Nope, Gencoin is not a real cryptocurrency: Startup is a show on Netflix that's gaining a ton of popularity recently. Apparently the show is quite old, as the first season was aired in 2016 right before Bitcoin exploded to $20k. It's easy to see why this gem has been overlooked for all this time. Netflix bought the show from a lesser known platform called Crackle. Now that it is gaining a lot of fans on Netflix there is almost certainly going to be an extension into the forth season.
I've already watched the first two seasons, and they are pretty damn good. When my girlfriend was like, "Hey lets watch this, it's about crypto, you'll like it," I was very skeptical. As a former professional poker player I've never seen a single movie about poker that I liked. They are all bullshit. Poker is math and it's boring as hell. Hollywood likes to zoom and enhance, those pixels aren't going to enhance themselves, fellas.
When it comes down to topics we know a lot about (like cryptocurrency) Hollywood will come in and sensationalize the genre by just making a bunch of random stuff up to make the topic more exciting. So then people who are actually heavily invested in the space tend to ironically reject the on-screen false representation.
Startup gets around this by not really focusing on the cryptocurrency/tech part and remaining largely vague. What does GenCoin do? Who knows. There are random references to a decentralized way to get a loan. Of course that makes no sense within the context of crypto (how do you force someone to pay back the loan) but who's checking? The developer's code is constantly referred to by other coders as amazing so it must be good!
Also around the end of season one they start talking about how GenCoin is so awesome because it's closed-source unlike all the other cryptocurrencies out there. Yeah, another red flag, but again the show isn't really about crypto it's about starting up a business in the cutting edge of tech. There are a ton of moving parts to keep up with.
If Gencoin was real it would be a totally worthless asset bound to crash to zero. Why? Because it's closed source; meaning that it is a permissioned closed source network that employs KYC (Know Your Customer) regulations. This would be the only way to give people loans in the first place, because how else would you be able to force them to pay you back (short of liquidating collateral that poor people looking for loans don't have in the first place)?
At the end of the day this is nothing more than a fancy bank with the blockchain moniker. A real life, Gencoin Startup would never succeed, as these networks must be open and permissionless to survive. No amount of venture capital pumped into the project is going to change that, as we've seen proven true with every other enterprise blockchain controlled by a corporation. Networks without a "soul" end up dying, and zombie/vampire corporations are anything but alive.
For the most part this show is way way better than the critics let on. It got really good marks from viewers and terrible reviews from professionals, so my girlfriend and I thought we were walking in to some kind of cult-classic type deal, but honestly the show is just really good in pretty much every category. I almost wonder if professionals gave it the axe simply because it was a show about crypto that aired in 2016. Would not surprise me.
In the first few episodes they talk a lot about the importance of banking the unbanked and giving financial freedom to the world. There are a lot of moving parts. A corrupt FBI agent just looking to enrich himself (too real), a struggling but talented idealist developer who's been working on her project (GenCoin) for 7 years (started in 2009?), a Haitian gangster and his crew from the Miami hood, and an upper class rich kid with connections to shady sources trying to make a mark on society.
Honestly considering the reviews and everything I figured the show would have crashed into the mountain by now, but I've gotten to the point where this is perhaps one of the best shows I've seen in a while AND it's about crypto, the dark-web, and tech so it's right up our alley. Highly recommend.
