Bitconned (2023) Movie Review – A documentary on crypto frauds!

A documentary on crypto frauds!

The very end of the new Netflix documentary Bitconned puts up an interesting fact. In 2022, crypto scams had reached a total of 78% in terms of any sort of crypto business venture for investors. Bitconned is not just the title of this documentary; it seems to be a way of life for anybody who knows how to get their hands on a lump of cash and scam their way into millions.

We all know Bitcoin and remember the boom that hit at the tail end of the last decade and the surge it had in 2021, with the stock market taking some strange turns. And of course, it all came crashing down at one point. Celebrities like Tom Brady and Kim Kardashian all got caught up in the fiasco as they became spokespersons for what was believed to be the future of making financial gains in life.

Remember anyone who brought up Bitcoin to you back in, say, 2017? It was either one of two things; they couldn’t make it sound clear to anyone who didn’t understand it. Or, they just came off sounding like it was a pyramid scheme. The crazy thing was that Bitcoin and any crypto were not really scams; they were just new things in the world that had yet to come into their own.

But let’s get down to how all that comes into play in this 2024 Netflix documentary. Bitconned follows the rise and fall of the company Centra Tech. Its main focus is its creator, Ray Trapani. A businessman who bounced around South Beach in Miami, using his family investments to open businesses like a fancy car rental place for celebrities like Rick Ross and DJ Khaled.

His colleagues all say the same thing about Ray: He’s a scumbag. He knows how to put ideas together, but he isn’t really an idea man. As a matter of fact, he’s high all the time, too.

The documentary starts out talking about how Ray got into the drug game by selling pills as a teenager. To avoid jail time, he rats his friends out and moves on with his life. Lightning strikes twice in a situation like that later in the film. Ray ends up losing all his money on his so-called ventures and then dabbles in the world of crypto with one of his business partners who he didn’t even like personally, Sohrab Sharma, aka “Sam Sharma.”

The plan was to create a debit card of sorts that allows all the people who have made millions off of Bitcoin to actually get to use their profits rather than just have it sit there on a digital platform. Enter Centra Tech, the company formed by Ray Trapani. The foundations of it all may seem like a scam, with the promotional videos of the company looking like some sort of marketing company you hear about on Craigslist that helps you live your best life through your career.

And yet, Centra Tech ends up taking off big and gaining confidence. This is a company that literally created a fake CEO, and it started to believe its own B.S. That is until the New York Times catches wind of them.

Bitconned documents the rise and fall of this organization in a comedic way that most Netflix films like to do about dumb criminals who go forward in life confidently. Trapani comes off like a villain in a TV show that you love to hate. He slips through the cracks every time. There are moments when he’s absolutely about to lose every penny he has, and then it turns around for him.

Trapani is a real-life Game of Thrones villain come to life. He’s charming and dashing and should be in jail for the next hundred years for scamming investors into his product, and by the time the film ends, he’s just bought a house while his business partners sit in jail for the next few years.

Bitconned may fall deep into the sea of Netflix docs about the American dream crashing down around those who try to sneak in the back door to obtain it. But don’t let it, especially this early in the new year. It’s a wild tale of greed and the idea that the system is rigged these days. And therefore, pushing back against it can be an admirable thing to do. The only thing is the person pushing back isn’t really an admirable person.

Read More: Bitconned Ending Explained

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