Bitcoin Conference boosts security efforts as Trump prepares to headline

The Bitcoin Conference is usually a wild time. With President Trump still in the spotlight—despite being just days away from an attempt on his life—conference organizers are making sure they’re ready for what’s expected to be a near-record crowd.

Brandon Green, the chief of staff of the conference organizers, recently told Coinage that security measures have been increased.

“It’s already standard procedure to have a massive surge of Secret Service personnel,” Green said. “There’s going to be a lot of planning around security for the event — it’s already been done. There’s going to be even more, and that’s something we take very seriously, especially in the wake of what happened.”

After a bear market decline in attendance, Nashville’s Bitcoin Conference attendance is expected to easily surpass last year’s attendance of around 12,000 and could even set a new record to rival 2022’s 25,000-plus attendees. Ticket sales have accelerated since President Trump was announced as the keynote speaker, Green said.

“Tickets are flowing very heavily and intensely, and we’re preparing for any kind of conversations with the fire marshal about how to manage the crowd throughout the event,” Green said, estimating that final attendance could fall anywhere from 20,000 to as low as the venue’s capacity limit of 45,000. “There’s no way for me to predict, all our models are broken.”

Other conference speakers include the usual suspects and a host of politicians, including Senators Bill Hagerty (R-TN) and Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), who recently held a crypto roundtable with industry leaders and Biden administration officials. With 2024 being an election year, it’s perhaps no surprise that so many politicians are on the agenda, but as Coinage has covered , political hopefuls have been courting bitcoiners for years. Last year’s conference also drew former presidential candidates Vivek Ramaswamy and Tulsi Gabbard, as well as RFK Jr., who will be back in attendance.

Green says the Bitcoin Conference is expected to mimic past conferences, despite moving from Miami to Nashville. “It was like a political rally gathering, you know, Burning Man, and it’s just a special feeling,” Green said. “We’re going to recapture that with this event.”

With so much at stake from a regulatory perspective in the U.S., the conference is likely to provide a unique symbiotic opportunity for both industry and politicians. The Washington Post reported that one of the conference’s founders promised Trump that his attendance could result in a $15 million fundraising opportunity.

The conference is scheduled to begin on July 25.