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   still a priority, but this push is now being presented as being in   
   service of much loftier aims: protecting innovation,   
   entrepreneurialism, and America’s future.   
      
   In July, Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, of the Andreessen Horowitz   
   venture fund, made a ninety-one-minute video accusing President Biden   
   of weakening America. Andreessen said to Horowitz, “There’s been a   
   brutal assault on a nascent industry that I’ve just—I’ve never   
   experienced before. I’m in total shock that it has happened.” Horowitz   
   replied, “They’ve basically subverted the rule of law to attack the   
   crypto industry.” These and other government actions, they said,   
   threatened to doom America’s economy, technological superiority, and   
   military might. And Biden, by refusing to embrace various tech-industry   
   proposals, was allowing China to leap ahead. “The future of technology,   
   and the future of America, is at stake,” Horowitz declared. The two men   
   were so concerned, they said, that they had no choice but to endorse   
   Donald Trump in 2024. (They also noted that, under Biden, billionaires   
   like themselves might have to pay more in taxes. But that issue   
   received less airtime.)   
      
   To people inside the crypto industry, the video—which received a huge   
   amount of attention, prompting online co-signs from Elon Musk and   
   various other titans—was a masterstroke. As the Coinbase employee put   
   it, “Now you’ve got Andreessen and Musk and all these other rich,   
   powerful guys saying that crypto is part of a bigger debate. It’s about   
   an attack on American innovation and progress and the future of the   
   country! It changed the conversation from ‘Is cryptocurrency a scam?’   
   to ‘Does Biden even care about middle-class entrepreneurs?’ ”   
      
   Even though Lehane opposes Trump’s candidacy, and had nothing to do   
   with the video, Andreessen and Horowitz’s move was right out of the   
   Lehane playbook. Lehane had done such a good job teaching the Valley   
   how to play politics that others could now mimic his gambits. In July,   
   Lehane joined Coinbase’s board of directors. “Chris is a genius,” the   
   Coinbase employee said. “I don’t know how he comes up with this stuff,   
   but he can change reality. He makes magic happen.”   
      
   The annual conference for Bitcoin enthusiasts isn’t an event at which   
   politicians usually appear. The affair often draws more than twenty-   
   five thousand people, many of them distrustful of government. Wandering   
   around the sea of booths, you can get a free vodka shot at 10 a.m. or   
   discuss “tax-avoidance strategies” that fall somewhere between fraud   
   and fantasy. People sell Edward Snowden T-shirts and crypto-themed   
   board games. It’s a safe haven for enthusiasts of Panties for Bitcoin.   
   But when the event took place in Nashville, in July—at a venue just a   
   few blocks from the Redneck Riviera bar, where women were offering to   
   lift their shirts in exchange for some of “that bit stuff”—it was   
   teeming with political luminaries. There were eight senators, nearly a   
   dozen representatives, and countless candidates for national and state   
   office, some of whom launched into impromptu speeches whenever the   
   techno music paused. The star attraction, however, was Donald Trump.   
      
   The event’s appearance on the Presidential campaign circuit—and Trump’s   
   willingness to spend one of his campaign days in a state he’s   
   guaranteed to win—confirmed that the crypto campaign initiated by   
   Lehane was having an effect. When Trump gave a speech before a   
   standing-room-only crowd in orange wigs and “Make Bitcoin Great Again”   
   hats, he pledged, “On Day One, I will fire Gary Gensler”—the S.E.C.   
   head. This prompted a standing ovation and choruses of pro-Trump   
   chants. A man standing near me FaceTimed his wife and insisted that she   
   watch the speech, even though she was in the delivery room where their   
   grandchild was being born.   
      
   Trump’s embrace of crypto was a hundred-and-eighty-degree turn. As   
   President, he had tweeted that he was “not a fan” of cryptocurrencies,   
   which “are not money” and “can facilitate unlawful behavior, including   
   drug trade and other illegal activity.” He continued, “We have only one   
   real currency in the USA. It is called the United States Dollar!”   
   Later, he said that Bitcoin “just seems like a scam.” But after leaving   
   office Trump began seeking out new revenue sources, such as selling   
   non-fungible tokens—a type of digital content hosted on the blockchain.   
   This earned him a reported $7.2 million in 2023. Trump was convinced.   
   His current Presidential campaign was among the first to accept   
   cryptocurrency donations. He recently announced that—presumably in   
   exchange for compensation—he’d become the “chief crypto advocate” for   
   World Liberty Financial, a company led, in part, by an entrepreneur   
   who’d reportedly sold marijuana and weight-loss products. Before Trump   
   took the stage in Nashville, he hosted a “roundtable” fund-raiser with   
   crypto investors, many of whom paid more than eight hundred thousand   
   dollars to attend. Conference organizers have said that Trump raised   
   twenty-five million dollars there.   
      
   When Trump spoke at the conference, it was clear that he had been, in   
   the parlance of Bitcoin fans, “orange-pilled.” He promised that, if   
   elected, he would direct the federal government to hold billions of   
   dollars’ worth of cryptocurrency reserves. The U.S., he proclaimed,   
   would become the “crypto capital of the planet and the Bitcoin   
   superpower of the world!” Trump began echoing the crypto campaign’s   
   talking points. “If we don’t do it, China is going to be doing it!” he   
   said.   
      
   You might think Trump’s newfound veneration of Bitcoin would have   
   delighted Lehane. It didn’t. Rather, it suggested that his campaign   
   might be working a bit too well. As with Airbnb, Lehane doesn’t want   
   the crypto industry to become firmly associated with either Democrats   
   or Republicans, because then it will be impossible to pass legislation   
   around it. And virtually any policy championed by Trump becomes a   
   partisan matter by default.   
      
   President Biden’s announcement, in July, that he was dropping out of   
   the race seemed to offer the crypto industry an opportunity for a reset   
   with the Democrats. The ascension of Vice-President Kamala Harris, a   
   Californian with a tech-friendly record, raised the possibility of   
   balancing the partisan scales. In a September speech about her economic   
   plans as President, Harris pledged that the U.S. would “remain dominant   
   in A.I. and quantum computing, blockchain, and other emerging   
   technologies.” The détente seems to be working: on October 4th, Ben   
   Horowitz, the venture capitalist who had appeared in the video   
   attacking Biden, told his employees that he and his wife would be   
   making a personal donation to “entities who support the Harris Walz   
   campaign”—in no small part because some private conservations he’d had   
   with Harris and her team made him “very hopeful” that, as President,   
   she’d abandon Biden’s “exceptionally destructive” crypto policies.   
   Lehane, for his part, has donated thirty-five thousand dollars to   
   Harris’s campaign (and nothing to Trump’s).   
      
   In the meantime, however, the crypto coalition that Lehane helped to   
   build has begun fraying—a victim of the same partisan divides that   
   plague the rest of the nation. In August, Ron Conway, the California   
   power broker who had given half a million dollars to Fairshake, e-   
   mailed the super PAC’s other funders, including Andreessen and   
   Armstrong, to complain that the campaign was alienating Democratic   
      
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   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)