Bitconned Review: Releasing on January 1, 2024, the Netflix true-crime docu-film with a runtime of 1 hour and 34 minutes has been directed by Bryan Storkel. It dives into financial frauds concocted in the rather new-age cyptocurrency world as Ray Trapani and his associates Sohrab Sharma and Robert Farkas, came together to build a fortune on lies, Centra Tech. The film lets these people speak for themselves, and their contrasting narratives, when put together flesh out different understandings and emotional involvements in the scheme.
Watch the Bitconned Trailer
Bitconned Netflix Review Contains Mild Spoilers
Bitconned Review
The Bitconned trailer itself starts off by letting Ray Trapani spell out his ways and character for himself better than possibly anyone else could. “Ever since I was a kid, I’ve always wanted to be a criminal”, so puts out Trapani, and rest assured that the entirety of the Netflix docu-film builds on that from there on. As much as this true-crime documentary is about dropping the curtain and revealing the dark side of the “freewheeling cryptocurrency market”, Kerri, Ray’s mother would be stupefied to learn that it’s equally about capturing her son’s smug attitude and letting it speak for itself despite her cautionary warning, “If you make him look like a scumbag, I’m really gonna be pissed”.
What begins with three guys coming together despite their lacking “friendship”, soon evolves into another scam, but on a large scale that also ends up roping in a huge number of victims falling prey to the shady bylaws of cryptocurrency. As an unaffected outsider, one would almost find the whole construct hilarious as to how this alliance of people, coming together under the umbrella of Centra could themself believe in the credibility of lies they had concocted – fake profiles, fake biographies and whatnot.
But even as this passive bystander, once you get a somewhat in-depth look at how the functions worked at this supposed sham of an organisation, it vehemently takes you aback to see how one of the most active and front-running members of the main team was almost left untouched once the penal sentences were rolled out. Even though you may not be personally tied into the story, it really gets you how unabashedly Ray is still rolling out his business as an “entrepreneur”, while some of the others standing by his side as mere puppets at the time have been subjected to far worse, that some of them can’t even take this chance to come forward and speak for themselves.
Even though it shakes you up to see that a fraudster like that has been offered a grand pedestal to vocalise his experience, it’s actually clever on the part of Bryan Storkel to let Ray speak for himself, because then the crew doesn’t need to go over and beyond to explain his character to us. Trapani’s puffed-up conceited talks do all the work for them.
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Moreover, from the surface, it may appear as if the film is glorifying his claims and attitude, but the very next minute, it’s all countered by the first-hand experiences relayed by the other hands-on personnel who’ve suffered too much, believing that Centra is a company with a solid foundation, when it’s but actually built on a series of dominoes of lies.
A lot of the visual screenplay on the part of building up the case of Ray’s narcissistic affluence constitutes the cliched series of montages that circle around images of men vaping around, squandering away hours on end on parties, drugs and all that frivolous paraphernalia. However, after a point it all gets a bit too tiring and exhausting to see Trapani spew the same inflated narrative and still not being able to see through it all.
Of course, it’s not a fictional storyline or something else that would work on the redemption arc of the main guy because we can all see through the act that is put on to craft out a plausible lie that Ray has in fact changed, when people who’ve suffered at the hand of his “masterstroke” are still working their way out to some sort of happy resolution, but failing nevertheless.
Bitconned Documentary: Final Thoughts
If you’re someone who’s all about diving into finding out more flaws with the whole cyptocurrency setup, then you should look into this documentary. However, you should be ready to sit through an hour or so of Ray Trapani’s brazenly immodest and brash talks. If you can’t handle that, then you should probably not choose this as the next title to cross on your watchlist.
Bitconned is now streaming on Netflix.
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