Fortune: Who sold the "Bitcoin burger" to Trump?
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Fortune: Who sold the "Bitcoin burger" to Trump?
Pacchia was once Fidelity's first external employee with Bitcoin expertise, and now his focus has shifted to a Bitcoin-themed bar.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsBy Leo Schwartz, Fortune Magazine
Translated by Luffy, Foresight News
When Thomas Pacchia first proposed to Donald Trump’s campaign team the idea of using PubKey, a bitcoin-themed bar, as a campaign stop, their reaction was exactly what he expected: "What's a Bitcoin bar?" On Wednesday last week, Trump made a detour to PubKey while en route to a rally on Long Island. At the bar, he purchased a burger with bitcoin—an unprecedented transaction marking the first time a former U.S. president has used bitcoin in history.
Thomas Pacchia, owner of PubKey bar
Pacchia founded PubKey two years ago, envisioning the West Village bar—located just a few blocks from Washington Square Park—as a civic pub. He wanted his bar to become a place where people could drink beer and discuss monetary policy and politics, much like the Founding Fathers did 250 years ago.
So a surprise visit from a potential future president didn’t shock him. PubKey has previously hosted politicians such as Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, and Pacchia has invited other presidential candidates, including Kamala Harris.
But the details surrounding Trump’s visit were more dramatic. Pacchia only learned about it one week in advance. He spent four hours daily working with the Secret Service to prepare—covering skylights and positioning snipers nearby. “It was insane,” Pacchia told Fortune the day after Trump’s visit, as staff scrambled to resume normal operations.
From Fidelity Mafia to Bitcoin Burgers
Pacchia is not your typical Manhattan bar owner. A former lawyer, in 2015 he became the first outside hire at financial services giant Fidelity with expertise in bitcoin. Under CEO Abigail Johnson, Fidelity aggressively expanded into cryptocurrency, and Pacchia helped build the architecture for Fidelity Digital Assets—including early versions of custody and trading platforms, as well as mining operations.
Although Pacchia now focuses primarily on PubKey—with plans to open a new location in Washington, D.C., and expand to other cities backed by funding from the Winklevoss brothers—he remains active in the crypto industry. He serves on the board of Stronghold Digital Mining and consults for another bitcoin mining company, Luxor.
Pacchia used to live a few blocks from PubKey, where a bar called Formerly Crow’s once stood—“an epic, quintessential New York underground dive bar,” he described. He would host gatherings there with friends, talking about bitcoin, which he dubbed “Crypto at the Crow.” When Formerly Crow’s closed during the pandemic, Pacchia decided to launch PubKey.
“Bitcoin needs its pubs and meeting rooms to nurture the revolutionary cultural, economic, and technological changes it enables,” Pacchia told Fortune.
He teamed up with two experienced restaurateurs and a former Eleven Madison Park chef to create a menu featuring burgers, hot dogs, and cocktails designed to appeal to locals and crypto enthusiasts alike.
Despite its bitcoin-centric theme, PubKey attracts a diverse crowd. Last November, Pacchia noticed a couple sitting at the end of the bar who looked like they’d just finished a long workday. He quietly approached them, and they asked about the unusual theme (bitcoin). When he explained PubKey’s bitcoin ethos, they looked stunned: “Are you messing with us?” It turned out they were photographers from the New York Post who had covered former FTX executive Caroline Ellison, who happened to live nearby and had testified during Sam Bankman-Fried’s trial. The couple had stumbled into PubKey by chance.
Trump’s Visit
Trump first entered the crypto space in 2022 when the former president launched an NFT collection. While his overall stance on cryptocurrency remained ambivalent, that began to shift as the crypto industry emerged as one of the largest financiers of the 2024 election cycle. Today, Trump enthusiastically embraces blockchain and has adopted several industry proposals, including freeing Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht and firing SEC Chair Gary Gensler.
Yet Trump hasn’t won over everyone. Some remain skeptical due to his past dismissal of bitcoin as a “scam” years ago. Meanwhile, his recent announcement of World Liberty Financial—a so-called DeFi protocol operated by the Trump family—has drawn criticism, with skeptics accusing it of being a cash grab rather than a genuine effort to build a decentralized product.
During his visit to PubKey, Trump still struggled with some of the industry’s niche terminology, referring to the food sold as “crypto burgers” instead of “bitcoin burgers”—a distinction important to hardcore bitcoin supporters, who view other tokens as “shitcoins.” Meanwhile, the video of the historic burger transaction initially appeared to fail; Pacchia attributed this to camera flash interfering with QR code scanning. He added that about 5% of PubKey’s sales come from bitcoin.
Pacchia quickly cut Trump some slack. “Understanding the difference between bitcoin and crypto requires a long learning curve,” Pacchia told Fortune. “It’s unrealistic to expect politicians to become bitcoin experts.”
Trump’s visit 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 held behind then-Fed Chair Janet Yellen during a 2017 congressional hearing by one of PubKey’s founding partners. The second was an American flag, commissioned by another PubKey patron as a prank from Senator Elizabeth Warren, flown above the U.S. Capitol to honor Satoshi Nakamoto, bitcoin’s creator.
Still, Pacchia insists PubKey will not endorse any presidential candidate. He hopes Harris will visit too. “Bitcoin shouldn’t be a partisan issue,” he said. “It belongs to everyone.”
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