Bitcoin Forum

So what does everyone think of bitcoin being mentioned on CSI Cyber?

I'm not u US Citizen so I couldn't watch it online.
I just have seen following youtube video of it --> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwuR3MvZ6xM (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwuR3MvZ6xM)

So I can not really say how familiar they had been with the technology.

nice catch, i like when they mentioned internet things(or nerd thing you like it better) in a tv show, like how they mentioned starcraft in that film of love(fore reference https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EvgSP6gQPJs)

Well this wouldn't be the first time that some show mentioned Bitcoin, although I only remember it being in some cartoon. I believe it was the Simpsons.
Could you provide more details?

Update:
Never mind someone posted the video while I refreshed.

are you referring to this? http://imgur.com/xmE9ojz

i missed it, it looks hilarious

Yeah that was the picture.
Although there are probably more references, this is another one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KV5haSCooHs


I did watch the video of CSI. What's that stuff about a 64 character passkey?  :D

I have no idea. I thought passkeys (or private keys) were only like 32 digits long.

Also, what is with 2 private keys on a wallet?

I haven't even heard of this CSI show until now but it seems like they need to hire some actual techies so they don't sound like fools

Haha, some friends I know saw this and they were thinking that Bitcoin isn't secure since the funds couldn't be immediately tracked to the person who took them.   ::)

I am thinking this is just and error in their reporting.  It is so complex and all.   ::)

Mere mentioning does not matter anymore. That is soo 2013. Let us know it was mentioned in what context ?

A multisig wallet requires several privkeys before the funds on it can be spent at all. Maybe the show is referring to multisigs?

EDIT: Nope. Just another error. 64-bit passkey on every bitcoin account is needed to gain full control of the wallet? Lol.
EDIT 2: Yes, the address in this show is a multisig address. It requires 2 privkeys before you can gain access to it.

that would be great because it will gain bitcoin more popularity

A quote from the show:

"It's the preferred currency of the deep web. It's used to fund drug deals, hitmen, and human trafficking."

Looks like they did their research. lol  :D

LOL, if it was in any significant amount, BTC would be hitting a new ATH daily instead of being a shadow of its former self. Also, IIRC academic research was done and found that illegal uses of bitcoin were in the single digit percentage range overall.

ETA: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/10728809/One-in-twenty-have-bought-illegal-drugs-with-Bitcoin.html wasn't it, but it says:
22% online games
19% clothes
17% electrical items
5% illegal drugs

This is how they always showcase it, being used by criminals to buy illegal things. I guess this is the general view of it among people who don't know anything about it.

I remember it was also mentioned in the movie Horrible Bosses 2:

It wouldn't be the first time Bitcoin is mentioned in a series.
I heard that it was mentioned in some other series before.
Apparently it's "futuristic" to have Bitcoin mentioned in your show.
Which is not bad.
Actually it's good publicity depending on the way it was mentioned.

You remember the scene words?
LOL
How many times have you seen the movie?
I am guessing it's a lot.

It was a copy-paste from http://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/movie_script.php?movie=horrible-bosses-2 - same format.

Yeah just posted it for reference but I have seen that movie 2-3 times.

And I guess when things like this happen : Dark Net Weapons Bust Leads To 17 Arrests and a $80,000 Bitcoin Seizure (https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/dark-net-weapons-bust-leads-17-arrests-80000-bitcoin-seizure/) It makes more people believe that it's being mostly used for illegal stuff.

Ofcourse that's not true because fiat and other currencies are used more for these purposes but because people believe that it is anonymous, they think that it's favorable for illegal trades.

I also saw a recent episode of one of the Pawn Shop reality shows, where a guy came in to sell his "Money maker" - A home built rig, with a combo of about 5 GPU cards, and he claims it mines Bitcoins.

I could not help to laugh, he asked $4000 for it, and told the guy, he wanted to sell it, because he wanted to upgrade to something bigger.

They brought in a expert, and he knew even less about Bitcoin.

The general notion about Bitcoin is... "It's something, where a lot of people lost BIG money"

This was not a good reflection on what Bitcoin should be and where it's going... Most of these movies and series only concentrate on the negative side.  >:(

Well that's a problem with them, i.e. the people. It is not the problem of the Bitcoin community that most people are very ignorant and have limited views.
Sure we can try explaining Bitcoin, but the individuals rarely understand it like the people that did on their own. I think that I remember seeing that episodes, it was horrible.
If they had called me in, I'd be better than that "expert" without any preparation at all.

That's because they understand it that way.
Since most of them don't go to the trouble of proper research, they rely on what information they get from the news.

Bitcoin is just the victim here not the offender, because you can't blame something to but you should blame the people who uses it :)

I think the “two passkeys” stuff is actually meant to be a multisig address. It's just that they didn't do their research.

Bitcoin will undoubtably recur often in this series since the theme supposedly revolves around the elusive "dark net"  :o

You can't blame people, since the MT GOX incident.
Bitcoin most of the time is used as a joke, there a tons of references out there, but the most important that is being accept more and more everywhere.

yeah but in THIS clip they talk and explain bitcoin for 3 minutes - pretty cool  :D

That is true. I dodn't even know multisig wallets existed. (Until now!) :P

Indeed, but they information isn't that correct. They should have at least gotten better information in regards to Bitcoin.

This just proves my point. They should have worked a bit to provide better information in those 3 minutes, but I guess it's better than nothing?

Not a lot of the things they use in movies and series are based on facts.... They use fiction to sell content, and the more elaborate it is, the more interesting it is for the viewer.

This is why Bitcoin is usually used for it's more controversial use... it's simply more exiting.

Would we enjoy, say "Jurrasic Park" if they used croc's and lions, instead of fictional dino's? Sure it would be more real, but it would be boring.

What would be great, is if they could zoom in on a counter, where a "Bitcoin Accepted here" sticker is displayed.  ;D

It would be an eye opener to people who doesn't know BTC yet. Sometime soon, people will be interested in it and voila! BTC price gets spiky again.

There's an initiative: get set dressers into BTC, so they stick a BTC logo next to the Visa/Mastercard/Amex ones at every single checkout stand/business door set in the post-genesis block era. Make it ubiquitous.

Just watched the episode, it's crappy like all the others, this show is terrible, they failed to capture the way cyber crime happens, it's just another action cop show, technology is irrelevant to the plot, it can easily be substituted by some other thing.

Misinformation in a large scale is definitely harmful to the development of bitcoin and the potential adoption rate from the masses. There are different info in there that are just plain wrong, like this one:


Well people are blindly accusing bitcoin as the more evil money compared to its fiat counterpart when in fact, fiat is traded heavily in regards with illegal crimes and transactions.

I have never watched this before or heard of it but I will now!

Indeed, it was a huge disappointment, and I don't understand why it got a second season.

They failed to explain and understand simple concepts like 'dark web' and 'deep web', they just throw technical terms to make the show look techie, it doesn't make any sense the way the characters use technology.

I'm a big fan of technology shows, Silicon Valley, Halt and Catch Fire, Person of Interest, are all shows that use technology really well in their plots, even Almost Human used bitcoin a lot of times in the plot and was quite entertaining got canceled...

Well, CSI is a crime show after all. It wouldn't be too interesting if they just showed someone buying a pair of shoes with Bitcoins.
That's the way the media is. Any time there's something new that the world doesn't know about yet, they want to give it a bad spin. It's sensational news reporting and sensational entertainment. A journalism professor once told me: Good news is no news. Bad news is great news.

A plot could be "massive credit card breach, millions of identities stolen, signed up for porn free trials". Someone showed buying a pair of shoes with BTC at the beginning of the episode, split-screen, the breach ocurring simultaneously in full cinematic "hacker style". Then later on in the episode, either one of the investigators says "well that BTC customer wasn't affected!" OR they put a CCTV still on the news of the BTC customer as a material witness, because they showed up on CCTV but there was no ID to be leaked, then publicly have to exonerate them at the end after the real perp is caught.

Tweeted this to them, RT at will! http://twitter.com/TheButterZone/status/600790689409040384

I think that's true.