BITCOIN MAKES PRIME TIME

As Bitcoin entered mainstream culture, it began showing up in the unlikeliest of places. That it would be written into fiction at some stage was inevitable, but Bitcoin’s prime time debut was nevertheless surprising, both on account of the show in question and the depth of treatment it received.

The Good Wife was a legal and political drama series that aired on CBS from 2009-2016, spanning seven seasons and 156 episodes. It followed Alicia Florrick (Julianna Margulies), who returns to her legal career after husband Peter Florrick (Chris Noth) – a disgraced Chicago State’s Attorney – is jailed following a public sex and corruption scandal. Alicia takes a job at law firm Stern, Lockhart & Gardner, navigating complex cases and office politics while rebuilding her reputation.

This was the show in which Bitcoin surfaced in early 2012, much to the surprise and amusement of the Bitcoin community. At that point in time, Bitcoin was no longer underground but it was far from being a household name. It had just weathered its first speculative bubble, surging to around $30 in mid-2011 before collapsing below $5 by year’s end, and when the episode aired on January 15th, 2012, one bitcoin was worth less than $7.

For Bitcoin to have made it into such a mainstream program, it was clear that someone on the production team was well aware of its existence and figured it would make for a good plot point. That someone was Corinne Brinkerhoff, who “conceived of the Bitcoin episode after becoming fascinated by the alternative money system.”

Not only did Bitcoin dominate the episode in which it featured, which was titled “Bitcoin for Dummies,” but its introduction came courtesy of a female writer at a time when the cryptocurrency’s community was largely male-dominated.

Recognising that the episode’s success would hinge on viewers understanding the digital currency being described, efforts were made to break its core concepts down into comprehensible terms – hence the title.

Bitcoin 101 

TV dramas are in the business of entertainment, not education, and thus the scriptwriters faced the challenge of weaving Bitcoin into the plot without leaving viewers bamboozled. They achieved this through having the protagonist’s son Zach school his mother on how Bitcoin worked, to which Alicia responds: “This stuff makes me feel so dated.” Many in the audience likely concurred.

The episode’s central mystery concerned the identity of “Mr. Bitcoin,” wanted by the U.S. Treasury for creating an illegal private currency. It was clearly inspired by the real Satoshi Nakamoto manhunt, which had reached fever pitch a few months earlier when The New Yorker tried and failed to unmask Bitcoin’s creator. The Good Wife made better progress, its fictional Satoshi turning out not to be one person, but three co-conspirators.

In a nod to the stylometric sleuthing that real journalists were attempting, the episode sees investigator Kalinda identify one suspect by the distinctive phrase “theoretically established combinatorial properties” in Mr. Bitcoin’s manifesto. This was a tip-of-the-hat to an actual clue from Bitcoin’s whitepaper: the unusual phrase “computationally impractical to reverse” that bloggers in 2011 noticed was also used in a patent filing by potential Satoshi candidates. Such trivia demonstrates that the writers did their homework to nail the nuances of Bitcoin lore.

The Bitcoin for Dummies episode rapidly achieved cult status within the Bitcoin community, who were largely impressed with its treatment, which included presenting the views of both proponents and opponents. In a memorable cameo, CNBC’s Mad Money host Jim Cramer appeared as himself, dismissing Bitcoin as “not a true currency” because “there’s no central bank to regulate it; it’s digital and functions completely peer-to-peer.”

For many in Bitcoin’s small community, it was surreal to see their niche obsession depicted on a prime-time TV drama. While the episode’s dramatic qualities were deemed by critics to be below average, Bitcoiners proved less critical. The producers had described their digital currency with surprising accuracy. Those who had been collecting Bitcoin since before it was cool were highly entertained.