Bitcoin Nashville Conference: Highlights and Insights

Last week’s Bitcoin Nashville conference captured the crypto community’s attention, particularly because of former U.S. President Donald Trump’s campaign speech filled with ambitious promises, alongside U.S. Senator Cynthia Lummis’s intriguing proposal for a national “Bitcoin Strategic Reserve.” For those interested, we have the draft legislation readily available.

Over the course of four days, our team navigated the vibrant atmosphere of the event while diligently covering the latest updates and snapping numerous photographs. The concept of Bitcoin LARP (Live Action Role Play) seemed to resonate throughout the gathering.

In this issue:
Network News

U.S. Senator Cynthia Lummis, a Republican from Wyoming, presenting her bitcoin reserve bill during the Bitcoin Nashville conference on Saturday, July 27. (Danny Nelson/CoinDesk)

RESERVING JUDGMENT

Details surrounding the Republican calls for a “strategic national bitcoin stockpile” remain somewhat elusive. President Trump, who is the party’s presidential nominee, suggested utilizing the government’s current holdings of just over 200,000 BTC as the “core” for a new reserve. Senator Lummis took this idea further by proposing the potential to accumulate the reserve up to 1 million BTC, which would represent about 5% of the cryptocurrency’s total supply.

During her speech at Bitcoin Nashville, Lummis claimed that this initiative could eventually “eliminate” the national debt, which stands at approximately $27 trillion, as of our last check. However, she did not provide much clarity on how this would be achieved, save for the simplistic notion that increasing U.S. government wealth could correlate with reduced debt levels, a point emphasized by CoinDesk’s Jesse Hamilton.

Social media buzzed with questions regarding whether the government has the legal right to retain its current bitcoin stash, which has largely been acquired through seizures and forfeitures linked to criminal activities. Essentially, any assets obtained through unlawful means may need to be returned to their rightful owners at some point.

Additionally, the implications of Lummis’s statement regarding the conversion of “excess reserves at our 12 Federal Reserve banks into bitcoin over five years” sparked considerable speculation. The feasibility of such a move, both economically and legally, was called into question. George Selgin, an economist affiliated with the conservative Cato Institute, noted on X that he had “heard from someone in Senator Lummis’s office” that the actual plan was to purchase around $64 billion worth of bitcoin by revaluing the gold reserves in Fort Knox. CoinDesk obtained a draft bill that indeed outlines a strategy to revalue Federal Reserve gold certificates while earmarking $6 billion from any net earnings generated by the U.S. central bank over the next five fiscal years. However, it’s noteworthy that the Fed has been experiencing significant financial losses recently.

As a fun aside, the draft bill includes a provision detailing how the U.S. government would manage any airdropped tokens.

Taking a broader perspective, the Wall Street Journal Editorial Board asserted that if cryptocurrencies are genuinely a libertarian tool for investing free from political influences, they should function independently of government support.

The discussion took an unexpected turn when it was reported that U.S. authorities had recently transferred approximately $2 billion worth of government-held bitcoin related to the Silk Road website seizures. U.S. officials remained tight-lipped about the reasoning behind this move, urging caution against overinterpreting the action. Nevertheless, theories proliferated on social media suggesting that the Biden administration was hurriedly attempting to “dump” the government’s bitcoin holdings before a potential Trump administration could take control.

ALSO:
Bitcoin Nashville Conference in Pictures: A Colorful Showcase

Lightning protocol engineer Lisa Neigut conducting an engaging game titled “Bitcoin LARP” at the Bitcoin Nashville conference (Bradley Keoun)

Explore our photo-blog from last week’s Bitcoin Nashville Conference: “Surreal doesn’t even begin to encapsulate the unique visuals captured during this festival-like gathering dedicated to the oldest and largest cryptocurrency, highlighted by former U.S. President Donald Trump’s pro-crypto campaign address to an enthusiastic audience.” The event featured appearances from notable figures such as David Tse, Lisa Neigut (as seen above), Adrián Eidelman, Fred Thiel, Justin Sun (in a not-so-ordinary way), Robin Linus, Jeremy Rubin, Liam Eagen, Weikeng Chen, Andrew Poelstra, Casey Rodarmor, Erin Redwing, Cathie Wood, Michael Saylor, Ron Paul, and Donald Trump.

Click here for the full story by Bradley Keoun.

Protocol Village

Top highlights from the past week featured in our Protocol Village column, focusing on significant blockchain technology upgrades and news.

• 1. Irys: This project, which serves as a provenance layer for data storage, announced its transition to a new layer-1 network featuring a “programmatic datachain that integrates data storage and execution.” According to the team, “Through IrysVM, fully compatible with EVM, developers can utilize efficient and cost-effective real-time data manipulation. This strategy streamlines development processes, enhances scalability, and ensures stable and predictable transaction and data storage pricing. Partners within the Irys ecosystem include Berachain, Eclipse, Injective Labs, Livepeer, Linea, IoTeX, Gateway.fm, Lit Protocol, NodeKit, Olas, Snapchain, BeraLand, and YEET.” Established in 2021, Irys began as Bundlr, a scaling solution for permanent data storage on Arweave.
• 2. Router Protocol: Built on Cosmos blockchain technology, this project announced the launch of its new main network aimed at achieving “chain abstraction,” a concept many protocols endorse to streamline blockchain user experiences. The Router Chain focuses on reducing development hurdles and facilitating the creation of decentralized applications (dApps) that seamlessly operate across various blockchains while aggregating liquidity.
• 3. Blackbird Labs: Co-founded by Resy and Eater co-founder Ben Leventhal, this restaurant loyalty platform introduced Blackbird Pay, allowing participating restaurants to accept cryptocurrency payments. This innovative payment system aligns with Blackbird’s mission, enabling consumers to pay for meals using the $FLY cryptocurrency, which can be earned as loyalty points or purchased in the Blackbird app via Coinbase’s widely-used USDC stablecoin.
• 4. Theoriq: The developers of this “AI agent base layer” released its official project whitepaper, detailing the core aspects of its network and the benefits it offers for developing advanced AI agent collectives. They stated, “Using a decentralized model, Theoriq will leverage smart contracts to ensure transparency and accountability while retaining the flexibility necessary for the network to evolve alongside advancements in AI complexity.”
• 5. Dash: This payments-focused cryptocurrency project is set to launch its Evolution upgrade on July 29, noted as its most significant enhancement to date, introducing a new sidechain. The project aspires “to facilitate indexed decentralized storage and decentralized applications.” According to a blog post, the sidechain “is operated by EvoNodes, which also secures the legacy Dash chain. It employs an account-based model (single addresses hold balances), in contrast to the UTXO model (multiple addresses contain coins, or UTXOs) of the Core chain. It utilizes a heavily modified version of Tendermint (Cosmos) consensus known as Tenderdash, which differs from Tendermint mainly through its same-block execution feature, eliminating the need to wait for the next block post data writing to query it.”

Money Center
Fundraisings

Hyperbolic CEO Jasper Zhang and co-founder Yuchen Jin (Hyperbolic)

Data and Tokens
Regulatory and Policy
XRP Leads Gainers Among CoinDesk 20 Members in July

The benchmark CoinDesk 20 index, which tracks leading digital assets, reported a return of 3.3% for the month through July 30, closely mirroring July’s performance for gold, while slightly surpassing the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index of U.S. stocks.

MTD returns through July 30. (Tracy Stephens/CoinDesk Indices)

XRP, the cryptocurrency associated with Ripple Labs and the XRP Ledger, emerged as the standout performer in July, increasing by 32%, followed by Solana’s SOL, which rose by 20%. Bitcoin was the only other cryptocurrency to post gains, climbing by 3.8% month-to-date.

MTD returns through July 30. (Tracy Stephens/CoinDesk Indices)

Calendar