Report from RFK Jr's speech at Bitcoin 2024

The values of bitcoin are the values of America, he says

Hi all. I am at Bitcoin 2024 in Nashville, today.

It has been interesting. One impression I received almost immediately is that this is not about a few people posting memes online and hoping the price of BTC goes up. No, this is big business now, companies have built up their work around all aspects of blockchain technologies and make big money connections through conferences like this. And of course there is political power in that too. When Kamala Harris says something stupid like “bitcoin is just money for criminals”, she is not just offending internet memelords, she is insulting a large and growing industry (about which she is completely ignorant, I suspect).

Many great talks today, but I wanted to post for you summaries and thoughts from two speakers - Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and, in a separate post, Edward Snowden. (Donald Trump speaks tomorrow actually and we shall see how that goes. I suspect this crowd actually prefers RFK, if only he had a chance of winning.)

RFK Jr, bitcoin and freedom

Here he is. I was in the second row, actually.

One of the most impressive things he mentioned was that last year, he received a cash payment that was his fees from winning a legal case against Monsanto, an amount of money that constituted a substantial fraction of his own wealth… and he invested it all in bitcoin. So what that means of course is that this guy is a real believer.

What really got him into bitcoin originally, he said, was the Canadian trucker protests during COVID. His organization, Children’s Health Defense, had a reporter embedded with the truckers (I’m still not sure why, actually). And he said videos of their protest event were like Woodstock, by which he meant it was peaceful, kids were playing, people were having a good time. But the Canadian government made them sound like a rightwing terrorist organization. It froze their bank accounts. This from one of the premier democracies of the world.

He realized then, he said, that transactional freedom was as important as freedom of expression. (Big applause for that line.) If a government can starve you if you criticize that government, we are on the road to totalitarianism and slavery. So he started looking into alternatives, and that led him to bitcoin.

Orange has become the color of bitcoin. At the end of his talk, he actually said, “I don’t think of myself as red, blue, or even purple. I think of myself as orange.” (He got a standing applause for that.) Then he joked, “it’s true that Trump has orange hair. It’s a really great start. But I have an orange heart.”

First day promises

But it was also an “elect me” speech, so there was some straightforward politics too. On his first day in office, he said,

1. He would take the 200,000 BTC already held by the US government, and order the US Treasury to hold onto it as a strategic asset.

2. He would order the purchase of 550 BTC daily, until the US has built a reserve of 4 million BTC. Remember there will only ever be 21 million BTC. He said the United States holds about 19% of global gold reserves, it should have approximately that same percentage of bitcoin.

3. He will order the IRS to issue public guidance that all transactions between bitcoin and USD are unreportable and nontaxable. Right now the IRS treats bitcoin like property. He pointed out that no law says this, it is just a decision the IRS has made. Later he elaborated that the 4th Amendment guarantees a right to privacy. That includes financial and transaction privacy. You should not have to report every bitcoin transaction to the government. It is not their business to know your business. (Big applause for that.)

4. He will order the treatment of bitcoin as eligible for 1031 exchange into real property (I am not sure what this means, just reporting what he said here).

5. And then at the end of his talk, he said he would pardon Julian Assange, Ross Ulbricht, and Edward Snowden. He noted that Trump had four years to do this, and didn’t. He will do it on day one.

The uses and philosophy of bitcoin

But a lot of talk was about how the philosophy of bitcoin matches Kennedy’s own philosophy, which is also the philosophy of America.

At the very start of his talk he said, and I think this is true, that what you see in the bitcoin community is fierce divisions on minor issues, but an overwhelming sense of unity around the bitcoin ecosystem itself. And that is the way it should be in US politics as well, but is not (a pretty common theme if you ever hear him talk).

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States has somewhat perversely moved in a declining direction. We waste ourselves on useless wars. And our dollar is losing reserve currency status because we have weaponized it against other countries (cutting Russia off from SWIFT being an obvious recent example). The BRICS nations are realizing they don’t need US debt. We need to restore world confidence by backing our debt obligations with hard assets again, including precious metals and bitcoin. The world needs to believe that we have safely handicapped our own government.

Six months before his uncle was assassinated, his uncle had signed a bill putting silver coins in competition with notes produced by the Federal Reserve. He had wanted to restrain debasement of the US dollar, and all the wealth inequality, violence, division, and discontent that results. The US government immediately stopped issuing these silver coins after his uncle’s death. In a like manner, bitcoin can restore competition to the Fed, and so refortify the dollar.

Nixon took us off the gold standard to help finance the Vietnam War (a common theme, since fiat currencies were invented to pay for wars). Alan Greenspan actually said that in the absence of a gold standard, there is no way to prevent confiscation by inflation. Inflation is theft from the poor. Biden and Trump both, he said, embraced money printing that has been terrible for the middle class. $1000 six years ago is now worth $520. Mortgages have doubled in four years. No wonder people are marrying later, not having children. Today’s generation faces moving goalposts because of inflation. Results include depression, suicide, hopelessness, and loss of pride in our country.

Half of Americans cannot put their hands on $1000 if they heed it for an emergency. We now have armies of homeless Americans because they got two flat tires at once and could no longer get to work. [I suspect some readers disagree about the causes of homelessness, but reporting what he said here.] Mothers tell him stories about buying cheaper ingredients to make it through the grocery store, elderly tell him about cutting pills in half to make them last twice as long. These decisions are because our money is broken. Bitcoin is the offramp from the inflation highway of doom. Bitcoiners have it right, he said, fix the money, fix the world. (Big applause for that, of course.)

We can also use bitcoin to incentivize green energy production (and several speakers made this point, actually). Bitcoin miners are super-sensitive to energy prices, that is why they love getting their electricity from, for example waste-energy that would have just been burned off into the air. This also makes them ideal partners for variable-power projects, which is what a lot of green energy is. When the windmills are producing more energy than the grid needs, fire up the bitcoin miners, make some money for the windmill company. When the wind dies down, turn off the miners. The miners can thereby help balance the grid and financially support green energy.

And finally, bitcoin guarantees property rights. The government cannot tax your property at the border. Getting wealthy is really one of the minor points of bitcoin. It’s about our values and our souls. Every bitcoiner shares his skepticism of official pronouncements and his appreciation of critical thinking. (I would rather see someone like Michael Saylor or Caitlin Long as Treasury Secretary he said, to great applause.) Bitcoin is currency of freedom, liberty, and hope. We will fight to keep it decentralized (he was wary of the ETFs for this reason which is… remarkably well-informed for a politician to understand that detail). Bitcoin can help restore self-sovereignty, which is the whole point of our democracy.

THE END

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(Bonus shot of the crowd, between speeches.)