How Trump was 'orange-pilled' by three bitcoiners in Puerto Rico and the promise of $100 million
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — A block away from the neon-lit buzz of Lower Broadway, where honky-tonk pours onto the city’s main drag at all hours, stands the Music City Center, a venue that’s hosted everything from craft beer conferences to a performance by the legendary Dolly Parton.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — A block away from the neon-lit buzz of Lower Broadway, where honky-tonk pours onto the city’s main drag at all hours, stands the Music City Center, a venue that’s hosted everything from craft beer conferences to a performance by the legendary Dolly Parton.
In late July, the complex filled up for something entirely different. It was the biggest bitcoin conference of the year, and the headline act was none other than former President Donald Trump.
For nearly 50 minutes on a Saturday afternoon in the country music capital, the Republican nominee for president extolled the virtues of bitcoin and spelled out what a second Trump administration would mean for the crypto industry to a packed crowd of conferencegoers who’d spent hours getting through the Secret Service’s tight security protocol.
“If crypto is going to define the future, I want it to be mined, minted and made in the USA,” Trump declared, in a message targeted to the industry’s bitcoin miners, who secure the network by running large banks of high-powered machines. “We will be creating so much electricity that you’ll be saying, ‘Please, please, President, we don’t want any more electricity. We can’t stand it!’”
The speech, which read like it was straight out of a bitcoiner’s bible, was quite the about-face for an ex-president who three years earlier had dismissed the cryptocurrency as a “scam.” Trump was, no doubt, lured by the potential of huge amounts of donor money from an industry that sees itself as under constant attack from the Biden-Harris administration and the heavy regulatory hand of SEC Chair Gary Gensler.
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