My wife and I did not go to the Bitcoin conference in Las Vegas.
But we did go to Vegas.
We went to Vegas because the Bitcoin conference was there, and because we knew we could see many of our Bitcoin friends and acquaintances. But we weren’t there to go to the conference. In fact, we were there to intentionally NOT go to the conference, which we anticipated would be an ostentatious Trump and altcoin carnival. We’re not Trump fans, but we are Bitcoiners. Specifically, we are “Bitcoin Only” Bitcoiners, meaning we have no interest at all in the side-show of memecoins and jpegs that have come to mostly dominate Bitcoin conferences. We have our doubts about whether Bitcoin Magazine, the organizer of the conference, shares our view of Bitcoin. It is often said that Bitcoin is for enemies and our experience in Vegas reinforced that idea. We saw many of our political adversaries along the Vegas strip.
Bitcoin itself is a neutral tool and it doesn’t really matter what the user of that tool believes. It works just as well for those of us on the political left (if we bother to learn about it) as it does for those on the right. The right has clearly embraced it and is making plans for building a movement that can capitalize on its many unique characteristics. Should the left not do this, it really becomes a case of unilateral disarmament. It would be as if, after the Chinese invented gunpowder the rest of the world had said, “We don’t like that stuff. It’s so loud. And messy. They can have fun playing with their gunpowder. We’re going to keep throwing rocks.” As lefties who believe it would be irresponsible to leave our priorities in the hands of a disarmed opposition, we chose to learn about and embrace Bitcoin. That part was easy. It turns out that not going to the conference once we had arrived in Vegas was harder than we expected though as we had numerous offers for free tickets to the conference itself. Perhaps the market for a hard right/Altcoin conference was not as robust as they originally anticipated.
To us, Bitcoin is Money. The fact that it is also an innovative and effective way to timestamp events isn’t that meaningful to us. The fact that you can attach cartoons to it just confuses us, since the whole point of Bitcoin is that you can move value without attaching any other real world thing to it. You shouldn’t need any person in the real world to verify that the cartoon is a true and fair representation of the real world thing. Bitcoin is… just Bitcoin. The fact that it allows marginalized communities to escape financial oppression is interesting to us. The fact that Bitcoin helped save WikiLeaks, the Ukrainian resistance, the Nigerian Feminist Coalition, and Alexei Navalnyi’s Anti-Corruption Foundation is interesting to us. The fact that 20 recent peer-reviewed papers have found that Bitcoin has significant environmental advantages and is a tool for helping meet our sustainability goals is REALLY interesting to us.
But the Pro-Trump Sideshow? Eh. Not so much.
So we went to Las Vegas to meet with friends who share some or all of our developmental interests. It may be surprising to some that a Bitcoin conference would be a place to look for others with these interests. We think we found more common ground among these other “Bitcoin Only” attendees than the Altcoiners that were there are likely to have found among themselves. Bitcoiners are uniquely focused on making the world a better place. The Altcoiners there were all simply focused on making money, mostly from each other. It’s a pretty common belief among Bitcoiners that good ideas are…good. Nearly every Bitcoiner I know has been forced to reexamine some belief they held prior to discovering Bitcoin that could not hold up under that examination. The beliefs that persist are strongly held. But they aren’t necessarily Lefty or Righty. The appearance of a tool as significant as Bitcoin has inspired collaboration among people who might formally have had nothing in common. This doesn’t mean that all Bitcoiners have become Trumpers because Trump now says he likes Bitcoin. (He didn’t like it during his first term). We have our doubts about whether he truly understands it now or whether he just saw an opportunity to capitalize on the obstinance of the uninformed Democratic leadership. It’s clear from the many cringe-worthy statements by Democratic octogenarians that they chose to oppose Bitcoin before they bothered to understand it. It is entirely possible this cost them the election. We don’t want it to cost them another one.
This common interest in Bitcoin allowed us to sit down with a former Investment Bank Director and Senior Counsel who also sees potential for realizing a Universal Basic Income through Bitcoin. We talked for over an hour with a Bitcoin Mining operator who shares our interest in Regenerative Agriculture. We talked with another former Peace Corps Volunteer who sees Bitcoin as a way to help support medical choices for women. We met a left-leaning Political Event Coordinator who shares our distaste for the shenanigans on display at the actual Bitcoin conference and hopes to organize future events that are devoid of that chicanery.
It could be that avoiding the conference was actually the best way to focus entirely on Bitcoin. It’s hard to know how many of the roughly 30,000 attendees were really there for Bitcoin. A bar along the Las Vegas Strip was offering free tickets (“worth” $390) to anyone who purchased $21 in beer. Over 1,000 people showed up for an XRP side event. If you know anything at all about Bitcoin and XRP, you must know that it isn’t possible to support them both. This isn’t a Ford vs General Motors sort of rivalry. It’s more like a Batman vs. the Joker sort of rivalry. If you can’t decide which one you like, you’re simply not paying attention.
My wife and I met in the Peace Corps 36 years ago in a small country in West Africa. Our shared experiences of being outside observers continues to flavor our Bitcoin adventures. We are comfortable with the feeling that we don’t quite belong. But we also know that the most innovative solutions are likely to come from those who are closest to the problem. And we are paying attention. We think it is important for others like us to be visible in Bitcoin spaces, because… again… Bitcoin is simply a neutral tool that is effective for building the world we want our children to inhabit. We were in Vegas to plant a flag – a Pride flag, a Black Lives Matter flag, an Earth Day flag – and say “Rally to Us!” We are here and we can help your cause.
So we understand that you may not want to go to a future Bitcoin conference, but that’s OK. We’re perfectly happy to not go for you.
