Trump’s speech has been delayed by an hour. After a half-hour wait, the restless audience members begin chanting “Trump.” The woman sitting in front of me murmurs her own chant:
“Bitcoin, bitcoin, that’s what you should be chanting.” You probably got the message: It’s not a Trump rally; it’s a Bitcoin rally.
When Trump finally takes the stage to sing “God Bless the USA,” he basks in the glory of his standing ovation, “thrilled … to become the first American president to address an event about bitcoin.” His next step is to indulge his supporters in the audience. “This is the kind of spirit that will help us make America great again. I stand before you today full of respect and admiration,” for which he then calls all the “high-IQ individuals” in the room. He reiterates past promises (freeing Ross on day one; never creating a central bank digital currency) and adds some new ones (the plan for a U.S. bitcoin strategic reserve, which Senator Lummis details in a brief speech after Trump’s; the firing of SEC Chairman Gary Gensler, a nemesis of the cryptocurrency industry). He promises that no one in the industry will have to move to China to find work, and says we will continue to use fossil fuels. We will have so much electricity, he says, “you will say please, please Mr. President… no more electricity, sir, we have enough!”
As usual, he slams his political opponents and promises that no one in his administration will “go progressive” — a sentiment he perhaps knows will resonate with Bitcoin folks. But he demonstrates even better insight with a basic appeal to the audience’s wallets: under his leadership, “bitcoin and crypto will skyrocket like never before.” The crowd goes wild.
As I leave the conference center after the speech, I see a shock of orange hair combed to one side disappearing down the escalator. I follow it.
“It was a very orange talk,” says Trump impersonator, Atlanta comedian Josh Warren, when I ask him how the keynote went, immediately pretending to be Trump. “We’ve been asking people who’s more orange, RFK or me, and surprisingly, I’m still the orange guy.”
Warren is not a fan of bitcoin, but her speech was better received here than at the Libertarian National Convention in Washington. When I ask her about her vote, she says it will be “for comedy.”
“We’re just here to disrupt the status quo. Humanity is killing comedy,” he says, seriously, before slipping back into the Trump farce and adding that “the deep state doesn’t want you to talk about things that make you think anymore.”
In his introduction to Trump’s keynote address, Bailey had said that Bitcoin is “not a red party thing. It’s not a blue party thing. It’s an orange party thing (referencing the color of the Bitcoin logo).” Before he joked that an orange party should be led by an orange man, he was right. Bitcoin 2024 ticket holders aren’t necessarily people who define themselves as Trump enthusiasts, though most of those who spoke to WIRED apparently plan to vote for him. More so, they are people who have traditionally distrusted government, a view now shared by more mainstream sectors of society.
“I was born conservative, I went liberal. Now I’m coming back to conservatism, mainly because of what I’ve seen in our country recently,” says Andrew Campbell, who drove in from Texas and sports a bitcoin pin along with his bitcoin orange hair. “I think we’ve gone too far to the left and we need to take a step back and focus.”