Bitcoin Burgers and Secret Service Snipers: Inside Donald Trump's Visit to Crypto Tavern PubKey

Former lawyer Thomas Pacchia opened PubKey two years ago, envisioning the West Village dive located just a few blocks from Washington Square Park as a civic tavern of sorts.

Former president Donald Trump visited bitcoin bar PubKey in New York City on Thursday, making a historic purchase with the cryptocurrency: eight burgers for Secret Service agents.

The bar’s owner, Tony Pacchia, a former Fidelity lawyer with deep ties in the crypto industry, told Fortune that Trump’s visit was kept a secret until a week prior. Pacchia worked closely with the Secret Service to prepare for the visit, which included blacking out the bar’s skylights and having snipers positioned nearby.

“It was insane,” Pacchia said. “It was a whirlwind.”

The presidential visit culminated in one of the most high-profile bitcoin transactions to date, with Trump’s purchase being quickly shared on social media and generating excitement within the crypto community.

Pacchia, who used to host happy hours at the former bar to discuss bitcoin, named the gathering "Crypto at the Crow." When Formery Crow's shut down during the pandemic, Pacchia decided to open PubKey, inspired by visions of Paul Revere and Thomas Paine.

“Bitcoin needs its tavern and meeting house to cultivate some of these revolutionary, cultural, economic, and technical changes that it’s been the catalyst for,” Pacchia told Fortune.

He teamed up with two experienced restauranteers, as well as the former Eleven Madison Park chef, to design an eclectic menu of gourmet burgers, hot dogs, and cocktails that could appeal to both Village denizens and crypto acolytes.

Despite its Bitcoin-themed decor, PubKey still attracts a diverse clientele. Last November, Pacchia noticed a couple at the very end of the bar who seemed like they had just finished a long shift of work. He sidled over to chat them up, and they asked about the strange theme. When he told them about PubKey’s Bitcoin ethos, they looked shocked. “Are you messing with us?” they asked. As it turned out, they were photographers for the New York Post, tasked with photographing Caroline Ellison, who just happened to be staying nearby to testify at Sam Bankman-Fried’s trial. The couple had stumbled in by accident.

Trump’s first foray into crypto was in 2022, when he launched an NFT collection and earned a modest return. His overall attitude towards crypto remained lukewarm, but that changed as the industry emerged as one of the biggest campaign spenders of the 2024 electoral cycle. Today, Trump embraces blockchain with zeal, adopting some of the sector’s top priorities, which include freeing Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht and firing Securities and Exchange Commissioner Gary Gensler.

Despite Trump’s parroting of party lines, he hasn’t won over everyone, as some remain suspicious over his labeling of Bitcoin as a “scam” just a few years ago. Meanwhile, his recent announcement of a so-called DeFi protocol, World Liberty Financial, run by the Trump family has been slammed by critics as a cash grab rather than a genuine effort to create a decentralized product.

During Trump’s visit to PubKey, he still hadn’t mastered the often esoteric lingo, referring to the food he slung out as “crypto burgers” even as one patron tried to correct him to Bitcoin—a distinction that matters to Bitcoin loyalists who view other tokens, in crypto lingo, as “shit coins.”

Meanwhile, videos of the historic burger transaction initially suggested it had failed, which Pacchia attributed to QR scanning difficulty due to camera flashes. (He added that that about 5% of sales at PubKey are with Bitcoin.)

Pacchia was quick to give Trump the benefit of the doubt. “It’s a long-duration learning curve to get the point where you understand the differences between [Bitcoin and crypto],” Pacchia told Fortune. “It’s unrealistic to expect any one of these politicians to become Bitcoin experts—it’s about who they’re listening to.”

Trump’s appearance validated Pacchia’s decision to start PubKey. He gave the former president two gifts. The first was a replica of the famous “Buy Bitcoin” sign, which a PubKey founding partner held up behind then-Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen during a congressional hearing in 2017. The second was the American flag that another PubKey patron had commissioned to fly above the U.S. Capitol by Senator Elizabeth Warren as a prank, in honor of Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto.

Despite the fanfare, Pacchia insists that PubKey will not endorse a presidential candidate. He’s holding out hope that Harris will stop by. “Bitcoin should not be a partisan issue,” he said. “It’s for everyone.”