Pacchia was once Fidelity’s first external employee with expertise in Bitcoin, and now his focus is on a Bitcoin-themed bar.
By Leo Schwartz, Fortune Magazine
Compiled by Luffy, Foresight News
When Thomas Pacchia first proposed the Bitcoin-themed bar PubKey to Donald Trump’s campaign as a campaign stop, their reaction was what Pacchia expected: “What’s a Bitcoin bar?” Last Wednesday, Trump stopped by PubKey on his way to a rally on Long Island and bought a burger with Bitcoin, the first transaction ever completed by a (former) U.S. president using Bitcoin.
Thomas Pacchia, owner of PubKey
Pacchia founded PubKey two years ago, envisioning the West Village bar, a few blocks from Washington Square Park, as a civic watering hole. He wanted his place to be a place where people could discuss monetary policy and politics over a beer, just as the founding fathers did 250 years ago.
So it didn’t surprise him to have a future president drop by unexpectedly. PubKey has hosted politicians like Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand in the past, and Pacchia has invited other presidential candidates, including Kamala Harris.
The details of Trump’s visit, however, were even more shocking. Pacchia, who learned about the visit only a week before it happened, worked with the Secret Service for four hours a day to come up with a plan for the reception, including covering the skylights and positioning snipers nearby. “It was crazy,” Pacchia told Fortune a day after Trump’s visit, as bar staff worked to get back to business as usual.
From the Fidelity Mafia to the Bitcoin Burger
Pacchia isn’t your typical Manhattan bar owner. A former lawyer, he became the first outside hire with Bitcoin expertise at financial services giant Fidelity in 2015. Under CEO Abigail Johnson, Fidelity made deep inroads into cryptocurrencies, and Pacchia helped build the architecture of Fidelity’s digital asset business, including custody and trading platforms and early iterations of its mining operations.
While Pacchia’s current focus is on PubKey, which is about to open a new location in Washington, D.C., and expand to other cities with financial support from the Winklevoss brothers, he remains active in the cryptocurrency industry. Pacchia is serving on the board of Stronghold Digital Mining and consulting for Luxor, another bitcoin mining company.
Pacchia used to live a few blocks from PubKey, where a bar called Formerly Crow's was then located: "An epic, quintessential New York speakeasy," he said. He and his friends would host parties to talk about Bitcoin, which he called Crypto at the Crow. When Formerly Crow's closed during the pandemic, Pacchia decided to start PubKey.
“Bitcoin needs its bars and its meeting rooms to foster some of the revolutionary, cultural, economic, and technological changes that it’s driving,” Pacchia told Fortune.
He teamed up with two experienced restaurateurs and a former Eleven Madison Park chef to design a menu of burgers, hot dogs and cocktails to appeal to neighborhood residents and cryptocurrency enthusiasts.
Despite its Bitcoin-themed decor, PubKey still attracts a diverse clientele. Last November, Pacchia noticed a couple at the end of the bar who looked like they had just finished a long day at work. He quietly walked over to chat with them, and they asked about this strange subject (Bitcoin). When he told them about PubKey's Bitcoin spirit, they looked shocked, "Are you kidding us?". It turned out that they were photographers for the New York Post who had photographed former FTX executive Caroline Ellison, who happened to live nearby and had testified in the trial of Sam Bankman-Fried. The couple came to PubKey by chance.
Trump's visit
Trump's first foray into cryptocurrency was in 2022, when the former president launched his NFT collection. However, his overall attitude toward cryptocurrency remained hesitant, but his attitude changed as the crypto industry became one of the largest funders in the 2024 election cycle. Today, Trump has enthusiastically embraced blockchain, adopting some of the industry's suggestions, including releasing Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht and firing SEC Chairman Gary Gensler.
Trump hasn’t won over everyone, as some are still skeptical of his calling Bitcoin a “scam” a few years ago. Meanwhile, his recent announcement of World Liberty Financial, a so-called DeFi protocol run by the Trump family, has been slammed by critics as an effort to make money rather than actually working on building a decentralized product.
During Trump’s visit to PubKey, he still hasn’t grasped some of the esoteric jargon within the industry, referring to the food he was selling as “crypto burgers” rather than “bitcoin burgers.” This is important to Bitcoin loyalists who view other tokens as “shit coin.” Meanwhile, a video of the historic burger transaction initially showed the transaction failed, which Pacchia attributed to the camera flash making it difficult to scan the QR code. He added that about 5% of PubKey’s sales come from Bitcoin.
Pacchia was quick to express his understanding of Trump’s behavior. “It takes a long learning process to understand the difference between Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. It’s unrealistic to expect these politicians to become Bitcoin experts,” Pacchia told Fortune.
Trump’s visit confirmed Pacchia’s decision to start PubKey. He gave the former president two gifts. The first was a replica of the famous “Buy Bitcoin” sign that one of PubKey’s founding partners held behind then-Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen during a 2017 congressional hearing. The second was an American flag that another PubKey patron commissioned as a prank by Sen. Elizabeth Warren to hang over the U.S. Capitol in honor of Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of Bitcoin.
Still, Pacchia insisted that PubKey would not endorse a particular presidential candidate. He hopes Harris will come, too. “Bitcoin shouldn’t be a partisan issue,” he said. “It belongs to everyone.”
