Las Vegas Bitcoin Conference Extends Invitation to Roswell, New Mexico Mayor and City Council
The Bitcoin Conference 2025 in Las Vegas, scheduled for the last week of May, includes several notable political figures slated as speakers, including returning guest and Bitcoin advocate Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-WY). Also appearing are Trump's so-called 'A.I. and Crypto Czar,' David Sacks, and Bo Hines, the 'Executive Director of the President's Council of Advisors for Digital Assets at the White House.'
This year, a less-expected and almost otherworldly contingent will possibly make an appearance as well — at least in the audience, if not beamed up and looking straight into the stage's spotlights. Like fire from the skies, an unexpected $3,000 bitcoin donation which nobody asked for crashlanded in Roswell, New Mexico, earlier this year, leaving city council members wrestling with whether to once again answer history's call, by establishing the United States' first strategic bitcoin reserve — at the city level or otherwise — before other U.S. states or even the U.S. Congress itself acts definitively (following President Donald Trump's executive order).
Roswell is home to a few things you might not expect — world-renowned dairy farming and one of the world's largest mozzarella cheese factories; aerospace and aviation industries with a famous 'aircraft graveyard' which once housed Elvis Presley's personal small plane, 'Hound Dog II,' for 35 years; a vibrant arts, museums and cultural scene — but also a thriving tourism industry, largely built around what Roswell is really known for: flying saucers.
But Roswell is really known worldwide for the 1947 'UFO incident.' In early July 1947, a presumably once-flying object of unknown origin crashed and was destroyed, landing roughly at nearby Corona, New Mexico, recovered later and brought to the now-defunct Roswell Army Air Field's 509th, a World War II-era military base, still housing the United States' only nuclear bombs at the time as well as the U.S.'s only pilots, mechanics, and officers equipped to touch them.
Speculation still rages as to whether the recovered craft and its alleged pilot and passengers — reports of oddly shaped bodies persist but are highly debated still — were from a supposed extraterrestrial location, or the result of a U.S. military experiment.
At the time, the local newspaper, the Roswell Daily Record, family-owned since 1891 and still in print today, reported the headline seen around the world:
RAAF Captures Flying Saucer on Ranch in Roswell Region
Readers now know that the Daily Record followed up with a retraction, restating the military's revised claim that the crashed vehicle was 'just' a high-altitude weather balloon. 21st-century examination of a zoomed-in photo from the 1947 'flying saucer' staged press photo reveals otherwise, according to Donald Burleson, cryptanalyst and former professor of mathematics at Eastern New Mexico University-Roswell. Burleson is also a published author and has written 'Looking Up,' one of the Daily Record's recurring columns on UFOs, for 25 years.
The city of Roswell hosts the International UFO Museum and Research Center, which opened in 1992 and draws over 220,000 visitors annually, Executive Director Karen Jaramillo told The Associated Press during a 2023 interview marking the museum's 5 millionth visitor. Roswell also hosts an annual UFO festival, which, according to the city's website in 2023 '… had a $510,205 direct economic impact for Roswell …' in a lockdowns-recovery rebuilding year for the event(s).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roswell,_New_Mexico#Local_industry
Stranger in a Strange Land
Roswell by and large and the newspaper alike is today home to many oddities, myself included. A Nashville transplant with an odd missionary calling, last year the Record took me in as their in-house evening copy editor — with a desk, landline, sick pay, and everything … it's kind of surreal. (I'm told the desks are from the WWII army air base. And the chairs? On day three, I brought in my own.)
Germaine to today, I also possess certifications in bitcoin and have been orange-pilling people for years. The newspaper eventually allowed me to fulfill that second calling of mine by contributing as a writer as well, via a Sunday column where I began writing about bitcoin, for the Record. I'm honored to have providentially been brought on board just in time to document the entire 'story arc' of President Trump's first-term anti-bitcoin hostility and his 2024 reversal in my October 2024 opinion column — as well as Trump's unexpectedly well-received 'Never sell your bitcoin!' exclamation, while campaigning at 2024's Nashville Bitcoin Conference. With 'World War Bitcoin,' I described for 'normie' newspaper readers the strategic race occurring among the multiple nations now competing to accumulate and mine 'all the remaining bitcoin.'
And through it all, I didn't even get fired. Yet. But being in the bitcoin news industry and seeing the trend, in January I proposed a strategic bitcoin reserve for Roswell, since the city received a $3,000 in bitcoin donation from an anonymous out-of-state reader of the newspaper column. To my mind, with or without government 'approval' or bitcoin media industry recognition, I have a confirmed blockchain transaction from January 3, 2025, that says the Roswell Strategic Bitcoin Reserve has been established. Period.
Who custodies and manages it is still up for grabs, but I ask others, 'Are we Bitcoiners or not?'
But OK, the idea is currently being mulled over by some city councilors who've given me the time of day, as I want to give the donation to the city as our start, and look for personal and corporate sponsorships from there (so as not to create any new expenses or taxes for the city). We're struggling, being honest.
While the city council can of course be a tough nut, and bitcoin is new and bewildering to many still, Roswell City Attorney Hess Yntema kindly replied to me recently via email, 'As for accepting a gift of Bitcoin, in New Mexico, municipalities are empowered to acquire real and personal property. NMSA 1978, §3-18-1(C). … Personal property is broad and includes tangible and intangible assets; this would include Bitcoin. The City is always grateful when a donation is made to further the public good.'
To help with the decision-making process perhaps, I'm grateful to report that Bitcoin Magazine has extended an invitation to all 10 members of the Roswell City Council plus Mayor Timothy Jennings to attend the event whether the council approves the custody and management of a city-held bitcoin reserve or not. Mayor Jennings' office replied graciously that he would be unable to attend on those dates, while at press time at least one other city councilor, Cristina Arnold, has committed to be 'thinking about it.' City Councilor Ed Heldenbrand and City Attorney Hess Yntema are, with Arnold, excited to be ushering in Roswell's next step, for posterity's sake if not their generation: '… a great step for the future,' Heldenbrand said in a text message.
The Roswell City Council next meets on Thursday, May 8, at 6:00 p.m. Mountain time, with meetings livestreamed over YouTube, where whether the topic of the proposed donation will be discussed remains unknown at press time. Prior to this meeting however, two Roswell city councilors, one from the city's finance committee, have scheduled a meeting with myself and Hess this week to discuss 'the procedure for accepting the Bitcoin,' according to a group text message from my ward's councilor organizing the meetup.
'…Trying to front-run the market to ensure New Mexico remains a rich state,' State Sen. Anthony Thornton (R-NM, Dist. 19) presented a strategic reserve bill, S.B. 275, during the recent legislative session. The bill was 'narrowly tabled' 5-4, Thornton later stated.
Asked for additional comment this week about 'why' a bitcoin reserve, Thornton responded to me in written detail: 'I do believe that as our debt based fiat currency (i.e., the U.S. dollar) continues to be debased by the Fed central bankers, more people, more corporations, more municipalities, more sovereign governments will decide to store their wealth in assets that cannot be produced by a printing press… hence commodities such as gold and silver will continue to rise in value.
'However, the scarcity of Bitcoin and its digital mobility will likely make it the one asset utilized by the entire world as the best place to store one's long-term capital.'
It's not at all surprising that denizens of Roswell might still be among the first in the nation to respond to bitcoin's siren song, calling out around the world to Earth's more intelligent life forms for 16 years now.
Roswellians — accustomed as they now are to random new technologies of mysterious origin appearing from the sky and disrupting all social order, industry and established financial infrastructures — might just have an unfair advantage over others in 'grokking' bitcoin because of such an 'incident' already being a part of their collective psyche.
Readers interested in learning more about bitcoin firsthand may eerily find themselves being drawn to Las Vegas this May to attend the Las Vegas Bitcoin Conference 2025's two-day conference lineup, plus additional events throughout the week.
Disclosure: The author both holds bitcoin as a savings asset, does not believe in aliens and has unsuccessfully run for public office in Roswell three times: This content could therefore contain unintended financial and/or political biases relating to the subject matter, and is the opinion of the author.
This is a guest post by Guy Malone. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.
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