward he explains that the debanking scheme had brought his US-based crypto investment fund to a standstill.
“We suddenly lost access to banking earlier this year, it was a huge struggle to pay staff while searching for a new bank.”
In his view, Trump offers the only hope of his business continuing as normal.
Many others in the crypto industry have similarly begun to view the election as a do-or-die choice between having their crypto portfolios and businesses wiped out by the Democrats or having them given a new lease of life by the Republicans.
But since Bitcoin 2024 the political landscape has been transformed, with Trump moving from favorite to underdog after Kamala Harris replaced Joe Biden as the Democrat candidate. Rightly or wrongly, the optics of…
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