Crypto in the Mainstream: Ether Makes Cameo in Netflix Series

Popular movie and series streaming platform Netflix has just released the second series of its original show, The OA, and surprisingly, it features the use of the native crypto asset on the Ethereum blockchain, Ether (ETH). The science-fiction mystery drama revolves around a fictional online puzzle game (presumably an Ethereum-based decentralised application) called Q Symphony.

One of the characters in the show has won a substantial amount of Ether playing Q Symphony. Besides being Ethereum that takes centre stage, what’s interestingly is that the inclusion has little to do with either the Dark Web, trading, or money laundering.

Ethereum on Netflix: A Boon for Crypto Adoption

The second most popular crypto by market capitalisation has been featured prominently in the second series of a Netflix original show, The OA. The first episode introduces Ether as the currency used to reward players on a fictional online puzzle game called Symphony Q.

Fittingly, given its crypto content, the second series of The OA, titled “Part II” is based in tech-hub San Francisco. Whilst we are not going to give any spoilers here, the show is heavily influenced by both science-fiction and the supernatural . The story begins with a girl going missing who has made a substantial sum of Ether playing Symphony Q. Prior to her disappearance, she had sent all her earnings to her grandmother.

As you can see from the screenshot below, the series was shot prior to the recent bear market desecrating prices. No doubt many watching the first episode, titled “Chapter 1: Homecoming”, will have cursed the directors for not using a more up-to-date price:

Seemingly, The OA is set in a reality in which prices across the entire crypto market did not spend most of 2018 plunging downwards. This is somewhat forgivable since the action is set across multiple dimensions.

Although cryptocurrency has been used to drive plots in popular culture several times in recent years, what distinguishes this latest mention is the fact that The OA’s narrative does not focus around the dark web (as is the case in the movie Unfriended: Dark Web, which came out last year), computer hackers (like in an episode of The Blacklist, also a Netflix show), or exclusively on trading (as in an episode of Billions aired last year).

Ledger Nano S featured in the last episode of @SHO_Billions (Billions S03E07) "one million dollars straight in crypto, in cold storage". It was a great suprise for us! Getting more and more mainstream. pic.twitter.com/KYrprYAMSJ

— Ledger (@Ledger) May 7, 2018

By contrast, the Ether in The OA has been awarded for playing a video game, presumably similar – at face value, at least – to the many decentralised games in development around the world today. Crypto as a payment method seems to have been largely accepted without question as a legitimate means of value transfer for the show’s characters too.

It is also interesting to see Ethereum take centre stage over the obviously more recognisable Bitcoin. Evidently, the show’s writing department is crypto-savvy enough to differentiate between the potential future use cases of both digital assets.

Related Reading: Cryptocurrencies Represented in Pop Culture: Marvel, Silicon Valley, and Billions

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