Released: 1st January
Seen: 1st January
Cryptocurrency is possibly one of the biggest scams to ever go mainstream in recent years. What’s sold as a way for regular people to make money without relying on banks is in reality a playground for con artists to squeeze money out of gullible rich people who see a new technology and dive in without thinking. The Crypto market has brought us the bitcoin and the NFT, both of which are totally bogus ideas that are hopefully on the way out soon but until then there’s a cornucopia of stories about crypto schemes and scams, one of which revolves around the company Centra Tech, the story of the rise and fall of that company and its founders is the basis for Bitconned.
Bitconned was made by the same director who created a previous Best Film of the Year, The Pez Outlaw, and there are a lot of similarities between the two. Through the use of interviews with 2 of the former CEOs of Centra (The third one is still in prison), investors, and the New York Times journalist who did the first investigation into the whole thing, along with some snappy recreations, Bitconned presents a timeline of Centra Tech and explores how each part of the scam built and built until it’s inevitable collapse. Presented like a Crypto-Goodfellas, we spend most of the film following Ray Trapani who is presented as the main guy behind the whole scheme and get to listen to him revel in what they almost got away with.
What’s handy about Bitconned is that it seems to understand that the minutia of how Crypto works is kind of dull and tedious, so it chooses to just stick to exploring the con in a broad strokes manner. You don’t need to really understand terms like “Ethereum” “Blockchain” or “FUD” because the film will just make sure each of those ideas is shown in a way that anyone can understand, or if absolutely needed will explain (Namely FUD, which is “Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt” for those playing at home). Its very broad strokes approach to the Crypto market helps make it easier to focus on the interesting bit, namely the scam itself.
Bitconned holds a lot of cards tight to its chest as the film goes on and doesn’t reveal them until it needs to. If they need the reveal of a certain person’s identity to be a surprise, they will hold that person back until an hour in and get a huge shock for the benefit. It does several very clever little reveals, letting the details of the story carefully trickle out without spoiling any surprises. If anything, it lets you draw your own conclusion on some things and then goes “Well actually” before revealing someone who you thought didn’t exist might actually have been there the whole time. It makes for an incredible experience, one that will require a regular hitting of the pause button for each new revelation to have the time to properly sink in.
At the centre of Bitconned is that main interview with Ray Trapani, they make sure he’s the main focus of everything by following him about his day, letting you see where he lives and doing little insert shots of him being fitted for a suit while he brags about just what happened. It doesn’t bother portraying him as some misunderstood guy who fell into it, it opens with him saying he wanted to be a criminal and it lets him revel in that. You probably won’t end up liking him by the end of the film, but he’s such a wild fascinating figure that it’s hard not to at least be somewhat intrigued by him. He’s the kind of guy who feels like he’s going to have an insane autobiography in 20 years that he can’t actually profit from due to legal reasons, and those people make fascinating targets for documentaries. It also helps because every detail from the other interviews can easily be hung off his main story, he’s doing the heavy lifting by keeping the flow going and making you just want to see him get some comeuppance, they picked a perfect figurehead to be the focus of this documentary.
Bitconned is another great documentary about the scam that is Bitcoin and once again proves that Bryan Storkel is a documentary filmmaker worth keeping an eye on, his work is up there with Jeffrey Schwarz (Who made I Am Divine and Boulevard!) in terms of documentarians whose works I will watch no matter what. Bitconned has all the high-stakes energy of a gangster film but with a subject matter that’s so undeniably nerdy that the contrast is fascinating. It’s quick, effective and downright fascinating, even if you aren’t into Crypto (and by god, why would you be into Crypto after seeing a scam like this?)
Movie Meister Reviews 