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The Bitcoin Conference 2025 in Las Vegas, projected for the final week of May, features various prominent political figures set to speak, including returning participant and Bitcoin supporter Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-WY). Also on the roster is 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-anticipated and somewhat otherworldly delegation may also be present — at least within the audience, if not digitally transmitted and gazing directly into the stage’s illumination. Like fire descending from the heavens, an unpredicted $3,000 bitcoin contribution that nobody requested crash-landed in Roswell, New Mexico, earlier this year, leaving city council members grappling with whether to once again heed history’s beckon by creating the United States’ inaugural strategic bitcoin reserve — at the municipal 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 the site of a few unexpected treasures — internationally-acclaimed dairy agriculture and one of the largest mozzarella cheese manufacturing facilities globally; aerospace and aviation sectors featuring a notorious “aircraft graveyard” that once housed Elvis Presley’s personal small plane, “Hound Dog II,” for 35 years; a lively artistic, museum, and cultural landscape — but additionally a bustling tourism sector, principally centered around what Roswell is truly famed for: flying saucers.
However, Roswell is indeed recognized globally for the 1947 “UFO incident.” In early July 1947, a presumably once-ascending object of unknown origin crashed and was obliterated, landing nearby at Corona, New Mexico, later retrieved and brought to the now-defunct Roswell Army Air Field’s 509th, a World War II-era military base, still storing the United States’ only nuclear weapons at the time along with the U.S.’s sole pilots, mechanics, and officers trained to handle them.
The conjecture continues regarding whether the recovered vessel and its supposed pilot and passengers — accounts of oddly shaped bodies persist but remain highly contested — hailed from a purported extraterrestrial source or were the consequence of a U.S. military undertaking.
At that time, the local newspaper, the Roswell Daily Record, a family-owned entity since 1891 and still in circulation today, reported the headline that resonated globally:
RAAF Captures Flying Saucer on Ranch in Roswell Vicinity
Readers now realize that the Daily Record issued a follow-up retraction, restating the military’s adjusted assertion that the downed object was “merely” a high-altitude weather balloon. Twenty-first-century analysis of a zoomed-in image from the 1947 “flying saucer” staged press photograph indicates otherwise, according to Donald Burleson, cryptanalyst and former professor of mathematics at Eastern New Mexico University-Roswell. Burleson is also a published author who has penned “Looking Up,” one of the Daily Record’s enduring columns on UFOs, for 25 years.
The city of Roswell hosts the International UFO Museum and Research Center, which opened in 1992 and attracts over 220,000 visitors each year, as Executive Director Karen Jaramillo informed The Associated Press during a 2023 interview commemorating the museum’s 5 millionth visitor. Additionally, Roswell holds an annual UFO festival, which, according to the city’s website in 2023 “… had a $510,205 direct economic impact for Roswell …” during a year of recovery from lockdowns.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roswell,_New_Mexico#Local_industry
Stranger in a Strange Land
Roswell broadly and the newspaper alike is today a haven for various peculiarities, myself included. A Nashville transplant with a unique missionary calling, last year the Record welcomed me as their in-house evening copy editor — complete with a desk, landline, sick leave, and all … it feels somewhat surreal. (I’ve been informed the desks originate from the WWII army air base. And the chairs? I brought my own on day three.)
Relevant to current affairs, I also hold certifications in bitcoin and have been enlightening individuals about it for years. The newspaper eventually permitted me to pursue that second ambition by contributing as a writer as well, through a Sunday column where I began discussing bitcoin, for the Record. I’m privileged to have serendipitously joined just in time to chronicle the entire “narrative arc” of President Trump’s initial anti-bitcoin stance and his 2024 turnaround in my October 2024 opinion column — as well as Trump’s unexpectedly well-received “Never sell your bitcoin!” remark, while campaigning at the 2024 Nashville Bitcoin Conference. Through “World War Bitcoin,” I communicated to “normie” newspaper readers the strategic race occurring among multiple nations now striving to amass and mine “all the remaining bitcoin.”
And through it all, I haven’t even been terminated. Yet. But being involved in the bitcoin news domain and observing the trend, in January I proposed a strategic bitcoin reserve for Roswell, given that the city received a $3,000 bitcoin contribution from an anonymous out-of-state reader of the newspaper column. To my perspective, with or without governmental “approval” or bitcoin media industry acknowledgment, I have a verified blockchain transaction dated January 3, 2025, confirming that the Roswell Strategic Bitcoin Reserve has been established. Period.
Who safeguards and administers it remains uncertain, but I pose the question to others, “Are we Bitcoiners or not?”
But fine, the concept is currently being contemplated by some city
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Council members who’ve taken a moment for me, as I aim to contribute the donation to the city as our starting point, and subsequently pursue individual and corporate sponsorships from there (to avoid imposing any new expenses or taxes on the city). We’re facing challenges, to be candid.
While the city council can undoubtedly be a hard nut to crack, and bitcoin remains unfamiliar and perplexing to many, Roswell City Attorney Hess Yntema graciously communicated with me via email recently: “Regarding the acceptance of a Bitcoin gift, in New Mexico, municipalities have the authority to acquire real and personal property. NMSA 1978, §3-18-1(C). … Personal property is extensive and encompasses both tangible and intangible assets; this includes Bitcoin. The City is always appreciative of donations made to enhance the public good.”
To assist with the decision-making process perhaps, I’m pleased to share that Bitcoin Magazine has invited all 10 members of the Roswell City Council along with Mayor Timothy Jennings to participate in the event, regardless of whether the council endorses the custody and management of a city-held bitcoin reserve. Mayor Jennings’ office kindly informed us that he would be unable to attend on those occasions, while as of this writing at least one other council member, Cristina Arnold, has expressed she is “considering it.” City Councilor Ed Heldenbrand and City Attorney Hess Yntema are, alongside Arnold, eager to guide Roswell’s next phase, for the benefit of future generations: “… a significant step for what lies ahead,” said Heldenbrand in a text message.
The Roswell City Council is set to convene next on Thursday, May 8, at 6:00 p.m. Mountain time, with meetings livestreamed via YouTube, where it remains uncertain whether the proposed donation will be a topic of discussion. Prior to this meeting, however, two Roswell city councilors, one from the city’s finance committee, have arranged a meeting with myself and Hess this week to discuss “the process for accepting the Bitcoin,” according to a group text message from my ward’s councilor coordinating the meetup.
“…Attempting to stay ahead of the market to ensure New Mexico remains an affluent state,” State Sen. Anthony Thornton (R-NM, Dist. 19) introduced a strategic reserve bill, S.B. 275, during the recent legislative session. The bill was “narrowly tabled” 5-4, Thornton later indicated.
When asked for further insights this week about “why” a bitcoin reserve, Thornton replied to me in detail: “I genuinely believe that as our debt-based fiat currency (i.e., the U.S. dollar) continues to be devalued by the Federal Reserve central bankers, an increasing number of individuals, corporations, municipalities, and sovereign governments will opt to secure their wealth in assets that cannot be generated by a printing press… thus commodities such as gold and silver will keep rising in value.
“Nonetheless, the scarcity of Bitcoin and its digital mobility will likely position it as the premier asset utilized worldwide as the optimal space for storing one’s long-term capital.”
It’s hardly astonishing that residents of Roswell might still be among the pioneers in the nation to heed bitcoin’s alluring call, echoing around the globe to Earth’s more enlightened beings for 16 years now.
Roswellians — now familiar with various novel technologies of enigmatic origins descending from the sky, disrupting all societal structures, industries, and existing financial frameworks — may possess an unmerited advantage over others in grasping bitcoin due to such an “incident” already part of their shared consciousness.
Readers keen on experiencing bitcoin firsthand may peculiarly find themselves drawn to Las Vegas this May to participate in the Las Vegas Bitcoin Conference 2025’s two-day conference schedule, along with additional activities throughout the week.
Disclosure: The author both possesses bitcoin as a savings asset, does not endorse the existence of extraterrestrials, and has unsuccessfully campaigned for public office in Roswell three times: This content may therefore include unintended financial and/or political biases related to the subject matter, and represents the author’s views.
This is a guest article by Guy Malone. The viewpoints expressed are solely his own and do not necessarily mirror those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.
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