Categories: U.S. Regulation

Donald Trump Used Bitcoin to Pay for Burgers at PubKey Bar in NYC, Rallying Crypto Fans to Vote

Days after announcing the launch of decentralized finance (DeFi) platform World Liberty Financial during an interview with Decrypt sister company Rug Radio, former U.S. President Donald Trump used Bitcoin to buy burgers during a stop at PubKey Bitcoin bar in Manhattan on Wednesday.

Bitcoin backers at the bar helped Trump with the process, which included scanning a QR code with a smartphone and then apparently approving the transaction. After a moment of uncertainty over whether the transaction went through, one of the men helping Trump said, “Oh, it did go through!”

During the stop at New York’s Bitcoin-themed bar, Trump voiced his hope that the Republican Party would win in New York in the upcoming U.S. election. “It’s a great place, I just made the first transaction in Bitcoin,” Trump said to the cheers of the crowd. “Everybody that’s a crypto guy—a crypto maniac, as I call them, because they really are—they believe,” he said, encouraging the crypto faithful to get out and vote this November.

“Get out and vote, because if you vote, we cannot lose,” Trump said. “They’ve been treating you very badly at the SEC and we’re going to treat you very fairly, because you have to get out and vote.”

On Monday, Trump warned that if Vice President Kamala Harris wins in November, crypto startups will be “living in hell” under the regulatory regime of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). “If we don’t win the election, those people that were under investigation and that are free as a bird right now,” Trump said, “and people that weren’t being looked at in the crypto world, they will be living in hell—because it will start the day after the election if they win.”
Cryptocy has become a political issue in Washington with Trump, a former Bitcoin skeptic, refashioning himself as a champion for crypto. Trump has launched multiple NFT collections on Ethereum scaling network Polygon, which the Republican presidential candidate credits for his change of heart on Bitcoin and cryptocy.
Bitcoin is typically considered to be a better store of value than means of making everyday payments—and some Crypto Twitter commenters took potshots at the idea of asking Trump to pay with BTC in the real world.

When asked how the experience of using Bitcoin to buy the crowd burgers, Trump noted how easy it was.

“It’s the beginning of a new era,” Trump said. “What they’ve done is so amazing over a short period of time, and you look at the values, and the kind of numbers you’re talking about, bigger than the biggest corporations in the world put together many of them. So it’s quite something.”

Terron Gold

Recent Posts

Cypherpunk Launches World’s Largest Zcash Mining Fleet in $33 Million Winklevoss Deal

Cypherpunk Technologies is expanding its massive bet on Zcash by launching what it calls the…

5 days ago

MapleStory Universe Launches AI Game Jam With $15,000 in NXPC Prizes

MapleStory Universe is putting artificial intelligence in the hands of game creators with the launch…

6 days ago

Kalshi Pushes Beyond Prediction Markets With Copper Perpetual Future Filing With CFTC

Kalshi is making another major move beyond prediction markets, filing with the Commodity Futures Trading…

6 days ago

Coinbase Brings 50x Crypto Perpetual Trading to Base App Through Hyperliquid

Coinbase is bringing high-leverage decentralized derivatives directly into its Base App through an integration with…

6 days ago

Hong Kong Puts First Regulated Stablecoin to Work in Insurance and $49 Billion UAE Trade Market

Hong Kong's first regulated Hong Kong dollar stablecoin is moving beyond testing and into real-world…

6 days ago

Fake Trezor, Ledger and Exodus Apps Target Crypto Users in Massive Seed Phrase Scam

Cybersecurity researchers at Rapid7 have uncovered a sophisticated crypto fraud operation that used nearly 885,000…

7 days ago