Trump Buys the Burgers And Pays With Bitcoin --- GOP presidential nominee makes campaign stop at 'it' spot for crypto

"NEW YORK -- A former president walks into a dive bar and asks, "Who wants a hamburger?" He pulls out an iPhone and pays not with dollars but with bitcoin.

"History in the making," Donald Trump declared Wednesday after making the transaction at PubKey, a Greenwich Village tavern that is the it spot for crypto enthusiasts -- a rising financial and political force that Trump is hoping will help him return to the White House.

The Founding Fathers had Fraunces Tavern, the Manhattan saloon where George Washington closed out a successful war against the Brits. Trump has PubKey.

"PubKey is the drinking hole for the bitcoin revolution. He's now one of us," said Mike Germano, president of Bitcoin Magazine. Germano, 42 years old, a former Democrat who plans to vote for Trump in November, had a prime viewing position for the visit.

"It's a significant step in bitcoin history. It's more than a currency, it's a movement," said PubKey co-founder Andrew Newman, 40, whose bar features a $12 beer-and-shot special.

Trump once said bitcoin seemed like a scam, but he has embraced the industry, appearing at a recent conference in Nashville, Tenn., and raking in millions of dollars in campaign contributions made in cryptocurrencies as he promised a more favorable regulatory climate if he wins a second term.

"Almost everyone starts out as a skeptic," said Thomas Pacchia, 40, the hat-wearing, lightly bearded co-founder of PubKey whose aesthetic could be described as dive-bar chic. "But when you do the work and dive into the protocol, you start to understand the really elegant mechanisms around decentralization, the way mining works, the way that transactions are effectuated. It's not an easy technology to grasp. It just takes time."

After making his bitcoin payment Wednesday, Trump said it went quick and "beautifully." He paid roughly $950 in bitcoin for smash burgers and Diet Cokes.

Invited guests were brimming with excitement when the teetotaling 78-year-old Trump stepped into the cramped New York dive bar. Red hats read, "Make Bitcoin Great Again," and on the wall, near an old-school boombox and a bank of cassettes, was a digital ticker displaying the current value of one bitcoin. A sign on the wall warned, "Central bank digital currencies enslave." Trump has also pledged to halt any work on central bank digital currencies if he is re-elected in November.

"I'm shocked to see anybody here, to be honest. I thought all New Yorkers hated him," said a self-described politically agnostic East Village resident who declined to give his name, not wanting to further alienate his wife -- a Trump supporter -- from her Trump-loathing friends.

T-shirts being passed around reminded Trump of a campaign promise he has made: "Free Ross Day One," a reference to Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht, who was sentenced to life in prison in 2015 for running the online drug bazaar. Ulbricht has become a symbol among libertarians and crypto fanatics of government overreach.

"They've been treating you very badly at the SEC," Trump said in the bar, referring to the Securities and Exchange Commission's crackdown on the crypto industry. At the bitcoin conference, Trump said he would fire SEC Chair Gary Gensler on his first day back at the White House, a promise that was met with thunderous applause. And just this week he launched a crypto project with his elder sons, Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr.

The former president has told crowds at conferences and events that he wants to make the U.S. the "world capital for crypto and bitcoin." Trump promised the creation of a "strategic national bitcoin stockpile" and the establishment of a bitcoin and crypto presidential advisory council.

Some attendees at the PubKey event appeared to be bitcoin maximalists, crypto slang for people who view bitcoin as the best and most important cryptocurrency. Germano corrected Trump when he called the burgers he paid for "crypto burgers."

"It's a bitcoin burger," Germano shouted, referring to the $17 handheld that comes standard with pub sauce, lettuce, onion, tomato and cheese.

Trump didn't seem fazed by the difference. "Everybody, whether it's bitcoin or crypto, get out and vote, because if you vote, we cannot lose," he said." [1]

1. Business News: Trump Buys the Burgers And Pays With Bitcoin --- GOP presidential nominee makes campaign stop at 'it' spot for crypto. Leary, Alex; Vicky Ge Huang.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 19 Sep 2024: B.6.