Bitcoin bros told me they can deliver Trump election at culty crypto carnival: ‘No mercy in November’

The ex-president and RFK Jr were among the stars of this year’s bitcoin conference, where there was no line for the women’s bathroom

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.