Bitcoin does cultural diplomacy in a dive bar

“Our top priority is trying to figure out how to soften that [hostility],” Thomas Pacchia, the founder of Pubkey’s New York City location, told me. To hear Pacchia put it, Pubkey DC — located strategically in the heart of DC’s lobbying neighborhood and close enough to Capitol Hill — was going to be a vessel for the Bitcoin community’s political aspirations and influence. But rather than dump money into endless lobbying against the interests of much larger crypto behemoths (and to say nothing of traditional financial institutions), Pubkey was going to do it through soft power. Instead of policy white papers and government affairs work, they were going to invite people — Republican, Democrat, important people, not-important people — into their quirky, very nice, superchill world, full of Bitcoiners who wanted to work with the government rather than evade them at all costs.