Surreal doesn't begin to describe the combination of visuals collected from last week's festival-style gathering in homage to the oldest and largest cryptocurrency, punctuated by former U.S. President Donald Trump's pro-crypto speech to an adoring crowd.
Attending the Bitcoin Nashville conference last week hosted by BTC Inc. was an exercise in sensory-overload management: Try to stay in the moment, follow the thread, and hopefully don't lose your mind or your wits.
A couple of us CoinDesk journalists were lucky enough to attend in person, and rather than write some hackneyed conference-wrap article that nobody would read, we thought we'd spare you the windy prose and just give you a glimpse of our journey.
While trying to take it all in, we had to simultaneously plan our strategy for how exactly we were going to cover former President Donald Trump's keynote scheduled for Saturday, the last day of the conference. The security around this particular speech was unrivaled in the history of Bitcoin and crypto conferences; it wasn't totally clear how or if we would be able to take laptops or good camera equipment inside, or if we would have the wireless connectivity to send headlines and file stories.
Wednesday
The conference didn't start till Thursday, but the side events and parties were already in full swing on Wednesday. We went to the BIT GALA at the Nashville 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 swathed in orange light, casting a glow on the 42-foot-tall (12.8-meter) meticulously reconstructed statue of the
Just to be fair to the hosts of this party, the following image was taken before it really got going, but here's what the inside looked like. Later in the evening we had a 97-percent-confirmed sighting of Heather Morgan aka the rapper "Razzlekhan," who pleaded guilty along with her husband in July 2023 to charges connected 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 crossed paths with her in Nashville, and separately we heard from a source that she was describing herself as a "Web3 advisor.")
Thursday
We don't shy away from the clichéd people-taking-photos-in-front-of-conference-sign image that's so de riguer at these events:
Below is a view of the main Nakamoto Stage, where many of the biggest names spoke. Later in the week, this is the specific room that the U.S. Secret Service would lock down with its own separate security check, in advance of the scheduled appearances on Friday of the independent U.S. presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and Trump on Saturday.