At Bitcoin 2025, Crypto Purists and the MAGA Faithful Collide | EUROtoday

Now that Trump is in workplace, launching his personal crypto ventures and asking for laws establishing (mild) digital asset rules to look on his desk by August, his supporters’ voices drown out these of the bitcoiners who warn how abandoning crypto’s ideas might endanger their group.

“Trying to [politicize bitcoin] is really dangerous for everybody, because the message of what bitcoin does … gets glossed over [as it becomes] this tool for the Republican Party,” says Erik Cason, writer of the e-book Cryptosovereignty.

In a panel titled “Are Bitcoiners Becoming Sycophants of the State,” he elaborates to a crowd on the convention flooring: “The amount of dick-sucking going on towards the political establishment here is shameful and disgusting,” he says. “You can own bitcoin today and exit from this fucked-up establishment that’s designed to steal from you and redistribute that money towards war and horror.”

Among resounding cheers, an older man stands up and pumps his fist in settlement. A person behind him slaps his leg emphatically.

Politicians “need us more than we need them,” Bruce Fenton, founder and CEO of fintech firm Chainstone Labs, continues. “We should refuse meetings with them … We’ve invented nerd money that they can’t stop with all their tanks.”

Not solely is the state harmful as a car of warfare, they are saying; it’s additionally dangerous to align with one political get together, as a result of it might provoke a reactionary backlash. Next time Democrats take over, Cason fears, they’ll “go after bitcoin and crypto hard.”

Bitcoiners “need to understand that we’re our own political contingency now, and pandering to either side is a massive disservice,” he tells me after the convention. “Bitcoin isn’t for the right or the left. It’s for the bottom, not the top.”

Bitcoin purists may need hoped for vocal help from Ross Ulbricht, the previous operator of the dark-web market Silk Road (the place customers might use bitcoin to purchase medicine). Ulbricht grew to become a logo for crypto working unburdened by the state’s guidelines when he was sentenced to life in jail in 2015. Trump pardoned him earlier this yr.

Ulbricht’s freedom has been such a key problem for the bitcoin group that David Bailey, CEO of BTC Inc, which organized Bitcoin 2025, made certain to speak to Trump in the course of the 2024 marketing campaign how excessive precedence pardoning Ulbricht was for his voting bloc. But Ulbricht’s look on the convention is paradoxical: His anti-state sentiment has been sanctioned by the very state he needed to bypass.

“The impression people have is that bitcoiners just care about money,” Ulbricht’s mom, Lyn, who’s been attending the Bitcoin Conference for years working to free her son, tells me, “but many are idealistic and caring.” A motion of donors and activists massive and small within the bitcoin, crypto, and Libertarian communities acquired her son out of jail, she says.

When Ulbricht walks onto the principle stage, lanky and confident in an extended, purple tie, he doesn’t thank Trump straight (he’s “thankful that we elected him”). Nor does he thank Bailey for his advocacy, and even his mom for her tireless efforts. He thanks the viewers, whom he urges to “stay true to our principles”—freedom, decentralization, and, he stresses, unity. “It’s more important than ever,” he says, as bitcoin’s recognition spreads.