young man asked at one of
the conference happy hours.
“He was doing no one any
good. Ross did something to
protect all of those thousands
of customers.”
Aside
from
Lyn
Ulbricht’s appearance, the
most memorable part of the
conference
was
Charlie
Shrem’s virtual appearance.
He couldn’t travel to Texas,
of course, but the organizers
got him on Skype and
projected a live feed of
Charlie, from his basement
bedroom with his guitars
behind him. Charlie was
wearing a brown “BOUGHT
WITH BITCOINS” T-shirt that
he’d worn two months earlier
when he met Nic Cary for
drinks, before his arrest.
Charlie was in the midst
of trying to negotiate a
settlement
with
the
government to lessen the time
he’d
have
to
serve—
eventually, as a result of these
talks, Charlie would plead
guilty to one count of aiding
and abetting an unlicensed
money-transmitting business
and accept a one-year prison
sentence. In the meantime,
his lawyer had told him to
avoid making any public
statements that might hurt the
talks. But his loquaciousness
and desire for attention were
irrepressible. This kid, who
had once been called Statist
for his mainstream politics,
now gave a fiery talk that was
a play on a well-traveled
speech delivered by the
founder of the Pirate Party
several years earlier.
Friends, citizens,
Bitcoiners, there is
nothing new under the
sun.
My name is
Charlie Shrem, and I
speak to you from
under house arrest.
During the last
few weeks, we’ve
seen several examples
of legal outbursts.
We’ve seen the police
abusing the measures
available to them.
We’ve seen the
actions of the
financial services
industry. We’ve seen
high-profile
politicians mobilizing
in order to protect the
financial and banking
industry.
All of this is
scandalous without
parallel. That is why I
stand here today.
When it ended, some
twenty minutes later, there
was a smattering of applause
and
shouts.
Charlie
complained
that
his
connection was making it
hard for him to hear the
crowd’s response. But the
people who got up to ask him
questions told him he was a
hero.
“We all love you. You are
still a huge part of this
community,” said the shaggy-
bearded founder of a Bitcoin
charity. “What kind of beer
should we send to you?
Because you said you were
looking for six packs.”
“I love Blue Moon, but
anything exotic is good,”
Charlie said.
“All right, cool. Stay
strong Charlie!” the man
shouted with a raised fist.
ALMOST NONE OF the more
recent, moneyed arrivals at
Bitcoin showed up for the
conference at the race track.
But many of them did fly to
Austin just as the conference
was ending, to attend another
conference,
SXSW,
the
storied
public
gathering
where Silicon Valley mingled
with celebrities. On the first
day of SXSW, in a marquee
session with Google chairman
Eric
Schmidt,
Google’s
“director of ideas,” Jared
Cohen,
responded
to
a
question about Bitcoin with
his conclusion: “I think it’s
very obvious to all of us that
cryptocurrencies
are
inevitable.”
Fred Ehrsam, the former
Goldman Sachs trader who
had
joined
the
Bitcoin
company Coinbase a year
earlier, was given the honor
of his own SXSW session—
not a shared panel with other
entrepreneurs—and it was put
in one of the largest rooms in
the convention center, which
quickly filled up. In the
question-and-answer session
that followed Ehrsam’s talk,
Lyn Ulbricht was the first one
in line at the microphone. She
said something about using
Bitcoin for charity, but she
was clearly there to make a
plug for Ross’s legal defense
fund, which she told Ehrsam
was hosted on Coinbase.
Whereas Lyn had been a star
at the Bitcoin conference,
here she was an unhappy
reminder of a side of Bitcoin
that
Ehrsam
and
others
wanted to put behind them.
Fred responded politely and
fumbled to find something to
say about the value of Bitcoin
for
charitable
donations
broadly. But Fred was not shy
about his belief in the
transformative impact that
Bitcoin
would
ultimately
make as it became “the
prevalent transaction medium
on the internet.”
Fred’s biggest backer,
Marc
Andreessen,
was
increasingly vocal about his
belief that the Silk Roads of
the world were quickly giving
way to more Coinbases.
Andreessen frequently noted
that in the early days of the
Internet,
when
he
was
creating
the
first
web
browser, the new technology
had lacked the infrastructure
that would have made it
appealing to a mainstream
audience, and so it was
relegated to fringe groups that
were willing to experiment
with new technology. In time,
though, “the fringe characters
tend to get alienated and then
tend to move on to the next
fringe technology.”
“You don’t get the new
technology
from
the
mainstream,” he said. “My
prediction is actually that the
libertarians are going to turn
on Bitcoin. I think that’s
about two years out.”
SXSW underscored how
thoroughly Silicon Valley
was winning the battle to
shape and define the Bitcoin
technology. The gathering
also
served
as
a
stark
reminder of how Silicon
Valley had, more broadly,
emerged as the big winner
after the financial crisis. With
Wall Street in retreat, these
were the new billionaire
power brokers, flying around
the country in private jets. On
Saturday night Ehrsam was
invited to an exclusive party
hosted
by
Andreessen
Horowitz. At the party, which
was attended by celebrities
like Ashton Kutscher, Ehrsam
talked about Bitcoin with Ben
Horowitz and the rapper, Nas,
whom Horowitz had brought
on as an investor in Coinbase.
The big names like Horowitz
at SXSW reiterated what
world-changing
new
technologies, such as Bitcoin,
the tech industry was helping
to bring to the world. In an
onstage conversation between
Nas and Horowitz, Horowitz
called Bitcoin “the internet of
money,” with the potential to