“I want to make a big announcement,” said Faryar Shirzad, the chief policy officer of Coinbase, to a nearly empty room. His words echoed across the massive hall at the Bitcoin Conference, deep in the caverns of The Venetian Expo in Las Vegas, and it wasn’t apparent how many people were watching on the livestream. Then again, somebody out there may have been interested in the panelists he was interviewing, one of whom was unusual by Bitcoin Conference standards: Chris LaCivita, the political consultant who’d co-chaired Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign.

“I am super proud to say it on this stage,” Shirzad continued, addressing the dozens of people scattered across 5,000 chairs. “We have just become a major sponsor of the America250 effort.”

My jaw dropped. Coinbase, the world’s largest crypto exchange, the owner of 12 percent of the world’s Bitcoin supply, and listed on the S&P 500, was paying for Trump to hold a military parade.

No wonder they made the announcement in an empty room. Today was “Code and Country”: an entire day of MAGA-themed panels on the Nakamoto Main Stage, full of Republican legislators, White House officials, and political operatives, all of whom pr …

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