When Thomas Pacchia first suggested Donald Trump’s team visit PubKey as a campaign event, their response was just about what he expected: “What’s a Bitcoin bar?” On Wednesday, the entire world – or no less than the Twitter-addicted portion of it – got a likelihood to seek out out. That time, Trump stopped at PubKey on his strategy to a Long Island rally and acquired the bar a round of burgers. It was the primary transaction made using Bitcoin by a sitting or former president.
Pacchia opened PubKey two years ago and envisioned the West Village watering hole, just a couple of blocks from Washington Square Park, as a sort of community bar. He sees his local bar as a spot where people can stop by to debate monetary policy and political ethics over a couple of beers, identical to the Founding Fathers did 250 years ago (it also doesn’t hurt that PubKey’s menu was designed by a chef trained at Eleven Madison Park).
So it was no surprise to him that a former president-elect would stop by—PubKey has hosted politicians like Senator Kirsten Gillibrand previously, and Pacchia has invited every candidate, including Kamala Harris.
The practical details of a presidential visit, nonetheless, were more harrowing. Pacchia only learned of the visit every week before it was on account of happen and spent 4 hours a day working with the Secret Service to hatch a plan that involved blacked-out skylights and snipers nearby. “It was crazy,” Pacchia said Assets on Thursday as bar staff worked to reopen the bar under some semblance of normality. “It was a whirlwind.”
One of probably the most historic transactions in #bitcoin History has just been made.
president @realDonaldTrump Buy burgers at @PubKey_NYC with @tpacchia.
Block height: 861871
You saw it here first. pic.twitter.com/moHUIKDxej
— PUBKEY (@PubKey_NYC) 18 September 2024
From Fidelity Mafia to Bitcoin Burger
Pacchia isn’t your typical Manhattan bar owner. A former lawyer, he became Fidelity’s first outside hire with bitcoin expertise in 2015 when the financial services giant brought him on board. As Fidelity moved further into the cryptocurrency sector under the leadership of CEO Abigail Johnson, Pacchia helped construct the architecture for the digital asset business, including the custody and exchange platform and the primary iterations of the mining operation.
While PubKey is Pacchia’s fundamental focus today – a spotlight that features an upcoming expansion to Washington DC and shortly other cities with the financial backing of the Winklevoss twins – he remains to be energetic within the crypto industry. For example, he serves on the board of Stronghold Digital Mining and advises Luxor, one other Bitcoin mining company.
Pacchia lived a couple of blocks from PubKey, then a bar called Formerly Crow’s: “An epic, quintessential New York dive bar,” he called it. He hosted completely happy hours with friends to speak about Bitcoin, affectionately calling the gathering Crypto on the Crow. When Formerly Crow’s closed through the pandemic, Pacchia turned to PubKey, inspired by visions of Paul Revere and Thomas Paine.
“Bitcoin needs its tavern and its meeting house to promote some of these revolutionary, cultural, economic and technological changes for which it has been the catalyst,” said Pacchia Assets.
He teamed up with two experienced restaurant owners and the previous head chef of Eleven Madison Park to create an eclectic menu of gourmet burgers, hot dogs and cocktails that would appeal to each Village residents and crypto enthusiasts.
Despite its Bitcoin decorations, PubKey still attracts a various crowd. Last November, Pacchia noticed a pair at the top of the bar who looked like that they had just finished a protracted shift. He snuck as much as speak to them, they usually asked concerning the odd topic. When he told them about PubKey’s Bitcoin ethos, they looked shocked. “Are you kidding us?” they asked. As it turned out, they were photographers for the New York Postto photograph Caroline Ellison, who happened to live nearby to testify on the trial of Sam Bankman-Fried. The couple had stumbled in by likelihood.
Presidential visit
Trump’s first flirtation with cryptocurrencies got here in 2022, when the previous president launched an NFT collection and earned a modest return. His overall stance on cryptocurrencies, nonetheless, remained hesitant, but that modified when the industry became one among the most important campaign donors of the 2024 election cycle. Today, Trump is zealously championing blockchain, taking up among the sector’s top priorities, including freeing Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht and firing Securities and Exchange Commissioner Gary Gensler.
Despite Trump parroting party lines, he hasn’t convinced everyone. Some are still wary of Bitcoin because he called it a “fraud” a couple of years ago. Meanwhile, his recent announcement of a so-called DeFi protocol called World Liberty Financial, run by the Trump family, has been criticized by critics as a pure money-making scheme slightly than a serious try and create a decentralized product.
During Trump’s visit to PubKey, he still didn’t master the usually esoteric jargon, referring to the food he was offering as a “crypto burger,” despite a guest attempting to correct him to Bitcoin – a distinction that is vital to Bitcoin supporters who consider other tokens to be “shit coins” in crypto parlance. Meanwhile, videos of the historic burger transaction initially suggested it had failed, which Pacchia attributed to difficulties with QR scanning on account of camera flashes. (He added that about 5% of sales at PubKey are made with Bitcoin.)
Pacchia quickly gave Trump the good thing about the doubt. “It’s a protracted learning curve until you get to the purpose where you understand the differences between [Bitcoin and crypto]“, said Pacchia Assets“It’s unrealistic to expect any of these politicians to become a Bitcoin expert – it depends on who they listen to.”
Trump’s appearance validated Pacchia’s decision to found PubKey. He presented the previous president with two gifts. The first was a duplicate of the famous “Buy Bitcoin” sign that a PubKey founding partner held up behind then-Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen during a congressional hearing in 2017. The second was the American flag that one other PubKey customer commissioned by Senator Elizabeth Warren as a prank in honor of Bitcoin inventor Satoshi Nakamoto over the US Capitol.
Despite all of the hubbub, Pacchia insists PubKey is not going to endorse any presidential candidate. He hopes Harris comes around. “Bitcoin should not be a partisan issue,” he said. “It’s for everyone.”
