I'm in Manhattan's Greenwich Village, and this is Pubkey. Like almost any Manhattan dive bar, it serves beer, nachos, and burgers. But what sets this bar apart is its inescapable Bitcoin theming. Pubkey has attracted a growing list of Bitcoin bulls, most notably former President Donald Trump during the 2024 campaign stop. History. History in the making. Now I'm here to talk to its co-founder, Thomas Pacchia, about the bar's role in Bitcoin's culture. So this is our shrine up front. This is our collection of, you know, Bitcoin paraphernalia and special gifts from the community. We get people sending us stuff from all over the world all the time. So this is the price of Bitcoin. We have two tickers. We have one ticker in the shrine, and we have this one here. When it starts ripping, people start getting a little distracted,

like there's a game on or something. We started accepting bitcoin a couple of months after we opened. 5% of our total revenue is in Bitcoin, and that's definitely growing since the visit by former President Trump. Previous bars used to have pool tables and dart boards back here. We took those out to create a little bit more of a gathering space where we could host the Bitcoin meetups that we do there. It effectively is a comedy club for nerds. I love to talk about Bitcoin, and not everybody is interested, but I come here and there's always... I've met so many people that are interested. We talk about it. We meet once a week, first time in pub key, first time in New York, and second time in the US. My two sons have never been, my wife and I have not been for like, 20 years. And so we came up to the city to see the things.

that you do in New York, statu, liberty, et cetera, et cetera. And I've been trying to drag them to pub key for four days. And finally, today, they acquiesced, and I brought them here. It's not a Bitcoin-themed bar. I always kind of bristle when people call it a Bitcoin-themed bar. Bitcoin is more in the DNA of the tavern than it being sort of a theme on a Kaan Oguz: given night, let's say there is no event. What would you say is the breakdown of enthusiasts versus non-enthusiasts? Yeah, Unknown: that's a great question. So on any given night, about 80% of our customers overall are not Bitcoiners. They don't know it's a Bitcoin bar. It's just a good neighborhood dive bar. It's a tavern. This is our co-working space, slash

lounge. We were setting up for a podcast later. We do Twitter spaces at 4:30. The events typically start at 6, so we'll have the guests and some other special guests come up here and just talk about what we'll be talking about downstairs. You guys can come a little closer together. Welcome to pub. Pete. It's Thursday, live from the pub, well above the pub. We're in the parlor. What is bitcoin's political philosophy? I mean, it's governance, if that's what you're talking about. Yeah, yeah, it's in progress. Honestly, there's no definitive answer to that. I think we learn lessons like from the block size war. We learn that some ideas of how it's governed are wrong, but we don't have a definitive picture of how it actually is governed. We've been gifted so much stuff over the last two years, and it's all we appreciate, every last bit of it. We need a bigger

shrine. We need a bigger bar to, you know, sort of put the stuff on display. Maybe we'll have a PUBKEY museum one day to highlight all of these things. Is that in the works, to get a bigger board? We're expanding to DC. Yeah, we'll be expanding to other cities and hopefully bring the community and culture and vibe to other systemically important locations where bitcoin is becoming more and more of an issue. DC is a natural fit for us to go to next. I had reached out to all the campaigns, you know, a long time ago, in one form or another. We touched, you know, RFK, President Trump, President Biden, Vice President Harris, just trying to get people interested in coming through, meeting the community, where they are interacting and, you know, trying to make a payment using Bitcoin, because that would have been a cool moment. Kaan Oguz: And I'm just so curious, like, did you just flat

out ask, Hey, can he come and pay in Bitcoin? Yeah, that was the pitch to everybody. If you think about the historic transactions over the course of Bitcoin's history, the pizzas, you have a bunch of ones. But I think, I think the, it's not for me to decide, but I think President Trump definitely ranks, and that was, that was part of the pitch. I said, you know, think of it like visiting an ice cream shop or donut shop on the campaign trail. But if you do it here and you pay in Bitcoin, you're going to reach a cohort of single-issue voters, you know, in the crypto ecosystem and Bitcoiners. I think that that cohort is growing. It's not like you know what you would typically think of as a single-issue voter cohort, but I think that after the last four years and with the growth of the industry as a whole, the crypto voters could

turn out in a pretty big way. I gotta go back and see this. Let's go right this way. President Trump's obviously been courting them for a while, right? He went to Nashville for the Bitcoin Conference. He hosted a round table in Mar a Lago with Bitcoin miners. He's seen lots of campaign donations or contributions from the industry that are, I would say, dissatisfied with SEC oversight and attention over regulation, and also, you know, the current Biden administration has been pretty punitive towards the industry, Kaan Oguz: so we're seeing reports that Vice President Kamala Harris might be having a warmer stance on the industry than, let's say, the Biden administration. Given who you're serving, Bitcoiners, maybe yourself. What do you think is the consensus of these recent reports. Unknown: Well, you know, I think that people want to see something more substantive. I can speak for myself, not on

behalf of PUBKEY, and we would love to host, you know, the conversation, and facilitate this in any way for either party, again, apolitical. From PUBKEY's perspective, my personal perspective, we haven't seen substantive policy out of the Harris campaign yet, but we're really hopeful that we will see something. We want to hear about, you know, things like, how are crypto companies banked? How are they regulated? Support for Bitcoin miners and the touch points that it has with national security and energy independence and energy security, a strategic reserve, like, how are we thinking about inflation, and how can Bitcoin potentially help Americans and American businesses protect against inflation if we were to put Bitcoin on a balance sheet or have the strategic stockpile or stuff like that. So Kaan Oguz: another recent visitor you had was commissioner

Hester Pierre, who serves the SEC, which has taken many enforcement actions against crypto companies. So I'm curious to hear what your conversation with her was like, and what do you think her visit says about the current state of crypto regulation here, and where you believe it might be headed. Unknown: So Commissioner Pierce was here for a small dinner. And it was a fun chat. It was an informal conversation about the different perspectives, the SEC role when it comes to Bitcoin, when it comes to the ETFs, when it comes to crypto projects, whether they're securities or not. It was a far-ranging conversation, and it was great. I mean, she has definitely been one of the most open-minded supporters of the innovation that's taking place in Bitcoin and crypto. It got deep, to be honest, and it was a really cool conversation to have. Tonight, we are interviewing Troy Cross. He is a bit of a

celebrity in the Bitcoin space, probably the thought leader at the intersection of Bitcoin and the environment. I'm going to talk about energy basically. I think Bitcoin energy use is probably the most misunderstood aspect of Bitcoin, and I'm going to explain how Bitcoin is designed to use only the cheapest energy in the world. Kaan Oguz: You mentioned pokey like Bitcoin is apolitical. So I kind of want to just give you this time to address that, and specifically, I guess, what you're doing to move this to become more of a bipartisan issue. Unknown: We've invited everybody we want to like, there is an open invitation. Have we invited everybody directly? No, like, not every single senator or representative, like, no, but everybody is welcome, even if people hate Bitcoin and they think it should be regulated and pounded into the center of the

earth. Let's have the conversation as to why and how that would happen. And you know, does it benefit Americans? Does it benefit American businesses? Does it benefit America on the global stage? We just want to help facilitate that conversation. You.

Why This Bitcoin Bar Wants To Turn Donald Trump And Kamala Harris Into Crypto Fans

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Why This Bitcoin Bar Wants To Turn Donald Trump And Kamala Harris Into Crypto Fans

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