r/cryptocurrency May 1, 03:55 PM
Bitcoin 2026 opened yesterday and somehow managed to be more chaotic than the market So Bitcoin 2026 kicked off at The Venetian in Las Vegas yesterday with BTC sitting at $79k, down from $110k at last year’s conference, which is already not the vibe you want walking in. Then it got worse. The FBI Director and the Acting Attorney General were both billed as headliners for a main stage panel called “Code is Free Speech” and neither of them physically showed up.
A congressman told the crowd he started mining Bitcoin in 2006, which is not possible because Bitcoin launched in 2009. Security escorted the wife of the imprisoned Samourai Wallet developer out of the conference for holding a Free Samourai sign, at a conference that had literally scheduled her to speak on a panel about injustice that same afternoon. And all of this happened on day one.
Keonne Rodriguez is serving five years for operating a privacy wallet and his wife got removed from the industry’s biggest conference for holding a sign about it, at a panel called Code is Free Speech, while the federal officials who were supposed to be there to signal an olive branch to the crypto industry didn’t bother to attend. The symbolism is so dense it almost feels constructed. Bitcoin was supposed to be the conference where the new regulatory era got announced. Instead it’s a half empty room in Vegas where a congressman doesn’t know when Bitcoin was invented.
submitted by /u/Repulsive_Counter_79
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