Sometimes, the best way to learn is to watch something. While reading whitepapers and hearing other people’s perspectives can be useful for understanding the crypto sector, there are times when nothing beats a fully-fledged documentary on a topic. However, the fact that the crypto market is so wide-ranging, coupled with the fact that it is still somewhat niche, means that it can be hard to know what documentaries are worth your time. With this in mind, let’s take a look at three top Bitcoin and crypto documentaries that we believe you should check out.

Why Watch Bitcoin & Crypto Documentaries?

Watching Bitcoin and crypto documentaries is fantastic because they mix educational material in with entertainment, making them much easier to digest than some long-form articles and papers. Alongside this, they are made by experts in the field. Of course, this does come as a double-edged sword, as many experts tend to inject their own beliefs and perspectives into their documentaries, so that means you are not consuming unbiased media– but this is not always a bad thing, so long as you’re aware.

What Makes a Good Bitcoin & Crypto Documentary?

A good crypto documentary must perform the following:

Educate the Audience: At its most basic level, a good crypto documentary must be a reliable source of knowledge. It must teach you something that you did not know beforehand. This could be something technical, social, or philosophical. But no matter what, you should walk away from it with more information than you started.

Entertain the Audience: Documentaries are designed to be entertaining. While this is not their primary function, it is a necessary aspect that separates them from other academic material. You should not be bored during a documentary– otherwise why bother with a documentary rather than a research paper?

Explain its Biases: A great documentary wears its biases on its sleeve. Rather than try and hide or shroud its biases, it should embrace them, so the audience knows what the creator believes. This is extremely important as it allows the audience to then know when they should take certain information with a grain of salt.

Top Three Bitcoin & Crypto Documentaries in 2024

Let’s take a look at three of the best crypto and Bitcoin documentaries that everybody should be watching in 2024.

God Bless Bitcoin

God Bless Bitcoin is a documentary created in 2024, focused on exploring the social and economic complications that led to the rise of Bitcoin, and the subsequent crypto industry. The documentary is steeped in political and religious concepts, which helps to place Bitcoin in a cultural and personal context. This is great for connecting it with the public, although it is worth knowing this, as it means that it is loaded with biases. Inflation, centralized financial control, faith, and autonomy are its primary themes, which it uses as vehicles to explain both what Bitcoin is, and why it is so meaningful.

Trust Machine: The Story of Blockchain

Trust Machine is a 2018 documentary looking at the geopolitical and mathematical elements of the blockchain sector. Unlike some documentaries, this one discusses other cryptocurrencies, and their role in the overall industry. While money is definitely a theme of the documentary, what makes this film stand out is that it also explores the technological elements on their own merits, and identifies other uses that cryptocurrencies serve, outside of merely digital cash. It is a fantastic documentary for anybody who is struggling to decouple the concept of Bitcoin from the rest of the industry.

This Is Not Financial Advice

Many crypto and blockchain fans understand the technical and economic aspects of the industry, but might still have some blindspots in their knowledge. One particular area that tends to leave experts dumbfounded is that of memecoins. This is the focus of the 2023 documentary This is Not Financial Advice. Rather than exploring the socioeconomic elements of the crypto sector (as the previously recommended documentaries do), this film is primarily interested in how memecoin holders engage with the industry. It is a fly-on-the-wall style documentary, cataloging the experiences of influencers and crypto natives who appear to essentially be gambling with their money by focusing on coins like DOGE, Shiba Inu, and various other meme assets. Despite the lack of seriousness this has, compared to other documentaries, it is a must-watch for those who want to get a better understanding of what the more ironic side of the industry feels like, and how it operates.

Where to Watch Bitcoin & Crypto Documentaries in 2024

These are your top resources for watching Bitcoin and crypto documentaries in 2024.

YouTube: The vast majority of documentaries covering these topics will be hosted on YouTube, as they will usually be made by amateur directors, and because accessibility is a major feature of the entire industry. In particular, YouTube is the best place to find God Bless Bitcoin.

Apple TV: To watch Trust Machine, The Story of Blockchain, your best option would be to go to Apple TV. There are also other tech documentaries found here, as well. As is to be expected, given Apple is a computing company first-and-foremost.

Amazon Prime: Amazon Prime has an extensive catalog of documentaries, including This is Not Financial Advice. You can watch this included within your subscription. Plus, any documentaries that are not available with your subscription (and which are not free) can usually be bought on Amazon Prime. For example, this is the case for Trust Machine.

Additional Resources for Bitcoin & Crypto Enthusiasts

Documentaries are a fun jumping-off point for people who want to get educated, but they are not great at offering full insights on topics. Therefore, you should keep in mind some supplementary sources to help round out your knowledge.

Bitcoin and Crypto Podcasts

Podcasts tend to touch on more nuanced points, as well as go more in-depth than documentaries. There are loads to choose from when it comes to this sector, but if you would like our recommendations, then check out our top Bitcoin podcasts out there.

Social Media

Twitter/X and Reddit are great resources for keeping up to date with the crypto market. These are a fantastic method of learning about the current news related to the industry, as well as discovering what experts and the public think of certain matters. The information you gather will be much more raw and unfiltered than a documentary, which is good for exposure, but it also means you need to take everything with a much larger grain of salt. Take a look at our suggestions for top Twitter crypto accounts here.

Books

Books on cryptocurrency are similar to documentaries in that they are educational as well as entertaining, however they have the added benefit of generally taking a much more nuanced perspective, and being able to dive into a far wider range of topics and unpack them more thoughtfully. Plus, many books actually cite their sources (even if they are not fully academic in nature). This is something that neither podcasts nor documentaries tend to do. These are some great crypto books to get stuck into.

Conclusion

The fact that documentaries on Bitcoin and crypto exist is an amazing sign of how revolutionary and all-encompassing this industry can be. Documentaries are typically only made on topics that are both interesting and in-demand, and so it is a powerful indicator of how ingrained in our lives this space has gotten. They also give a blueprint for how they may evolve in the future, touching on social, economic, political, and cultural factors– all of which are of equal and overlapping importance. 

Disclaimer

This article is sponsored by 21 Technologies Inc. and/or its subsidiaries (“Ledn”) and is for general information, discussion, or educational purposes only and is not to be construed or relied upon as constituting legal, financial, investment, accounting, tax, estate-planning, or other professional advice or recommendation. Please read Ledn’s full Risk Disclosure Statement and Disclaimers.