Through the Orange-Bitcoin-Glass

This past weekend, my youngest daughter and I headed off to the big hoo-haw Bitcoin Conference downtown, courtesy of my oldest daughter who has been interning this summer with BTC Inc., the sumptuously overstaffed company that runs the conference. We wanted to see Trump and RFK, Jr. speak, and so my oldest daughter found us two free tickets, worth a combined street value of $1398.00 in fiat money. 

Like many Americans, I kick myself hard for not putting money into Bitcoin back in the day. Unlike most Americans, however, I learned about Bitcoin very, very early on, in 2010, when fellow posters in online forums started touting it as the next big thing when the price was somewhere around 50 cents per coin. Of course, in response to this great discovery, I immediately and mercilessly mocked anyone who said they’d bought Bitcoin. I’m the guy standing on the dock when Columbus returned, calling him a liar. 

In my favor, I was not alone in mocking Bitcoin buyers, almost all sensible people were doing that, because everyone who was into Bitcoin in 2010 was doing so to buy illicit drugs, or so it seemed. 

Welp. Here we are. It’s the future and the stoners and autistic edgelords have won. Bitcoin 2024 has taken over the Music City Center and forced various politicians to come and kiss the disembodied ring of the electronic God Emperor, Big Daddy Bitcoin. 

Such were my thoughts as my youngest daughter and I showed up at 8 a.m. on Friday morning: if I had shown a tiny bit of foresight in 2010, I’d now be entering the convention center on a gilded sedan chair, borne aloft by six undrafted SEC down linemen. 

Instead, I was trudging through the doors with the mob. I was trudging, because my oldest daughter, a good-natured twenty-year-old, could not provide me with a so-called “Whale Pass”, which cost $21,000 at the door, and gave its holder access to a special lounge, free meals, priority seating and, presumably, oleaginous foot massages. For the next two days, I would be consumed with envy anytime I glanced at the “Whale” lounge, with its open bar, comfy sofas and Thai hostesses. (Later, I learned that V. Davis Hunt, the XIIIth, the eccentric boy billionaire publisher of the Pamphleteer had a Whale pass, and that he had eaten his weight in caviar and Mountain Dew and caused a scene when the hostesses had tried to cut him off.)

Speaking of the Bitcoin mob, it was as you’d expect about four-fifths male, the majority of whom were, by appearances, software developers, day-traders, sovereign citizens and Uber drivers, dressed principally in black t-shirts. The Whales were much the same, although they included a slightly higher percentage of very fit and sleek middle-aged men in Loro Piana resort wear. As for the women of the rabble, they were looks-matched with the crowd and similarly dressed, although, there was a conspicuous minority of what might be termed “adventuresses”, unattached sexy women in sexy clothes who were looking for unaccompanied men of wealth. 

Among the whales, not only were the women better-looking and better dressed, but there were a number of gargoyle-goddess couples, statuesque beauties being pawed by ogres and homunculi.

My daughter was determined to see Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Russell Brand, the English comedian-turned-podcaster, who were to begin speaking at 4 p.m. on the Nakamoto stage in the main hall. Because large crowds were predicted and only 8,000 would be admitted, first-come-first-seated except for the Whales, we elected to pass through the Secret Service metal detectors early, at 8 a.m. Unfortunately, I had rushed out of the house without coffee and breakfast, and once we were through security and in our seats, there was no way to get either without passing back through the security line, which grew longer and longer as the day progressed. Happily, my older daughter had been tasked by BTC, Inc, to work backstage, presumably because she’s one of the only women on staff and 6 feet tall. Thus, she was able to deliver iced coffee and a box lunch to our cheap seats, and the day was saved. 

And a very long day it was, starting off with a series of panels about such things as exchange traded funds, Bitcoin mining, Senator Bill Hagerty and other such nonsense. Boring!  Give us RFK and the hyperactive Englishman! 

It wasn’t much better after the lunch break. Edward Snowden appeared on Zoom from wherever he’s currently stashed to speak on digital oppression, but he’s not an especially good public speaker. He reached rhetorically for righteous indignation, but landed short, his speech nonetheless a good indictment of big corporations and the modern surveillance state. 

To be fair, there were a few amusing things. One was that anti-Bitcoiners Senator Elizabeth Warren and SEC Chairman Gary Gensler were singled out for absentee verbal abuse. Anytime one of their names was mentioned, they were booed like mustachioed villains in an old-time melodrama. Great fun!

Another was a speech by Bitcoin billionaire Michael Saylor, a tiny man of enormous reputation, who gave an unhinged Power Point that predicted Bitcoin would eventually deliver Heaven on Earth, but only if you really, really, really believed in it, like Santa Claus or Barack Obama. 

Saylor was claiming that Bitcoin would literally end the national debt, but only after having delivered massive wealth into your personal wallet. Of course, I was scoffing at him, but what if it was 2010 all over again? I scoffed in 2010 when I could have gotten fabulously wealthy on a pocket change investment if I hadn’t. The coin mob, of course, had no doubts about Saylor. They screamed with delight at each outlandish claim, and lit imaginary cigars with imaginary stacks of future money. 

Finally, after much waiting and palaver, RFK, Jr., arrived on the scene, strutting out in his too-tight suit and narrow tie to Rick Derringer’s “Real American”, which is, as anyone knows, Hulk Hogan’s walkout song. My youngest daughter was delighted. A gifted mimic, she does an incredible RFK, Jr., imitation (“these are my two ravens”) catching that croaky-raspy voice of his exactly. The speech was tailored (pandered) to the coinbros, a long list of ways a future President Kennedy, Jr., would use the power of the federal government to enrich all present—a croak-rasped vision of Bitcoin utopia. 

After RFK, Jr., we finally got Russell Brand. My older daughter, working backstage, reported that the Giga-Chadly Brand briefly knelt in prayer just before walking out. Once a famous libertine, he has recently embraced Christianity; a natural progression, I suppose, of his public turn away from the left. Brand was accompanied by Chris Pavlovski, the CEO of Rumble, a free-speech alternative to YouTube where Brand has found a home. Pavlovski was the straight man of the duo, teeing up questions and statements that Brand turned into 10-minute comedic monologues on censorship, democracy and freedom.

To me, the most amazing thing about these monologues was how fluent Brand is. He appears to rant, producing torrents of words, but if you diagram out his long sentences, with their many dependent clauses, you’ll find they are perfectly grammatical. The performance was simultaneously impressive, amusing and exhausting. 

And then we were done for the day. 

Saturday was more of the same, except the lines were longer and the morning more political, with various Republican senators and senatorial candidates wheeled out to pledge fealty to the Bitcoin God and his minions. Somehow, they even scraped up a couple of Democratic Representatives, the oily Ro Khanna of Silicon Valley and North Carolina’s Wiley Nickel, who, for whatever reason, decided to appear separately with moderator Jason Maier, the soyperson author of The Progressive Case for Bitcoin, a book I can scarcely believe exists in physical form. Khanna chose his words very carefully and escaped the stage unscathed. Nickel did not. Halfway through his talk, he began to criticize President Trump. The booing that accompanied this was loud and sustained. 

I am proud to say that it was I who cast the first stone. A natural leader of mobs, I was the one who shouted the first imprecations at that dirty dog Nickel. Had I the foresight to bring a length of rope, it would have been all over for him. I was, of course, only able to stir up such powerful feelings because Saturday’s crowd was there to see Donald Trump, whose 2 p.m. speech was the main event of the entire conference. 

We had arrived extra early on Saturday morning, at 7 a.m., and by 8:45 a.m. were sitting in the 8^th row slightly to the right of the podium, about as close as any non-Whale could get. As the day dragged on, and the audience grew to capacity, seat pirates became a problem. My daughter left for the bathroom and a middle-aged woman sat down in her spot. I promptly ejected her back to standing-room-only, although not without some indignation. A little later a young man offered me and my seat mates $100 for a seat. There were no takers. 

Trump was over an hour late in speaking, a result, I later learned, of both a Secret Service hold and epic trolling by Elon Musk, who hinted that he might appear on stage with Trump, and whose private plane was, at that very moment, flying from Memphis toward Nashville. The organizers asked Trump to delay his speech to see if Musk was for real, but Musk was not for real—although he was literally flying over Nashville when Trump was speaking. Trump, the King of Trolls trolled by a rival: a magnificent moment in American history. 

What is there to say about Trump’s Bitcoin speech? You’ve probably already seen excerpts of it, and the full thing is posted on YouTube if you haven’t. My observations were that Trump will always and forever be Trump, his speaking style uniquely his own, excessively digressive, slightly ridiculous but always worth listening to. There is no one funnier, or more willing to play to the crowd than Trump. For example, when he promised to fire the villainous SEC Chairman Gary Gensler on day one of Trump 2.0, the crowd roared its approval. 

“Wow, I didn’t know he was that unpopular,” responded Trump, “let me say it again. On day one, I will fire Gary Gensler.” 

Trump did not go as far as RJK, Jr., in promising the moon to the mob, but he did go further than almost any American politician has ever gone, and that seemed to be more than enough for the people of Bitcoin. They were ebullient. Wealth would be theirs for eternity! Validation had been given by history’s current main character!

Both my daughters were likewise ebullient. My youngest because she gets an enormous kick out of Trump. Anytime he launched into one of his digressions, however nonsensical or impertinent, she would look over at me with an enormous grin, fellow connoisseurs of linguistic absurdity sharing a delightful moment. Trump had given a bravura performance, the maestro at his instrument. My oldest daughter was ebullient because she had been backstage, interacting with the various nabobs as they had come through. Sadly, she didn’t get a chance to speak to Trump, but she did take a pretty artistic photo of the great man. It also didn’t hurt that, over the course of the summer internship, she had become a Bitcoiner herself, putting a few hundred dollars into it.

After Trump, we waited around for Vivek Ramaswamy and Marsha Blackburn. We shouldn’t have. It was anticlimactic, a letdown after Trump. For people who appreciate the spoken word poetry of The Rev. Dr. President Trump, everything else is a letdown. I will say, however, that if a slick, verbally skilled operator like Vivek Ramaswamy is bandwagoning Trump and the GOP, we are obviously winning. 

And then it was over and we went home

We had more fun than I expected, but less fun than I felt entitled to. Being denied entry to the Whale Lounge and relegated to Bitcoin steerage was a blow from which my pride will not easily recover. Will I be putting more money into Bitcoin? Probably. Did I learn anything else? Not really, only that Bitcoiners are pretty nice people and most politicians who aren’t Trump aren’t that interesting to listen to.