# Imagine IF 2026

Source: https://www.dandenney.com/posts/conferences/imagine-if-2026
Date: 2026-10-07
Tags: conferences
Summary: Two days of Imagine IF 2026 in Nashville, where AI, energy, and Bitcoin converged on freedom tech and a capabilities race.

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I spent Monday and Tuesday at [Imagine IF](https://www.imagineifnashville.com), put on by Bitcoin Park here in Nashville. The theme was AI, Energy, and Bitcoin, all pointed at freedom tech. That's a different crowd than my usual front-end and data conferences, and I was curious how those three would actually fit together.

Rod Roudi kicked things off by saying his goal was for us to be entertained, inspired, and informed. It delivered on all three. The format helped a lot: mostly 10 minute talks with some longer panels, all in the theater at the Fisher Center. It's a beautiful venue, and lunch was excellent with no lines and a great day for eating outside.

If I had to boil the two days down to one idea, it's this: we aren't in an arms race, we're in a capabilities race. Energy is an enabler for people, and it's what nations are truly fighting for right now. The future will belong to the people who deliver it, shared with the people who provide the compute.

The topics didn't line up much with my day-to-day, but they gave me a lot to think about as we keep teaching AI and machine learning at DataCamp.

## Day One

<article>
  <h3>Imagine IF Stories Moved Money</h3>
  <p class="speaker">Scott Harrison, charity: water</p>

I've seen charity: water presentations before, but it was awesome to hear it from the founder. People don't trust foundations, they found a great way to solve that, and then they improved on it by adding Bitcoin as a payment option.
</article>

<article>
  <h3>Imagine IF Bitcoin and Energy Went Supernova</h3>
  <p class="speaker">Rapha Zagury, Twenty One Capital</p>

> Money is a memory of work

Energy gives people choices.
</article>

<article>
  <h3>Imagine IF AI Worked for Freedom</h3>
  <p class="speaker">Rene Angel, The Reynolds Foundation</p>

74% of observed countries have some form of autocracy. The call to action was to own your knowledge and workflows, and to build for freedom fighters.
</article>

<article>
  <h3>Imagine IF You Held the Keys to Everything</h3>
  <p class="speaker">Jesse Posner, Vora</p>

> AI is the most intimate technology ever created

Modern, connected people have a fragmented digital self that's owned by the social media companies. His argument is that AI should be built more like Bitcoin.
</article>

<article>
  <h3>Imagine IF History Could Live Forever</h3>
  <p class="speaker">Michael Goldstein, Satoshi Nakamoto Institute</p>

Preserve money, time, and scale. Advance the canon. What we preserve today, people will advance tomorrow.
</article>

<article>
  <h3>Imagine IF America Defended Forward</h3>
  <p class="speaker">Cathie Wood, ARK Invest</p>
  <p class="speaker">Gen. Paul M. Nakasone (USA Ret.), Vanderbilt University Institute of National Security</p>

The median age of an NSS worker is 47. My favorite question for anyone deploying AI systems: "On your worst day, what will you do?"
</article>

<article>
  <h3>Imagine IF Every Home Ran a Data Center</h3>
  <p class="speaker">Jonathan Kirkwood, Ten31</p>

He talked about how hard it is to prepare an AI talk right now, so he had to plan for "what will still matter in 72 hours." The thing that stuck with me: we are all filled with tacit knowledge that we never write down.
</article>

<article>
  <h3>Imagine IF It Already Happened</h3>
  <p class="speaker">Jeff Booth, Ego Death Capital</p>

Everything you measure, you measure with money that changes. And money is lent into existence.
</article>

<article>
  <h3>Imagine IF Every Citizen Believed They Could Change Their Country</h3>
  <p class="speaker">Evan Mawarire, #ThisFlag</p>

Inflation hit Zimbabwe so hard that there was a one hundred trillion dollar bank note, and it would buy about half a loaf of bread. Courage is necessary for change.
</article>

<article>
  <h3>Imagine IF the Federal Government Set a New Standard</h3>
  <p class="speaker">Dr. Art Laffer and Brian Domitrovic, The Laffer Center</p>
  <p class="speaker">Luke Pettit, Former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury</p>

Dr. Art Laffer is wonderful. He favors Bitcoin as a store of value and Tether as a unit of exchange for digital currencies. The big idea is that we need two different units of money: one to store value and one to exchange it.
</article>

<article>
  <h3>Imagine IF Tyranny Had Nowhere to Hide</h3>
  <p class="speaker">Javier El-Hage, HRF</p>
  <p class="speaker">Felix Maradiaga, World Liberty Congress</p>
  <p class="speaker">Farida Nabourema, Katutu Civil Rights Center</p>

Money is a lifeline, and Bitcoin can't easily be taken.
</article>

<article>
  <h3>Imagine IF Open Systems Stayed Open</h3>
  <p class="speaker">Parker Lewis, Zaprite</p>
  <p class="speaker">Econoalchemist, 256 Foundation</p>

Another trio: mining, nodes, and applications. Mining uses energy to prove work was done. The surprising stat was that 90% of the hardware for Bitcoin comes from one company, and most of the other 10% comes from another.
</article>

<article>
  <h3>Imagine IF the U.S. Led the Convergence Decade</h3>
  <p class="speaker">Bill Hagerty, U.S. Senate</p>
  <p class="speaker">Brandon Williams, U.S. Department of Energy</p>
  <p class="speaker">Hash Hashemian, AMS Corporation</p>

Data centers have two problems: energy and public relations. Permitting is an inhibitor. This is where the line that framed the whole event for me came from: we aren't in an arms race, we're in a capabilities race.
</article>

## Day Two

<article>
  <h3>Imagine IF They Were Right: Cathie & Laffer, Part 2</h3>
  <p class="speaker">Cathie Wood, ARK Invest</p>
  <p class="speaker">Dr. Art Laffer, The Laffer Center</p>

Autonomous taxis are the result of S curves from robotics, AI, and electronics all landing together. They see huge gains in autonomous transportation as it moves onto the grid. Also a good reminder of the difference between risk and uncertainty.
</article>

<article>
  <h3>Imagine IF the Model Refused the Mission</h3>
  <p class="speaker">Rob Hamilton, AnchorWatch</p>

An excellent example of open models solving a vulnerability while a frontier model refused to. Entropy is the core of cryptography.
</article>

<article>
  <h3>Imagine IF Bitcoin Is What Aligns AI</h3>
  <p class="speaker">Dhruv Bansal, Unchained</p>

> I fear not AI, I fear humans with AI

The Lightning Network has overtaken Tor. Use money and markets to align incentives, and think of a network fungus, not Skynet. My favorite line of the two days: Bitcoin is alive, not intelligent. AI is intelligent, not alive. They need each other.
</article>

<article>
  <h3>Imagine IF We Think Small and Win Big</h3>
  <p class="speaker">Paul Itoi, Stakwork</p>

Live outside the distribution. The big lie is that AI is LLMs. I left knowing graphmaxxing is something I need to dive into.
</article>

<article>
  <h3>Imagine IF Kids Were Limitless</h3>
  <p class="speaker">Candice McQueen, Lipscomb University</p>
  <p class="speaker">Joe Liemandt, Alpha School</p>

Redesigning a school from within is really hard. The core belief is simple: kids must love school.
</article>

<article>
  <h3>Imagine IF Data Centers Disappeared</h3>
  <p class="speaker">Sean James, NVIDIA</p>

> The most profound technologies are those that disappear

They found a way to cool chips at 113 degrees Fahrenheit, and DC power is the best for electronics.
</article>

<article>
  <h3>Imagine IF I Trust You More Than I Trust Myself</h3>
  <p class="speaker">Obi Nwosu, Fedi</p>

Interesting insight into the Bitcoin theft. Everything fails eventually, so plan to fail small.
</article>

<article>
  <h3>Imagine IF Time-to-Exploit Hit Zero</h3>
  <p class="speaker">Andre Neves, ZBD</p>

Bitcoin is money as code, and the assumption that "attacks need time" is gone. If you're not following model releases, your Bitcoin is vulnerable.
</article>

<article>
  <h3>Imagine IF Speed to Power Decided Everything</h3>
  <p class="speaker">Nick Elliot, Innovation Council Action</p>
  <p class="speaker">Harry Sudock, CleanSpark</p>
  <p class="speaker">Adam Sullivan, Core Scientific</p>

There's an enormous focus on how much one day of downtime affects profitability. Clusters are changing based on software, and builds are following model development. They called it digital reindustrialization, and with investments this high, stability is the goal. Value is delivered, not announced.
</article>

<article>
  <h3>Imagine IF It All Got Built Here</h3>
  <p class="speaker">Stuart McWhorter, State of Tennessee</p>
  <p class="speaker">Marsha Blackburn, U.S. Senate</p>

No state income tax is in the Tennessee constitution. Oak Ridge has been, and is poised to keep being, the leader in nuclear energy.
</article>

<article>
  <h3>Imagine IF the Gigawatts Got Built</h3>
  <p class="speaker">Ryan Norris, Abundance Institute</p>
  <p class="speaker">Chuck Fleischmann, U.S. Congress</p>
  <p class="speaker">Matt Schultz, CleanSpark</p>
  <p class="speaker">James P. Danly, U.S. Department of Energy</p>

Delivering certainty with community backing helps mitigate execution risk. Insane-level change is coming. Bitcoin mining set the foundation for compute power: electrons, workforce, and technology.
</article>

<article>
  <h3>Imagine IF Freedom Were Built from the Bottom Up</h3>
  <p class="speaker">Russ Greene, Prime Mover Institute</p>
  <p class="speaker">Gideon Powell, Cholla Inc.</p>

> It's not what industry you're in, it's your capabilities

We'd want a market that rewards curtailment and accuracy. The barrier to entry is so low right now. Find an idea that solves people's problems and make it happen.
</article>

<article>
  <h3>Imagine IF All Activists Had AI Superpowers</h3>
  <p class="speaker">Alex Gladstein, HRF</p>

Local AI is vital for freedom fighters. AI will reshape power.
</article>

## Only the Beginning

Rod closed it out with the news that 2027 will be four days!

Thank you to Bitcoin Park, the speakers, and everyone who made this happen. It was a great two days of being entertained, inspired, and informed.