Original author: Leo Schwartz , Fortune
Original translation: Felix, PANews
On September 19, Trump bought burgers for supporters at PubKey, a Bitcoin-themed bar in New York City, and paid with Bitcoin. Trump paid $998.70 in Bitcoin through the Strike payment app, which is built on the Lightning Network. The bar used the Zaprite app to receive Bitcoin.
PubKey is a well-known Bitcoin bar in Manhattan. It features Bitcoin payments and has become a gathering place for Bitcoin enthusiasts. Fortune conducted an exclusive interview with PubKey owner Thomas Pacchia to take you to the story behind Trumps purchase with Bitcoin. The following are the details.
When Pacchia first proposed PubKey as a campaign stop to the Trump team, the campaign’s reaction was what he expected: “What’s a Bitcoin bar?” On Sept. 18, the world (or at least those obsessed with Twitter) got a chance to find out, when Trump stopped by PubKey on his way to a rally on Long Island and bought a burger in what is being called the first transaction ever completed using Bitcoin by a current or former president.
Pacchia opened PubKey two years ago, envisioning the West Village bar near Washington Square Park as a civic tavern. He sees his bar as a place where people can stop by to discuss monetary policy and political ethics over a beer, just as the founding fathers did 250 years ago. (It doesn’t hurt that PubKey’s menu was designed by a chef who trained at the three-Michelin-star Eleven Madison Park.)
PubKey has hosted politicians like Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand in the past, and Pacchia has invited every candidate, including Harris. So a surprise visit from a future president didn’t surprise Pacchia.
The details of Trump’s visit, however, were even more shocking. Pacchia, who learned of the former president’s visit only a week before it was coming, worked with the Secret Service for four hours a day to come up with a plan that included closing the skylights and positioning snipers nearby. “It was crazy,” Pacchia said as bar staff worked to get back to business as usual. “It was a whirlwind.”
From the Fidelity Mafia to the Bitcoin Burger
Pacchia is not your traditional Manhattan bar owner. He was a lawyer who was hired by financial services giant Fidelity in 2015 as its first outside employee with expertise in Bitcoin. Under CEO Abigail Johnson, Fidelity has moved further into the cryptocurrency space, with Pacchia helping to build the architecture of its digital asset business, including its custody and trading platforms and its early mining operations.
While Pacchia’s main venture right now is the bar PubKey, including an upcoming expansion in Washington, D.C., and soon to other cities with financial backing from the Winklevoss twins, he remains active in the crypto industry, including serving on the board of Stronghold Digital Mining and consulting for Luxor, another bitcoin mining company.
Pacchia used to live a few blocks away from PubKey, which was then a bar called Formerly Crows, which he described as an epic, quintessential New York dive bar. He would gather with friends to talk about Bitcoin at gatherings he affectionately called Crypto at the Crow. When Formerly Crows closed during the pandemic, Pacchia, inspired by Paul Revere and Thomas Paine, decided to take over and create PubKey.
“Bitcoin needs its own tavern and its own boardroom to facilitate some of the revolutionary, cultural, economic and technological changes that Bitcoin has been the catalyst for,” Pacchia told Fortune magazine.
He teamed up with two experienced restaurateurs and a former Eleven Madison Park chef to design an eclectic menu of burgers, hot dogs and cocktails that would appeal to both Village residents and crypto-believers.
Despite PubKey’s Bitcoin-themed decor, it still attracts a diverse clientele. Last November, Pacchia noticed a couple in the corner of the bar who seemed to have just finished a long day at work. Pacchia went over to chat with them, and the couple asked about the bar’s strange theme. When Pacchia told the couple about PubKey’s Bitcoin ethos, the couple looked shocked. “Are you kidding us?” the couple asked. It turned out that they were photographers for the New York Post, responsible for photographing Caroline Ellison (former CEO of Alameda Research), who happened to live nearby and testified at SBF’s trial. The couple came in by chance.
Presidential Visit
Trumps first exposure to cryptocurrency was in 2022, when he launched an NFT series and received a modest return. However, his overall attitude towards cryptocurrency remained tentative, but this attitude changed as the industry became one of the largest sponsors in the 2024 election. Today, Trump enthusiastically embraces blockchain and declares that he will deal with important matters that hinder the development of the encryption industry after taking office, including releasing Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht and firing SEC Chairman Gary Gensler.
Although Trump has been repeating the party line, he has not won over everyone as some are still skeptical of his labeling of Bitcoin as a scam a few years ago. Meanwhile, he recently announced a so-called DeFi protocol, World Liberty Financial, which will be run by the Trump family, and critics have slammed him for making money rather than actually working on creating a decentralized product.
During his visit to PubKey, Trump, still not grasping the “already popular” crypto terminology, referred to the food sold at the bar as “crypto burgers,” despite a customer trying to correct him as Bitcoin — a distinction that is important to Bitcoin loyalists who consider other tokens “shitcoins.” Meanwhile, a video of the historic burger transaction initially showed the transaction failed, which Pacchia attributed to the camera flash making it difficult to scan the QR code. (Pacchia added that about 5% of PubKey’s sales are paid in Bitcoin)
But Pacchia told Fortune magazine: It’s a long learning process to understand the difference between (Bitcoin and cryptocurrency). “It’s unrealistic to expect these politicians to be Bitcoin experts.”
Trump’s presence validated Pacchia’s decision to start PubKey. Pacchia gave Trump two gifts. The first was a replica of the famous “Buy Bitcoin” sign that one of PubKey’s founding partners held behind then-Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen during a 2017 congressional hearing. The second was an American flag that Senator Elizabeth Warren commissioned another PubKey patron to fly over the U.S. Capitol in honor of Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto (as a prank).
Despite the fanfare (visit + gift), Pacchia insisted that PubKey would not endorse a presidential candidate, and he held out hope that Harris would come. “Bitcoin should not be a partisan issue. It belongs to everyone.”
