Review of Banking on Bitcoin (2016) by John M — 04 Jan 2018

Money please. So you probably have heard about bitcoin, but don't fully understand it. There was a fake news story recently about a man altering Chuck E. Cheese tokens so as to make millions by claiming that they are bitcoin.

While it is not true, it does prove a point: it's believable if you didn't check snopes because nobody comprehends how the currency works. This is a documentary that helps you gain a grasp on the concept.

This is another Netflix feature that caught my attention. I like documentaries when it is a subject matter that I want to learn more about. While this did give me a baseline, I still don't feel like I know all that much more than I did back before I watched this.

The thing about this is that this is a pretty dry documentary. There are some graphics and slow motion shots that do give this a little bit of flair, but a lot of this is fairly raw data, and you are more than likely to drift in and out of it.

Also, it feels like it is trying to sell you on bitcoin as a product like it is something that you should be investing in, and while I do marginally understand it better, it still doesn't make me want to rush out and exchange my nest egg in the small hope that it will potentially increase in value, because it really doesn't seem like that sound of an investment.

Although to be fair, it does detail how well you could be doing on this if you just so happened to get in on the ground floor on this. They took something that was worth a fraction of a fraction of penny, and now it is worth over $15,000 for just one; you could potentially be a millionaire if you just invested $70 when this was taking off.

I like the idea of bitcoin on paper, as it is not a bad concept. There is a value in cryptocurrency, and with services like PayPal and Venmo, it seems like the financial industry is headed more and more in that direction, if only from a convenience standpoint.

The one obstacle that I don't fully foresee them getting over is how do you get rich people on board? How do you convince people who have worked their entire life to build their financial security to put it into something that has the potential to tank with the quickness? I think bitcoin is something to keep an eye on, and this is a documentary that you really only need to watch if the subject is a specific interest to you.