Local Man Falls Down the Bitcoin Rabbit Hole and Lives to Tell the Tale
🟧 Down the orange brick path · Nashville keeps forty seats · Tennessean agitprop · This week in streaming · Much more!
Good afternoon, everyone.
I didn’t get anyone a press pass for this year’s Bitcoin Conference, but H.D. Miller, on the coattails of his daughter’s internship with the company, took it upon himself to play correspondent. He told me that he was “reporting on stuff for me,” and I shrugged it off, assuming that he’d eventually retreat to the nearest beer kiosk, down a Rabelaisian serving of frothy libations, and forget about the whole thing before nodding off in the convention center somewhere.
But, much to my surprise, the dense, folded cerebral cortex that somehow found itself ensouled by the gargantuan personality that is H.D. Miller produced a nice document that conveys what it was like to mill about the conference in anticipation of Saturday’s main event: the Trump speech.
Onward.
This past weekend, my youngest daughter and I headed off to the big hoo-haw Bitcoin Conference downtown, courtesy of my oldest daughter who has been interning this summer with BTC Inc., the sumptuously overstaffed company that runs the conference. We wanted to see Trump and RFK, Jr. speak, and so my oldest daughter found us two free tickets, worth a combined street value of $1398.00 in fiat money.
Like many Americans, I kick myself hard for not putting money into Bitcoin back in the day. Unlike most Americans, however, I learned about Bitcoin very, very early on, in 2010, when fellow posters in online forums started touting it as the next big thing when the price was somewhere around 50 cents per coin. Of course, in response to this great discovery, I immediately and mercilessly mocked anyone who said they’d bought Bitcoin. I’m the guy standing on the dock when Columbus returned, calling him a liar.
In my favor, I was not alone in mocking Bitcoin buyers, almost all sensible people were doing that, because everyone who was into Bitcoin in 2010 was doing so to buy illicit drugs, or so it seemed.
Welp. Here we are. It’s the future and the stoners and autistic edgelords have won. Bitcoin 2024 has taken over the Music City Center and forced various politicians to come and kiss the disembodied ring of the electronic God Emperor, Big Daddy Bitcoin.
Such were my thoughts as my youngest daughter and I showed up at 8 a.m. on Friday morning: if I had shown a tiny bit of foresight in 2010, I’d now be entering the convention center on a gilded sedan chair, borne aloft by six undrafted SEC down linemen.
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🪑 Nashville Keeps Forty Seats Metro emerged victorious, but is this the last we’ll hear of the shrinking council lawsuit? Yesterday, a three-judge panel found the state law establishing a 20-member cap on city councils unconstitutional. A triumphant Freddie O’Connell praised the court’s decision. “The Metro Charter gives Nashvillians the right to determine the size of our Metro Council,” he said in a statement, “and as recently as 2015, we decisively concluded we prefer 40 members.”
Metro Legal argued that the law targeted Nashville, violating the Tennessee Constitution's home rule amendment. While two judges concurred, Judge Howell, a Jackson lawyer elected to Tennessee’s 26th Judicial District in 2022, had some disagreements with the panel’s decision. His separate opinion cited a previous case: “The Court explained that while ‘only the Knoxville board will be required to take affirmative steps to comply with the statute. . . . the other two counties are certainly affected by the statute, because they will have to maintain compliance with [it].’”
Will the state appeal the ruling? “We are reviewing the decision and expect to make a decision about next steps shortly,” a spokesperson from the Attorney General’s office told us. MEGAN PODSIEDLIK
📰 The Tennessean’s Latest Agitprop Two recent stories from the Tennessean stuck out for their framing: the first involves an analysis conducted by the Council on Criminal Justice, which reveals that homicides were down 13 percent compared to last year across 39 cities included in the study. It’s unclear what we’re to take from this analysis, given that it doesn’t include one of the nation’s homicide meccas, Memphis, but nonetheless, you’ll likely hear the stats parroted by Metro government officials to assure constituents that they’re doing good work.
In Nashville, homicides are down 20 percent six months into 2024 compared to the same period last year, but they’re still up 20 percent compared to 2019. The only other Tennessee city included in the analysis, Chattanooga, saw a 7 percent increase in homicides compared to last year.
Meanwhile, a story from Todd Price ponders over Nashville’s demographics. According to the piece, Nashville had the nation’s largest increase in white residents over the past year. Quoted in the article is Shirley Rainey-Brown, a sociologist and the dean of Fisk University's School of Humanities and Behavioral Sciences, who asserts that local companies need to recruit minority applicants to increase the area's diversity. This is, once again, a classic case of conflating Nashville with the Metropolitan statistical area, which includes the thirteen counties surrounding Davidson.
In fact, as domestic citizens flee to the surrounding counties, most of the growth in Nashville proper is from international migrants. This article, along with the incessant focus of local media on outside neo-Nazi groups parading downtown, just reinforces what the paper’s editor in chief, Michael Anastasi, stupidly said to the Los Angeles Times in 2022: “All of us from California understand the power of diversity. People here are just starting to understand it.” DAVIS HUNT
🗳️ Get Out And Vote Thursday is Election Day! Just over nine percent of active Davidson County voters hit the booths during early voting to determine who will appear on November’s ballot. We’ve seen it all: mudslinging, big budgets, special interests groups beating the pavement to influence your vote. If you haven’t made your way to the polls, Thursday's your last chance! Here’s a quick primer for the contested primary races.
On the Republican primary ballot:
US Senate
- Marsha Blackburn (incumbent)
- Tres Wittum
US House of Representatives, Tennessee’s 5th District
- Andy Ogles (incumbent)
- Courtney Johnston
State House of Representatives, District 60
On the Democratic primary ballot:
US Senate
US House of Representatives, Tennessee’s 6th District
State House of Representatives, District 56
- Nick Forster-Benson
- Bob Freeman (incumbent)
State House of Representatives, District 60
Full sample ballot here.
DEVELOPMENT
- Rock’n Dough Pizza and Brewery closes in Nations; Black Market Bar + Grill closes in Printers Alley; Tin Angel building preps for new tenant (NBJ)
- Downtown Audi dealership owner buys neighboring SoBro site (NBJ)
- New GC set for paused luxury residential project (Post)
- S.C. company buys property near its Beaman Toyota dealership (Post)
- L.A. entertainment industry company to open Music Row office (Post)
✹ THIS WEEK IN STREAMING: July 30th
Memory (Hulu and Prime) Jessica Chastain stars as an alcoholic social worker whose life is thrown into disarray when an amnesiac (Peter Sarsgaard) follows her home from their high school reunion. As the two begin an unlikely romance, they learn to cope with the past traumas their families have long repressed. It may sound like some pat awardsy melodrama, but Mexican filmmaker Michel Franco proves the political savvy and virtuosic style that made his brutal activist class drama New Order one of the best of 2021 was no fluke.
The Decameron (Netflix) Sure, the vibe is shifting, but sometimes the best way to find the pulse of our current moment is looking backward. In this bawdy and ruthless TV adaptation of Boccaccio’s Renaissance classic, a group of aristocrats and peasants retreat from The Plague at a bucolic estate. The COVID commentary and elite takedowns seem to be cutting a bit too close for comfort for those in the know, but that just makes this period-piece gamble all the more vital.
Children of the Corn (Prime, Tubi, AMC+) Celebrate back-to-school season with Stephen King’s ultimate cautionary tale of child radicalization. When the sons and daughters of a Nebraska farm town massacre all the adults at the behest of a demonic being lurking in the corn rows, a pre-Terminator Linda Hamiton and her doctor boyfriend (Peter Horton) realize their city wits may not be enough to get out alive. Come for the unbeatable opening sequence, stay to see some of the gangliest-looking kids in Hollywood circa 1984 get their comeuppance.
THINGS TO DO
View our calendar for the week here and our weekly film rundown here.
📅 Visit our On The Radar list to find upcoming events around Nashville.
🎧 On Spotify: Pamphleteer's Picks, a playlist of our favorite bands in town this week.
👨🏻🌾 Check out our Nashville farmer's market guide and yearly festival guide.
TONIGHT
🎸 Whitten @ The Underdog, 7p, $10, Info
🎸 Hank Born @ The Underdog, 9p, Free, Info
🎸 The French Family Band @ Station Inn, 8p, $20, Info
🎺 Todd Day Wait @ The Underdog, 11:00p, Free, Info
+ Honky Tonk Tuesday afterparty, down the street
🎸 Honky Tonk Tuesday @ American Legion Post 82, 8p, Free, Info
+ two-step lessons @ 7p, The Cowpokes @ 8p