American Consequences - July 2017

By Todd Prince

trade on the Bittrex digital currency exchange. The club has raised nearly $2 million since launching the offering in March – including $900,000 in bitcoin – according to Klamka, who is managing the initial LGD coin offering. Members include Charlie Shrem – a bitcoin evangelist who served 18 months in prison for unlicensed money transmission – as well as a rap star, a venture capitalist, and a wealthy 70-year old, according to Klamka. He said he has never met Shrem, a fellow New Yorker. Members will receive a Legends token on an app that will give them access to the VIP room, where porn stars and Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) fighters will hang out. The VIP room will also include two smaller rooms with booths, where strippers can perform private dancers for $500 or more, said Blomgren. While he expects guys to pay the hefty fee for the booths, he doesn’t expect the girls to do much private dancing. “Guys just want to hang out and talk with them,” he said as he showed off the booths.

pounds of mainly muscle. But he puts you at ease with his soft speech. Klamka, a former credit-card promoter from New York, makes up for his smaller frame with a commanding voice that belies his marketing background. He is sporting a black “King of New York” t-shirt with a photo of Laurence Fishburne brandishing a gun. He wears khaki pants with no socks and dark red moccasins. Blomgren and Klamka met in 2014 as the latter began promoting his bitcoin ATMmachines on the shorts of MMA fighter and fellow New Yorker Phil Baroni, one of Blomgren’s trainees. It was a cheap way to get nation-wide TV exposure for his product, he said. Klamka then teamed up with another fighter from New York to help him sell bitcoin ATMs. His Mike Tyson-themed bitcoin ATM launched in Las Vegas in 2015 with some media fanfare, but hasn’t expanded yet as promised. Klamka said it is unclear when more Tyson bitcoin machines will appear. Klamka will operate three cryptocurrency ATMs at the Legends Room, but he admits there is little demand for the machines to really scale a profitable business. Rather, his focus at the Legends Room is on repackaging the digital currency- based membership for other companies and industries. If he

THE ODD COUPLE

Blomgren, 53, and Klamka, 48, at first look make for an odd business couple (pictured left to right). Blomgren, a martial arts trainer, has the imposing presence of a club bouncer. Sporting a shaved head and dragon-tattooed arms, he stands 6’2” and weighs in at 205

can build it, they will come, he believes. “I just need to prove the concept,” he says. “Companies have said to me,

‘we will be there when you execute on the strip club.’”

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