VPro Backlight, a Dutch documentary series with multiple awards to its name, recently released \"The Bitcoin Gospel\" under a Creative Commons license on BitTorrent. Free bitcoin documentaries remain sc
VPro Backlight, a Dutch documentary series with multiple awards to its name, recently released "The Bitcoin Gospel" under a Creative Commons license on BitTorrent. Free bitcoin documentaries remain scarce. Most veer either too shallow, too promotional, or fixate on sensationalism at the expense of substance. This 48-minute-and-52-second film navigates between those poles.
The documentary centers on Roger Ver, a longtime bitcoin advocate and CEO of Memory Dealers who holds a majority stake in Blockchain. Ver presents the bullish case, walking through current uses and sketching out potential applications. Izabella Kaminska of the Financial Times counters with actual and perceived vulnerabilities in the system. Economist Garrick Hileman from the London School of Economics sits between them, offering an outsider's generally favorable assessment grounded in economic thinking.
The film brings in other voices: television personality Max Kieser, developer Peter Todd, advocate Andreas Antonopoulos, investor and author Brett Scott. Mining mogul Marshall Long guides viewers through the mining landscape, and the segment accomplishes what feels unintended—demonstrating why newcomers should avoid mining. Long's massive operation contrasts with a contemporary Chinese farm, both set against the typical "anyone can mine" claims found on YouTube. The filmmakers never state their conclusion outright. Viewers reach it themselves.
Ver opens the film by handing off bitcoin through Dutch television. He displays the private key to a wallet holding 100 Euros in bitcoin and remarks that no one can stop the transfer. The scene unfolds like a game show, with Ver hosting. The anonymous winner—unknown to viewers and filmmakers alike—wins because they moved faster than everyone else to import the key and forward the funds. The filmmakers leave this implication unstated: bitcoin operates outside traditional finance. People run it.
Ver's background receives attention, yet the filmmakers position him as one face among many, a representative of the bitcoin elite rather than its controller. His libertarian views come through in one passage. Ver says: "If you or I create counterfeit Euros or print euros or dollars or Yen, we would go to jail for counterfeiting because it is destructive to the economy. By counterfeiting dollars, it is stealing from everyone else in the economy that has money. When governments do the exact same thing, it has the exact same negative effects the only difference is that they have fancy names for it like economic stimulus or quantitative easing but it is destructive for the exact same reasons."
The film does not avoid bitcoin's problems. Mining centralization and distribution concerns surface. Kaminska presents a critical view by comparing bitcoin's price chart to classic bubble patterns. The resemblance is unmistakable—a small jump, then a larger one, then a crash. What goes unaddressed: the larger jump was once the small jump. Before that sat an even smaller jump. Bitcoin faced "bubble" declarations at $100, $30, and $1. The recent $1200 high merely continued an established pattern. Kaminska has followed bitcoin since its early days, so she knows this history. Whether she chose to ignore it or the filmmakers excluded it remains unclear. Her bubble comparison stands largely unchallenged.
Peter Todd mentions Satoshi Nakamoto possibly being an artificial intelligence. One detail trips up: the film states "all" bitcoin users hold a copy of the blockchain, though many use web wallets or lightweight clients instead.
If you want someone to understand bitcoin's prospects and pitfalls without spending money or time, the film works. VPro delivered what the space needed. The documentary sits on VPro's YouTube channel alongside other investigative work worth following.
Ver reflected on the experience. He told me that filming in Tokyo turned the crew into believers. "I spent several full days with the film crew in Tokyo, and I really got to like them as people. I could tell by the end of their trip to Japan that they had become believers in Bitcoin. One of the Camera men was so convinced that he even traded his drone for Bitcoins while he was in Japan."
