BUY BITCOIN

On July 12, 2017, Room 2128 of the Rayburn House Office Building was the stage for a routine fixture of American economic governance. The House Financial Services Committee was convened to hear the semiannual Monetary Policy Report from Janet Yellen, Chair of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. The stuffy atmosphere was characteristic of high finance, the air thick with the language of interest rates, balance sheets, and regulatory oversight. As Chair Yellen delivered her testimony, fielding questions from representatives on the state of the world's largest economy, the network television cameras broadcast proceedings.

This was important economic business, but it was hardly the stuff that TV drama is made of. Sure, millions of the American public would catch a few soundbites on the evening news, but they wouldn’t be munching popcorn. It simply wasn’t that engrossing. But no one told that to the young man seated a few rows back from Janet Yellen as she addressed the assembled financiers and mainstream media.

As the Fed chair delivered her remarks, attention suddenly shifted to the stranger in the background who had raised a yellow legal pad for the cameras to see. Scrawled on it in black ink were two words: “Buy Bitcoin.” For a few moments, the sign hung in the air, perfectly positioned in frame as a silent yet subversive message broadcast live from the inner sanctum of global monetary power. Then, “Bitcoin Sign Guy” was escorted from the room for violating committee rules. He appeared unconcerned; he had already won, and as the door slammed behind him, his legend was already being inscribed across the internet.

Sign of the Times

While the Bitcoin community had produced its share of viral stunts, including holding up signs in public places, this was the deepest it had ever permeated the corridors of power. It was a defiant act delivered in just two words but wrapped in layers of symbolism. The dominant discourse within Room 2128 that day concerned a system grappling with the long shadow of the 2008 financial crisis.

Policymakers in attendance expressed alarm at the sheer size of the Fed's balance sheet, which had swelled due to quantitative easing – the very process that had prompted Satoshi to encode The Times headline of January 3, 2009 in the genesis block: “Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks.”

It was also significant that the speaker at the time of the incident was Janet Yellen. As the world's most powerful central banker, she was the embodiment of this system of discretionary monetary policy. Her public statements on the burgeoning world of digital currency reflected the cautious and skeptical view of the establishment, later characterising Bitcoin as a “highly speculative asset” and “not a stable source of store of value.” In 2021, she noted its use “mainly for illicit financing.”

And yet, as the financial policy wonks in the room debated the levers available to adjust monetary policy, the greatest irony is that the two words of advice the gentleman sat at the back of the room delivered were more powerful than anything the U.S. economy’s brightest minds could dispense: Buy Bitcoin.

The photobomber was revealed to be 22-year-old intern Christian Langalis, whose advocacy for Bitcoin was dismissed during his previous stint at a Wall Street macro fund. But his revenge was sweet and his legend has lived long, even if he is best known to this day by the moniker he was assigned within minutes of pulling the stunt – Bitcoin Sign Guy.