Login | December 23, 2024
About that strange Black Keys crypto show at the Civic
RICHARD WEINER
Technology for Lawyers
Published: December 6, 2024
It’s pretty interesting to be at the collision point of several worlds, especially these days.
This particular recent collision had the world of cryptocurrencies and the blockchain, the world of rock’n’roll, and the political world crash landing together at the Akron Civic Theatre in the form of a small show featuring one of the biggest rock bands in the world.
The band was local kids The Black Keys, who showed up back in their hometown to do a show for about 500 people a few weeks ago.
Because I’m a part of all these above-referenced worlds, I got to see the show.
The free show was put on by a group called “Stand With Crypto. (https://www.standwithcrypto.org).” They have a web page where they list their versions of the pro- or anti-cryptocurrency positions of various politicians. But no press contact info.
Whoever they are, they have/had a ton of money, because the Keys get a ton of money to play a set.
In order to attend the show, you had to accept an invitation that was floating around online that would connect you to a link that would produce a ticket in the form of an NFT that would be airdropped into your Coinbase digital wallet. This caused a lot of confusion and limited attendance considerably, as it turned out, but I already had that wallet and I’ve bought and sold NFTs so I was cool with the process I went through the steps and had the NFT in my wallet a day or so before the show.
Only about 200 or so of us actually wound up with a ticket. About 300-ish people decided to stand in line even without one. There were separate lines.
Then right before the show was supposed to start, one guy walked through our invitation line hand-delivering our airdropped tickets through a QR code that we scanned into our phone. When the NFT ticket popped up, we were let loose into the hall.
Once we got into the Civic, what they had for us was something. The rock and roll and local press couldn’t understand the setup , but it was pretty cool with us. If you were one of the in-group, you were on the stage with about 200-250 compatriots. The performance area for the Keys was a small setup, but it was definitely their equipment. I stood directly in front of Dan’s mic stand and watched the show from there (see photo).
The people who did not get their airdropped tickets into their Coinbase wallets but yet stood in line for the show sat up in the general seating, and, as reported, the Keys played with their backs to the general audience and their fronts to the Coinbase crowd. This fact had the rock’n’roll press completely baffled. But to us it was just like seeing them back in the Lime Spider days.
Before the band started, crypto people spoke and then some kind of brief panel discussion on the topic of the inevitable takeover of the world by the blockchain and how cool that would be and how much money everyone could make, etc. and no one was interested or listened to them.
The one interesting person (to me) who talked was Akron native Paul Grewel, who is Chief Legal Officer for Coinbase. He seemed embarrassed to be there and talked for less than a minute.
The rest of the people talked about the importance of voting, but did not, contrary to various stories, did not recommend any particular person to vote for. It was also not a “fundraiser” for any individual political candidate, contrary to several local opinion posts. But it was as weird and uncomfortable as anyone who knows any of these people would think. Social comfort is not a thing among the crypto crowd.
Then the Keys came on and played a 45-minute Greatest Hits set, which had the crowd singing along through the whole thing. I play some of their songs, so now I know how Dan plays Little Black Submarines.
It was cool. It was only weird to people who aren’t a part of the crypto crowd plus the rock’n’roll crowd plus the political crowd altogether.
No mysteries.