A crypto exchange collapses under suspicious circumstances and the over-indebted holders of its token find themselves left behind. It's a sadly familiar story in the crypto world, and one that writer-director Cutter Hodierne has made the heart of his new film.
“Cold Wallet” opens with everyone Billy (Raúl Castillo) telling everyone about his surefire investment in the ominously named crypto exchange Tulip, spending money on a PS5 for his daughter and pinning his hopes on of a new house on its TPC token. .
Then everything collapses. The stock market CEO dies under mysterious circumstances, Billy's bags are worthless, and the friends he encouraged Tulip with face financial ruin. But hacker Eva (Melonie Diaz) has a lead: Tulip's boss, Charles Hegel (Josh Brener of “Silicon Valley”) is alive and well and holed up in a secluded mansion just down the street.
Along with Billy's pacifist martial arts instructor Dom (Tony Cavalero), the unlikely trio of vigilantes set out to kidnap Hegel, seize his material wallets and force him to cough up the missing funds.
But Hegel is not a helpless technological geek; instead, he is more of a Hannibal Lecter figure, playing mind games with his captors, sowing seeds of doubt and pitting them against each other. Billy must wrestle with his conscience: does he play the role of Robin Hood and drop the funds to impoverished investors, or does he take the millions of cryptocurrencies for himself and “join the big?”
“Cold Wallet” is at its best when its well-drawn characters clash against each other. Castillo shines as Billy, embodying the Dunning-Kruger effect as an ordinary investor who is just far enough down the crypto rabbit hole to appear convincing to his friends, without understanding the financial peril he has placed them in . And Cavalero's Dom is particularly entertaining while he wrestles. with the “karmic imprint” of vigilante violence.
Diaz is given the most thankless task, tasked with providing numerous explanations to convey the film's cryptographic concepts to the general public, while his exit from the film seems like an afterthought.
Brener's Charles Hegel is a thoroughly slimy villain, despite having witnessed the grim reality of cornered crypto scammers like Sam Bankman-Fried, it's difficult to accept the concept of him as a master manipulator, pulling the protagonists' strings like so many puppets. Or, indeed, a crossbow-wielding hunter, after a shocking act of violence, turns the film on its head for a tense finale that riffs on “The Most Dangerous Game.”
The film's low budget also limits its scope somewhat. It stretches credulity a bit that crypto billionaire Hegel is hiding right next to our protagonists in Massachusetts, while the action is mostly confined to a single location where the vigilantes clash with the crypto crook.
Cryptographic identifiers
Decrypt readers, of course, will be more interested in the film's treatment of cryptography.
So far, Hollywood has portrayed crypto the way it has computer hacking in the 90s; a tech buzzword scattered throughout scripts to enhance their cutting-edge credentials without really understanding how it works (looking at you, “Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning”).
“Cold Wallet” is one of the first films to actually use the mechanics of cryptography to drive the plot. A carpet provides the protagonists' motivation, while the ins and outs of hardware wallets, airdrops, leveraged trading, and one-liners provide the plot twists.
It is clearly made by people deeply immersed in the crypto space. The “death” of Hegel and the collapse of the TPX stock exchange echo the falls of QuadrigaCX And FTXwhile his mansion is generously decorated with whale motifs and Bored Monkeys Yacht Club NFT art. Billy and his fellow investors trade advice on Reddit and watch crypto YouTubers utter phrases like “diamond hands,” while a key meeting takes place in a parking lot lit by logos of actions memes GameStop and AMC.
For crypto fans, it's a refreshing experience to see space accurately represented on screen for once – and normies will find this a gripping thriller, even if the crypto jargon goes over their heads.
“Cold Wallet” is also a Web3 company itself; this is one of three films funded by the Web3 Decentralized Pictures film fund, thanks to a grant from Steven Soderbergh. Founder Roman Coppola believes that “a new Tarantino or a new Kubrick” could eventually emerge from the world of Film3, and on that basis, there's every chance he's right.
Edited by Andrew Hayward