Bitcoin continues to receive serious mainstream attention as it was featured in the premiere episode of the fifth season of the popular Wall Street drama Billions. The show has mentioned cryptocurrencies more than once before. Unfortunately, though, almost all the references are rather negative where crypto is used mainly for money-laundering purposes.
Billions is a popular financially-centered Wall Street drama following the clash between a ruthless US Attorney Chuck Rhodes (played by Paul Giamati) and billionaire Robert “Axe” Axelrod (played by Damian Lewis).
The season had its fifth season air this Sunday and it kicked off with a mention of Bitcoin. Interestingly enough, the character portrayed by Chuck Rhodes took a stab at the popular cryptocurrency, denying its intrinsic value and saying that it’s backed by nothing – a narrative all too common among naysayers.
This caught the attention of Changpeng Zhao, CEO at Binance, who retweeted the excerpt from the show.
“…and for what? So your multitude of computers can solve abstract math equations resulting in the mining of Bitcoin, worth millions right now but backed by what? Nada, nix…zat.” – said Rhodes whilst in an interrogation.
Surely enough, the response he gets is one that could also be easily predicted. The person he’s questioning was quick to ask “what’s the Dollar backed by since we went off the Gold Standard?”
The attorney answered that the USD is backed by “roads, the military, industry, the credit of the Federal Government, that sort of thing, but I get your point.”
Needless to say, this is perhaps the oldest and still ongoing debate between those who understand the values of Bitcoin and those who refute them completely.
This is not the first time cryptocurrencies were mentioned in the show. Most of the references are rather negative and mainly associated with money-laundering, profit-hiding, and so forth.
In one of the previous seasons, Bobby Axelrod handed one of his employees a hardware wallet with $1 million worth of crypto as a bonus off the company’s financial records.
It’s also worth noting that Bitcoin references in the show are likely to keep going. Last year, the show hired the author of Bitcoin Billionaires, Ben Mezrich, as a consulting producer.