THE GOLDEN KINGDOM

Crypto's true believers gather and rejoice under Trump.

- KIERA BUTLER

I WAS TOLD there would be a diamond-encrusted steak.

One hot May morning in Las Vegas, I was wandering through an art gallery set up in the Venetian Resort hotel and casino's cavernous convention hall—where 35,000 cryptocurrency enthusiasts were gathered for the seventh annual bitcoin conference—in search of Rare.

Artist Maxfield Mellenbruch had supposedly transformed a hunk of meat into “an exquisite combination of platinum and 216 carats of diamonds and rubies,” according to the conference promoters. “Much like Bitcoin itself, Rare challenges conventional ideas of value, art, and asset.” The piece, appraised at $2.2 million and up for auction, was nowhere to be found among portraits of Pepe the Frog and bitcoin-themed Andy Warhol knockoffs.

Instead, the exhibit commanding the most attention was considerably less dazzling: a dingy gray sweatsuit, a plain white T-shirt neatly folded atop a mesh bag, and a pair of beat-up sneakers, each framed and mounted. I assumed it must be some high-concept installation, until I read the accompanying text identifying the laundry as Ross Ulbricht’s uniform while serving 11 years of a life sentence for creating Silk Road, a crypto-fueled internet market for illicit goods and services.