Attending the Bitcoin Nashville conference last week hosted by BTC Inc. was an exercise in managing sensory overload: Try to stay in the moment, follow the thread, and hopefully not lose your mind or spirit.
Some of us CoinDesk journalists were lucky enough to attend in person, and rather than write a hackneyed conference wrap-up article that no one will read, we thought we’d spare you the windy prose and simply give you a glimpse of our trip.
While trying to take it all in, we had to simultaneously plan our strategy for how we would cover former President Donald Trump’s keynote scheduled for Saturday, the final day of the conference. The security around this particular keynote was unparalleled in the history of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency conferences; it wasn’t entirely clear how or if we would be able to bring laptops or good camera equipment inside, or if we would have the wireless connectivity to send out headlines and stories.
The conference didn’t start until Thursday, but side events and parties were already in full swing on Wednesday. We went to the BIT GALA at Nashville’s Parthenon, a 127-year-old replica of the ancient Greek temple. The carpet leading to the entrance was orange—the color of bitcoin—and the interior of the classical architecture was wrapped in orange light, casting a glow on the meticulously reconstructed 42-foot-tall statue of the goddess Athena.
To be fair to the hosts of this party, the following image was taken before it actually started, but here’s what the inside looked like. Later in the evening, we had a 97% confirmed sighting of Heather Morgan, aka the rapper “Razzlekhan,” who pleaded guilty with her husband in July 2023 to charges related to the $3.5 billion Bitfinex hack. (On Sunday, Jameson Lopp, a contributor to open-source Bitcoin projects who now serves as CTO of Casa, tweeted that he also ran into her in Nashville, and separately, we heard from a source that she described herself as a “Web3 advisor.”)
We don’t shy away from the clichéd image of people taking pictures in front of a conference panel that is so to be rigorous during these events:
Below is a view of the main Nakamoto Stage, where many big names have spoken. Later this week, that’s where the U.S. Secret Service will lock down with its own security check, ahead of scheduled appearances Friday by independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Saturday by Trump.
We went to the Bitcoin Builders conference, sponsored by the Stacks project, which is held upstairs in a huge bar called Acme Feed & Seed. They had an omelet station and were offering hummus and vegetable cups. We chatted briefly with David Tse, the Stanford University engineering professor who co-founded Babylon, a Bitcoin staking protocol, and I then moderated a panel on Bitcoin DeFi, showcasing projects working on stablecoins, swaps, and staking.
We returned to the main conference venue and took a tour of the exhibition hall. All sorts of solutions were on offer.
Bitcoin artists exhibited their works in a bazaar-style and gallery setting.
We happened to walk past this seminar hosted by Lisa Neigut, Bitcoin Lightning protocol engineer and co-founder of the Bitcoin++ developer conference. We had no idea what was going on at the time and had to rush to another meeting, but Lisa Neigut later explained in a Telegram message that it was an educational game she had invented called “Bitcoin LARP.”
Here are two completely different ways to wear a pink suit:
This guy put Dogecoin at the bottom and Bitcoin at the top:
We had a one-on-one interview with Adrián Eidelman, co-founder of RootstockLabs. The team, in collaboration with Fairgate, had just announced that they had achieved a technological breakthrough by interactively verifying a SNARK proof—a type of strong cryptography in many blockchain systems—on the Bitcoin mainnet.
We sat down with Fred Thiel, CEO of Marathon Digital Holdings, and had a brief chat about the challenges of funding open source Bitcoin developers.
The Tron blockchain hosted a sideshow party at a movie studio-turned-performance venue called Vu Nashville, with a country music singer providing entertainment in front of a wraparound electronic screen depicting what looked like a red-hued stage. Blade Runner. In fact, the bartender at the venue told us that the closing night of the Ordinals-focused Inscribing Nashville side event, held the night before at the same venue, was so packed that they sold out of their entire supply of about 4,000 cups.
The panel below was probably the most technologically fascinating we’ve seen all week at the main conference – on developer Robin Linus’ last-minute efforts to refine his revolutionary BitVM design for practical application, alongside OP_CTV creator Jeremy Rubin, Alpen Labs’ Liam Eagan, and L2 Iterative research partner Weikeng Chen.
On the sidelines of the Open Source Stage, Blockstream Research Director Andrew Poelstra, who probably understands the inner workings of Bitcoin programming as well as anyone, chatted freely with attendees about technical issues:
We happened to meet Ordinals and Runes creator Casey Rodarmor and his Hell Money podcast co-host, Inscribing Atlantis CEO Erin Redwing, who were attending an exhibition a few minutes before their scheduled panel discussion.
Cathie Wood, CEO of Ark Investment Management, entered through a side entrance of the Music City Center, the conference’s main venue.
It’s not Bitcoin at all, but this camouflage baseball cap from Polymarket — a prediction market built on the Polygon blockchain that has suddenly become the go-to place to bet on US election-related scenarios — was the most topical item we spotted at the conference.
The architectural visuals of Music City Center were breathtaking when viewed from a mezzanine balcony that you had to cross to get to Galaxy Digital’s invitation-only happy hour.
All week, my CoinDesk colleague Danny Nelson and I brainstormed the best way to cover Trump’s speech, looking at every possible angle. We’d heard there would be a special access area for press, but it was at the very back of the room. Danny calculated that our best chance of covering the event would be to get in line with everyone else and try to get the best spot we could in the general seating area. We continually reevaluated our options throughout the day.
The doors to the venue didn’t open until 8 a.m., but I found us a spot in line around 7:20. About 20 minutes later, the line snaked around the block.
Once you got through the security check inside the Nakamoto stage, there was no water or food readily available, and you had the option to leave, but anyone who left the venue had to go to the back of the line, and that line didn’t move at all, since the venue was already filled to capacity, and they weren’t really letting anyone else in.
Like everyone else who had come this far, we were determined to stay in our seats for the next six hours, waiting for Trump to speak. Danny managed to sneak in his laptop and a decent camera.
There was plenty of programming to watch, including a panel with pro-Bitcoin Republican political candidates. Democratic Rep. Wiley Nickel of North Carolina presented what was billed as the “progressive vision of Bitcoin,” but was heavily booed when he went out of his way to point out that Trump had tweeted in 2019 that Bitcoin “looks like a scam.”
A brief moment of entertainment occurred when MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor, who is credited with giving companies the idea to include bitcoin on their balance sheets, walked through the general seating area and was quickly surrounded by selfie-takers.
There was a swarm of video cameras and photographers waiting for Trump to arrive, an indication of the mainstream media’s interest.
Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, of cryptocurrency exchange Gemini, were spotted walking near the roped-off VIP section. Rumors swirled that Elon Musk might make a special appearance, and people in the crowd shared social media posts that appeared to be following his private jet on its way to Nashville. (Some confusion ensued when Musk never showed up, and it was never fully explained who the special guest was.)
Conference officials smiled during an interview with retired U.S. Congressman and former presidential candidate Ron Paul — known for his “End the Fed” mantra — from a pop-up news studio set up elsewhere in the Music City Center.
When Trump finally arrived, he initially stood there, not speaking, as Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA,” also known as “Proud to Be an American,” played. There was a standing ovation throughout the song.
We wrote about Trump’s speech here.
The camera angle from where we were sitting wasn’t ideal: Trump’s teleprompter blocked the view. But it turned out to be a good idea to sit with the regular people — if not for the camera angle, then at least to get a real sense of the mood in the crowd. Which is pretty awesome.
Below is the view through a smartphone lens, taken from the seats you got if you didn’t line up before 7:20am.