Last week, downtown Nashville transformed into a carnival as thousands of people descended on the Bitcoin 2024 conference. The most enthusiastic attendees wore bitcoin orange or “Make America great again” red – which, as the color wheel confirms, are not all that different.

Bitcoin has been around since 2009, and the conference since 2019, but 2024 marked the first year that two US presidential candidates would give keynote addresses: Robert F Kennedy Jr, a longtime bitcoin fan, and Donald Trump, who announced that he was pro-bitcoin in May after years of calling it a “scam” and “disaster”. The excitement was palpable: the way bitcoiners saw it, they had transformed into a voting bloc.

Marshall Beard, COO of the cryptocurrency exchange Gemini, even claimed in his remarks that a candidate’s cryptocurrency stance would influence the vote of seven in 10 US crypto-owners. Notably, a 2023 Pew Research Center survey found that just 17% of US adults have ever bought cryptocurrency, and most of them men under 50.

I flew out to Nashville on Saturday for the last day of Bitcoin 2024, when Trump was scheduled to speak, to see the spectacle first hand. I’d spent the previous two days watching the conference live stream, which featured speeches from RFK Jr and Edward Snowden, and talking-head panels opining about bitcoin.

In past years, bitcoiners insisted their enthusiasm for the coin was apolitical. Now, they insist that Joe Biden and Democrats waged a four-year war on cryptocurrency, forcing many to support the policies of RFK Jr and Trump. That said, I didn’t meet a single recent convert from Biden. Those I spoke with at the conference had a very similar style of politics to Trump supporters broadly: they insisted that they were under attack from elites, that the US was on the verge of tyranny or collapse. They’re determined to win the culture war, which they believe they’re losing.

And like Trump himself, they insisted that they’d been falsely branded as criminals.

***

Trump sells gold sneakers, T-shirts blazoned with his mugshot, and strange NFTs that depict him as various cowboy-superhero-maverick characters. It seems he and bitcoiners share a love of anything gaudy.

As I waited in a long, snaking line for Trump to take the stage on Saturday, I took in the campy aesthetic of the conference. A gallery area featured dozens of art pieces starring Pepe, a cartoon frog made famous by far-right internet users, that I haven’t seen since maybe 2018; an artist could even paint you as a Pepe-style frog on site. One booth sold a device that warms water using excess heat from bitcoin mining rigs; a young woman in a bikini stood in a small inflatable pool, showering herself with the bitcoin water. Other booths advertised “bitcoin panties”, or terrifying paintings of January 6-style events led by the left, or information about “a divine feminine Christ motherboard”. And, in celebration of a new political alignment, I kept seeing Maga-style red hats that said “BITCOIN MADE IN AMERICA”. (There were many actual Maga hats as well.)

The room was gigantic, and dimly lit by the neon orange glow of the stage. David Bailey of Bitcoin Magazine announced that about 8,000 people were packed into it, though I’d put the number closer to 2,000. They were, at a conservative guess, 85% male. For the first time in my life, I saw lines to the men’s restroom dozens of people long, and no line for the women’s. I sat nestled in a sea of Trump supporters, including one man in a Maga hat who wore an ear bandage in solidarity with Trump’s attempted assassination. A few times, the crowd broke out into “TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP!” chants. Trump took the stage about 90 minutes late.

Like most people, I’ve seen probably a million videos of Trump rallies. It’s markedly different to watch Trump in person. You can feel the air shift when he changes topics and thousands rush to match his performed anger, joy, solemnity or silliness. Shortly after somberly discussing the presumed Hezbollah attack on Israel, for instance, Trump excitedly called out the most recognizable attenders at Bitcoin 2024, including Kid Rock, Billy Ray Cyrus, Jake Paul and Laura Loomer. (He didn’t mention “Hawk Tuah girl”, who took a picture with RFK Jr on Friday, or Anthony Scaramucci, his former press secretary, also in attendance.)

Trump deftly gauged what his audience wanted to hear: that they were very, very smart. He obliged, repeatedly referencing the “geniuses” and “very smart” “high-IQ individuals” in the room. He also called the tech billionaires Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss “male models with a big beautiful brain”.

Though his speech touched upon favorite talking points – the southern border, “dangerous” cities, and “radical left” Kamala Harris – the biggest reaction came when he promised: “On day one, I will fire Gary Gensler.” Trump was visibly taken aback when the audience rose to its feet and roared in approval. Gensler is the chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission, which has its eye on crypto markets. Gensler has said the bitcoin industry is “rife with fraud”.

“I didn’t know he was that unpopular!” Trump said. “Let me say it again … ”

Many people I spoke to had expected Trump to make specific bitcoin policy proposals, which he has neglected to do on the campaign trail. And while he affirmed his support for basic bitcoin-friendly policies (no central bank of digital currency, the right to self-custody), he stopped short of getting as specific as RFK Jr, who had said the day before that he would direct the US treasury to buy $4m bitcoins, which, he claimed, would lead to a bitcoin valuation of “hundreds of trillions” of dollars.

Trump explained that he wanted to make sure bitcoin was mined and sold in America, making it “the bitcoin superpower of the world”. As the crowd cheered, a man behind me yelled: “Yes, boss, time to make money!”

Trump also played into the theme that bitcoiners, like him, are under attack. “They slander you as criminals,” he said. “But that happened to me too, because I said the election was rigged.”

His tone grew darker. “Let me tell you, if they win this election, every one of you will be gone.” There was a hush over the audience, then scattered laughter. It sounded like Trump was describing a mass execution of bitcoiners.

“They will be vicious, they will be ruthless,” he continued. “But right now, because of me, they’re leaving you alone. So please say, ‘Thank you, President Trump.’”

When the crowd sensed Trump was wrapping up – he spoke for approximately 50 minutes – everyone rose to their feet to applaud. When he called them “the modern-day Edisons, and Wright brothers, and Carnegies, and Henry Fords”, they ate it up.

A man in the row ahead of me was one of just a handful who remained seated. He was staring intently at his phone, which showed the real-time graph of an asset price taking a sudden nosedive. I realized it was the price of bitcoin. Although its price rose to a six-week high on Monday, it went into freefall as Trump was talking.

“He says whatever people wanna hear,” said another man as he leaned toward me. “It’s kinda sad that the left is so against crypto.”

***

Speaking in broad strokes: left-leaning people tend to think that due to its volatile price, bitcoin should be treated like a stock, not a currency. Further-left people argue that bitcoiners intentionally skirt regulation in order to hoard wealth and avoid taxes. Meanwhile, right-leaning people tend to see bitcoin as a currency that should exist completely outside of current systems of government (including capital income or gains taxes), with further-right people arguing that government-issued “fiat” money (ie the US dollar or British pound) exists solely to maintain centralized government power and bitcoin alone can liberate people from wealth inequality, forever wars and inflation.

The day before Trump spoke, Edward Snowden had given a sober speech in which he warned the audience about the politicians’ apparent interest in whipping cryptocurrency votes.

“Does this feel normal?” Snowden asked, referring to the politicians at Bitcoin 2024 – which, in addition to the presidential candidates, included half a dozen Republican senators and congresspeople, and one Democrat. “The fact that they’re here … it feels a bit unusual.

“Cast a vote, but do not join a cult,” Snowden said. “They have their own interests, their own values, their own things they’re chasing … Don’t give yourselves to them even if you have to vote for them.”

Generally speaking, people didn’t seem super concerned about the cult thing. They seemed more preoccupied with feeling under attack by regulators.

“The last four years, we’ve faced a lot of adversaries,” Amanda Fabiano, a bitcoin consultant, said during a panel on Friday. “It’s nice and refreshing to have politicians look at us and say: ‘Hey, you’re not criminals and ruining the environment.’” (Mining bitcoin currently requires a huge amount of energy and water.)

Similarly, Pierre Rochard, vice-president of research for Riot Platforms, said that Senator Elizabeth Warren “and her goons have driven bitcoiners into the Republican talking points”. (Moments earlier, he mentioned bonding with his wife over their shared love of Austrian economics, which is understood to take a far-right view.)

Nico Moran, founder and CEO of Bitvolt, said bitcoiners had to engage in a war. “Politics is downstream from the culture wars, so if we wanna win this, we wanna win the culture war,” he said. For bitcoiners, that meant winning over the bitcoin skeptics, and for Trump supporters, it meant beating the “woke mob” – with overlap between those imagined enemies.

I approached one man in a cowboy hat, Matthew Carmichael, who held a “Trump 2024” sign with the “0” replaced with a bitcoin token. He first invested in bitcoin in 2016. He has also supported Trump since 2016 and wanted to hear Trump talk about deregulation.

“Bitcoiners are afraid they’re always being attacked by the government,” Carmichael said. “There’s just this mantra a lot of times that everything bitcoin does is drug money, or sex trafficking. Which is just not true.”

I walked up to two friends, who said their names were Clay Carty and Josh Ashburn. From Pennsylvania and Kentucky, respectively, they met a few years ago at a conference for the Beef Initiative, a bitcoin-friendly organization that supports cattle ranchers and beef-eaters. “A lot of bitcoiners are into the carnivore diet,” Ashburn explained.

Carty owns C3 Cattle, selling beef from his cattle that customers can purchase with bitcoin. Meat eaters, he said, were under attack. “It’s like a war on red meat, and saying it causes heart attacks and it’s killing you,” Clay said. “Bitcoin helps you realize there’s a lot of scams out there.”

At one point, Carty lifted up his shirt to show me his stomach and chest on a red meat diet. “How do I look? Pretty good, right?” he asked.

Both men were carrying “Scamala” signs. I asked what they were communicating.

“Apparently, Kamala said that bitcoin is money used by criminals, which is just ridiculous,” Carty said.

Harris has never said this on the record. In fact, there’s no public record of her ever mentioning bitcoin. But one day before Bitcoin 2024 began, Bailey of Bitcoin Magazine claimed on X: “Major democrat donor told me Kamala says privately ‘Bitcoin is money for criminals.’” Around this time, rumors circulated that Harris might attend Bitcoin 2024.

By day one, the new rumor was that Harris had declined an invitation to attend. Tyler Winklevoss – the disputed Facebook co-founder and co-founder of Gemini – lashed out on X, accusing her of helping to wage an “all-out war on the crypto industry” with Biden. “She can’t even take the first step and show up to start mending fences,” Winklevoss posted. “Our industry won’t forget this. We will show no mercy in November.”

The Harris campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

Still, some attenders were optimistic. A bitcoin investor who introduced himself as Timar told me that the fall of Binance and FTX had flushed out a lot of the corruption in the crypto world, allowing it to finally become politically viable.

“Now you’re bringing in politicians that want to come and actually implement good regulation, which is something that the industry has been screaming for for years,” he said. “I feel it’s all happening at a good time, and it’s happening in a good way too, right? Where you’re seeing positive vibes.”

A woman I talked to, the Arab News columnist Maria Maalouf, caught my eye in her neon orange and pink suit, accessorized with gold necklaces and earrings with dangling “B” charms. I asked her where she got her bitcoin jewelry.

“It’s not bitcoin, it’s Balenciaga,” she said sweetly.

She went on to explain that she actually didn’t know much about bitcoin but was trying to learn. (This surprised me, because tickets for the conference were several hundred dollars.) She was primarily at the conference as a Trump supporter.

“Because I’m originally from Lebanon, what I like about Trump is his foreign policy,” she said. “He is so firm and he’s so strict in dealing with [other] countries, like dealing with dictators, dealing with Iran, dealing with North Korea, dealing with Russia.”

When I left the conference hall on Saturday evening, I thought about how Trump had allegedly incited an attempted coup, said he’d be a dictator on day one of a second term, and had a network of supporters creating a policy agenda to give him unprecedented power.

In a well-intentioned Thursday speech, Alex Gladstein of the Human Rights Foundation had insisted that dictators hated bitcoin. Maybe some dictators do hate bitcoin. But for many attendees of Bitcoin 2024, supporting bitcoin was enough to eclipse the mere idea that you could be a dangerous leader, even an autocrat.

Many bitcoiners and Trump supporters think they are preparing for a war. But watching bitcoiners sip alcohol, make afterparty plans, and buy fresh Maga merch, it seems they are excited for that war – or perhaps just confident they’re going to win it.