Blockbusters. 🍿

Sometimes they’re summer shark movies that have the American public lined through the streets, other times, a blockbuster is a defunct video rental company. 

But is Bitcoin ready for its summer blockbuster?

Pop some popcorn and save us a seat, cause today we’re talking Bitcoin’s debut on the big screen.

Espresso Shots

☕️ Crypto Declared Threat to National Security 🇺🇸 🤬

The U.S. Treasury has declared decentralized finance a threat to national security.

But no, it’s not crypto on its lonesome, it’s the manner in which these technologies can be utilized by criminals.

“Our assessment finds that illicit actors, including criminals, scammers, and North Korean cyber actors, are using DeFi services in the process of laundering illicit funds,” said Brian E. Nelson, Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence.

The U.S. Treasury published a report detailing how decentralized platforms’ ability for users to transact without an intermediary makes them prime venues for money laundering.

“Finally, the American government is recognizing money laundering’s real culprit,” said every strip club in New Jersey.

☕️ ChatGPT Banned in Italy 🇮🇹 ❌

Italy banned ChatGPT on Sunday, but the world’s foremost tomato sauce manufacturer seems hardly alone in their fears about AI.

Similar concerns have been voiced by Germany, France, Sweden, and Canada. Just Tuesday, Biden implored tech companies to ensure that their products are safe before making them public.

The catalyst for the Italy ban was a bug that exposed user’s payment information and chat history. On March 20th, OpenAI took ChatGPT offline to fix the bug.

But Germany’s opinion on ChatGPT is a little more in line with the Biden Administration’s than Italy’s outright ban. 

“We do not need a ban on AI application, but rather ways to ensure values such as democracy and transparency,” said a statement from the German Ministry of the Interior.

But some voices are considering that this isn’t really a panic over the capabilities of AI, rather how we, as a society, are going to use it.

“What this moment does provide is a chance to consider what sort of society we want to be,” said Barath Raghavan, an Associate Professor of Computer Science at USC Viterbi. 

“What rules we want to apply to everyone equally, AI powered or not– and what kind of economic rules serve society best.”

Well, if we’re applying the same rules to everybody, we think that none of the new robots should have swords for hands until we’re allowed to have swords for hands.

☕️ Bitcoin Whitepaper Hidden in MacOS 🫣 📝

The latest Easter Egg to be unearthed in Mac Software is the pdf of the Bitcoin whitepaper written by Satoshi Nakamoto.

The secret was discovered by blogger Andy Baio. “While trying to fix my printer today, I discovered that a PDF copy of Satoshi Nakamoto’s Bitcoin white paper apparently shipped with every copy of macOS since Mojave in 2018,” 

Baio wrote on his blog. “I’ve asked over a dozen Mac-using friends to confirm, and it was there for every one of them.”

The file, named simpledoc.pdf, isn’t the only hidden treasure uncovered in the mac operating system. Sleuths have previously uncovered a photo entitled “Warning Alarm System” taken on San Francisco’s Treasure Island in 2008.

Marvel fans should be warned that these whitepapers do not include teasers about future installments of the Bitcoin cinematic universe.

Spilling the Beans

Crypto on the Big Screen

The film industry seems to be in a little bit of a slump.

Remake after remake and more superhero movies than you can shake a latex fist at.

“What’s that? Pixar’s making a movie about a firefly that can’t glow? I… I guess I’ll take my kids?”

We’ve been in the golden age of television for a little over two decades, but nobody is saying that about movies.

But when movie studios run out of ideas, they start ripping concepts from the headlines.

And crypto seems primed in everyone’s sights for the next wave of media.

Admittedly, a lot of the content is going to be about Sam Bankman-Fried.

There’s a movie deal in the works at Apple to adapt Michael Lewis’s (author of The Big Short and Moneyball) book on the rise and fall of Sam Bankman-Fried.

There’s talk of Adam Mckay joining an FTX project at Netflix.

Amazon Studios has also ordered a SBF miniseries from the Russo brothers of Avengers fame.

And we get it, SBF and the collapse of FTX is a compelling story. You’ve got a nerdy, hapless antihero at the center of a debacle with global consequences. The script writes itself.

But moving beyond FTX, we’re excited by the notion of crypto entering mainstream media, without just focusing on its greatest disaster.

There are actually quite a few crypto documentaries currently in circulation. 

About… ten. Mostly about Bitcoin or how crypto is going to bring about the end of money as we know it. For more on that, try the documentary, “Bitcoin: The End Of Money As We Know It.”

Aside from documentaries, many people aren’t aware that crypto has already had quite the brush with prestige in the film industry.

“An Irish Goodbye,” directed by Nick Sadler, won the Oscar for Best Short Film at the 2023 Academy Awards. The film was funded almost entirely by Web3 donations.

The short is a black comedy about a man and his brother with down syndrome navigating the death of their mother on their farm in Ireland.

So while the content of the movie doesn’t have anything to do with crypto, it's proving how decentralized finance can change entertainment as we know it. 

We’ll keep holding our breath as far as crypto breaking out into gaming. Web3 gaming still seems too transparently about money over quality to garner any audience just yet.

“Cryo,” was the fictional cryptocurrency in 2022’s futuristic indie-hit, Citizen Sleeper. A video game about space, not about crypto, but heavily featuring crypto.

So, hey, again, sorta counts! Crypto is creeping into mainstream entertainment. 

But crypto still hasn’t had its breakout moment. And it seems clear, if crypto wants mass adoption, it’s going to need a mass audience first.

We've seen the inklings of that with a swarm of Super Bowl commercials in 2022. But now, it's time to show audiences how crypto can change entertainment for the better. 

And there’s no better way to connect with the masses than screens, the opiate of the masses.

We believe that crypto will have its time in narrative storytelling and that day is not far off.

But for now, we’re going to keep dreaming of a day when American audiences will be as tired of crypto movies as they are movies about sharks, cars, and coming-of-age love stories.

Meme of the Day

Give me some Binance docudrama content plz. 

Crypto 101

Easter Egg: This is any sort of hidden, fun feature inside of a piece of technology. Often inside of a video game, movie, or piece of software.

Hiding the Bitcoin whitepaper inside of MacOS (and no one finding out for years) is definitely one of the better easter eggs out there.

The Last Sip

Take three incredible movies, but make ‘em crypto:

• There Will Be FUD directed by Paul Thomas Anderson (2007)

• Ethereum for a Dream directed by Daren Aaronofsky (2000)

• Django Blockchained directed by Quentin Tarantino (2012)

Stay Caffeinated,

Coffee & Crypto Team

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