“The Rise and Rise of Bitcoin” documentary premieres at the Tribeca Film Festival this Wednesday, gathering Bitcoin investors and entrepreneurs.
“The Rise and Rise of Bitcoin” is a 96-minutes documentary telling the story of the digital currency, which changed the whole game of how money works.
The movie features interviews with some of the Bitcoin entrepreneurs and enthusiasts from the period. It describes the Bitcoin progress as digital currency, tells how it started and how it boomed. Moreover, the film explains the Bitcoin market and explores the subcultures of the Bitcoin community.
Nicholas Mross, the director of the film, started it as a small documentary that was expected to be an informative piece. He began to document the personal story of his brother Daniel, who was a 35-year old Bitcoin miner from Pittsburg. When Bitcoin really took off, Nicholas decided to turn his film into the bigger project.
The panel after the premiere will be held with Daniel Mross, the brother of the director and a film’s protagonist, Charlie Shrem, who has got a break from his house arrest to attend the event, and others.
The 24-year-old Bitcoin entrepreneur Charlie Shrem was arrested this January over money laundering allegations. He has been under arrest at his parents’ house in Brooklyn since then.
Shrem was accused of laundering USD 1 million worth of bitcoins to assist customers on the Silk Road Marketplace to make purchases anonymously. The charges could send him to prison for the period of 20 years. Shrem has a fear of going to jail and wonders about the reaction of the US government.
The premiere will be attended by such Bitcoin entrepreneurs as Erik Voorhees, co-founder of Coinapult, and Jered Kenna, co-founder of Tradehill Inc. exchange in San-Fransisco, which ceased trading operations as banks closed its accounts.
Bitcoin was unnoticed until its code, which was written by a programmer or a group of programmers under the name Satoshi Nakamoto, was made public in 2009. Bitcoin is not regulated by any authority. For years, Mt. Gox, located in Tokyo, was its main exchange.
The filming of the documentary began in May, 2012 and was finished last month. The film also highlights the arrest of Shrem and a collapse of Mt. Gox exchange, which went bankrupt after coins losses worth USD 500 million.
The goal of the film is to tell the story of Bitcoin and at the same time educate the audience. Nicholas Mross hopes that the film will be interesting for Bitcoin enthusiasts and also for those who are not familiar with the cryptocurrency.
The documentary premieres on Wednesday, April 23rd, at the Tribeca film festival at SVA Theatre 2 in Manhattan. The documentary is projected to be released online after the premiere.
Polina is an undergraduate student at Belarusian State Economic University (BSEU) where she is studying at the faculty of International Business Communication for a degree specializing in Intercultural Communication. In her spare time she enjoys drawing, music and travelling.
