Trump Forges Cryptocurrency Alliance in Nashville

Two things mattered inside Bitcoin2024, the premier international cryptocurrency conference hosted at Music City Center by Nashville’s Bitcoin Magazine over the weekend. 

The first was a five-digit number illuminated under a geodesic dome made to look like the surface of the moon. In early February, Bitcoin’s dollar value settled above $60,000, about 10 times its value in 2019. This number sheds and gains full percentage points during a typical week. Many conference-goers — the true Bitcoin faithful, bought-in financially and emotionally — didn’t need the ticker to quote the asset’s market value with almost hourly precision.

A snaking queue into the Nakamoto Stage, a limited-capacity hall hosting the event’s main speakers, was the second. At points during Bitcoin2024’s three full days, the line captured attendees for more than an hour, forcing a train that wound its way through the expo hall’s booths, art gallery and broadcast stages. Daily lineups of big names like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Anthony Scaramucci and super-investor Michael Saylor generated constant demand. While some fed-up patrons defected to nearby TVs streaming the speakers’ addresses, the queue became a visual representation of Bitcoiners’ core ethic: Hold the line. The greatest riches are yet to come.

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Holding — or “HODL”-ing in cryptospeak — has the practical benefit of suppressing supply, creating upward pressure on Bitcoin’s total value. It also blesses Bitcoiners with an emotional sense of solidarity.

Republicans came to Nashville for both. Just a few years ago, former President Donald Trump dismissed the cryptocurrency as a “scam” and a threat to the dollar; in May, his campaign launched an aggressive pivot toward Bitcoin with overtures and policy promises amid the asset’s moment of historic wealth. A dedicated media ecosystem, led by the glossy Bitcoin Magazine and driven by charismatic independent influencers trained to interpret current events in the light most favorable to Bitcoin prices, has immediately oriented around a Trump victory.

“Bitcoin stands for freedom, sovereignty and independence from government,” said Trump during his Saturday afternoon address in downtown Nashville. “The Biden-Harris administration’s repression of Bitcoin and crypto is wrong, and it’s very bad for our country. It’s really quite un-American.” 

In his speech, Trump promised to fire SEC chair Gary Gensler, establish a presidential crypto advisory committee and expand the United States’ Bitcoin holdings. A cursory understanding of macroeconomics (and a Trump opinion as recently as 2021) acknowledges that, as currencies, Bitcoin and the dollar compete directly. Bitcoiners openly “declare war” on the dollar, which is perhaps the most recognizable symbol of American power across the globe. A slipping dollar — which has ceded ground in recent decades, though it remains the world’s reserve currency — strengthens Bitcoin and spells chaos for the American economy. But such a fundamental contradiction would kill the vibes. Trump instead proclaimed America as the future crypto capital of the world. 

Four Republican U.S. senators — Tennessee’s Bill Hagerty and Marsha Blackburn, Wyoming’s Cynthia Lummis and South Carolina’s Tim Scott — vamped the party’s Bitcoin embrace throughout the weekend. They all took shots at Democrats, who have not communicated a party position on crypto. This silence has allowed the GOP to negatively message Democrats to Bitcoiners via examples like Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s proposed crypto regulations against money laundering. Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, twins who got rich on early ties to Facebook, have rallied followers against Kamala Harris by casting her non-stance on Bitcoin as a cold shoulder to crypto. Trump attacked both Warren and Harris in his address Saturday.

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Rod Roudi, a prominent local Bitcoin enthusiast behind the Hillsboro Village meetup space Bitcoin Park, interviewed Hagerty on the Nakamoto Stage Friday afternoon. 

“We have to win in November,” said Roudi to thunderous applause. “November, we win. We got the House, the Senate, the presidency — what else is on the agenda?”

Hagerty is among the GOP’s less practiced messengers. Unlike Blackburn, he avoids culture-war mud and minimizes media appearances. On Friday, Hagerty ended his spot 10 minutes early, walking briskly offstage and out of the spotlight. His brief remarks revealed Bitcoin as an ideal justification for the GOP’s lucrative addiction to resource consumption. Crypto “mining,” the raw computing process underpinning Bitcoin circulation, creates a voracious appetite for electricity, which, Hagerty explained, justifies expanding Tennessee’s electric grid. 

“The Bitcoin miners are tremendous customers for those who want to build out the electric grid,” said Hagerty. “We want to build our grid out aggressively here in Tennessee. Bitcoin miners are coming to Tennessee. They’re setting up operations — frankly they do it in rural areas that have lost jobs to offshoring, things of that nature. It’s been good for our local economies.”

Abundant water and affordable electricity remain competitive advantages for Tennessee. Both enable industrial-scale computer processing and have attracted mining operations across the state. For some, the churning computer farms evoke a dystopian future that directly converts natural resources into profit for absentee owners. Environmentalists already call foul on TVA’s carbon-spewing energy portfolio and protest crypto’s unnecessary burden on the state’s fragile power infrastructure.

While Hagerty sees a lucrative industry opportunity, neither he nor any member of his family owns Bitcoin — “I got a lot of grief from my family, but I don’t want that kind of headache when I’m making policy,” he told the Scene in the convention hallway. Blackburn’s support, though, may be just that simple: Her son Chad, another featured conference speaker, has publicly claimed deep personal investment in Bitcoin and Bitcoin-related business ventures. 

Two years ago, the excited buzz around Bitcoin Park was that Nashville would soon ascend as America’s Bitcoin capital. At the time, the Scene spoke with new residents who cited state lawmakers’ hostility to COVID restrictions as proof of Tennessee’s commitment to “personal sovereignty” and “freedom” — important buzzwords at the heart of Bitcoin culture that mask the community’s pathological aversion to authority. Mining hubs, two supportive senators, a raucous Bitcoin2024, blessings from Trump and a growing international reputation has solidified Nashville as the Bitcoin gold standard.