You could have had $600 in Bitcoin but all you got was a ticket to the movie Dope

Still visionary tbh.

December 11, 2017

Dope made a lot of headlines in 2015 for the rappers in its cast: A$AP Rocky, Vince Staples, Tyga, and Kap-G made their big-screen debuts, and the movie was produced by companies owned by Diddy and Pharrell. Just as innovative: the main character was obsessed with Bitcoin.


"Soon the world is only gonna sell and buy products using Bitcoins," he said in the film's first sentence. "There's these sites, where you can sell everything, from fake credit cards to illegal guns and drugs," he explained later, desperate to make quick cash. "They use Bitcoin so they can't be traced. We don't have to stand on any corners."

Fictional characters explaining the internet is always funny. And so is the fact that Dope was the first movie to accept Bitcoin to purchase tickets, which I learned today from The FADER's Instagram. So I looked into it.

When Dope opened in June 2015, people on Reddit were confused about how to actually exchange Bitcoin for seats, so one helpful cryptocurrency fan posted a clear how-to, along with a link to his transaction on Blockchain. One adult ticket cost them 0.0491 BTC, the equivalent at the time of $12.12.

Today, with a single Bitcoin trading at $16,500, that $12 ticket would have been worth well over $600. Had they sat on the coin and cashed out today, that same money could have been spent renting the same movie like 150 times. Sorry, I don't understand how technology works. Buy Bitcoin!
