Trump’s speech is an hour late. After a half-hour wait, restless attendees began chanting “Trump.” The woman sitting in front of me hums her own song:
“Bitcoin, Bitcoin – that’s what they should be chanting.” She must have gotten the memo: This is not a Trump rally; this is a bitcoin rally.
When Trump finally takes the stage with “God Bless the USA,” he basks in the glory of his standing ovation, “thrilled … to become the first American president ever to speak at a Bitcoin event.” His next step is to pander to his supporters in the audience. “This is the spirit that will help us make America great again.” I stand before you today filled with respect and admiration,” for what he later called all the “high IQ individuals” in the room. He repeats past promises (releasing Ross on day one, never creating a central bank digital currency) and embarks on some new ones (the US strategic bitcoin reserve plan, which Sen. Loomis detailed in a brief speech after Trump’s; the firing of SEC Chairman Gary Gensler, an enemy of the crypto industry). He promises that no one in the industry will have to move to China for 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!”
He lambasted his political opponents as usual and promised that no one in his administration would “woke up,” a sentiment he perhaps knew would resonate with the Bitcoin crowd. But he shows an even better understanding with a core appeal to the audience’s wallets: Under his leadership, “Bitcoin and crypto will skyrocket like never before.” The crowd goes wild.
Leaving the conference center after the speech, I notice a clump of orange hair disappearing down the escalator. I follow him.
“It was a very orange conversation,” says Trump impersonator Atlanta comedian Josh Warren when I ask how the keynote went, immediately pretending to be Trump. “We asked people who was more orange, RFK or me, and surprisingly, I’m still the orange guy.”
Warren isn’t a bitcoin guy, but his ruse got a better reception here than at the Libertarian National Convention in DC. When I asked him about his voice, he said it would be “for comedy.”
“We are only here to disrupt the status quo. Humanity is killing comedy,” he says gravely, before returning to the Trump act to add how “the deep state doesn’t want you to talk about things that make you think anymore.”
“I was born conservative, I went to liberalism. Now, back to conservatism, mainly because of what I’ve seen in our country lately,” said Andrew Campbell, who drove up from Texas and sports a bitcoin pin along with his naturally bitcoin orange hair. “I think we went too far to the left and we need to go back a little bit and center again.”
