Review: ‘Cold Wallet’ Frays The Nerves But Says Nothing About Crypto Scams

Every day a new crypto scam appears.

What was sold as the unshackling of the finance system to benefit everyone – not just the elite – has evolved into a 21st-century pyramid scheme for scammers to prey on the innocent. Cold Wallet explores this concept where people are sold the American dream, but it turns into a financially ruining nightmare. Mild spoilers for the film to follow.

What is ‘Cold Wallet’ about?

Billy (Raúl Castillo) has been down on his luck for too long, but he sees the tide turning in his crypto investments and plans to buy a house so that his daughter can visit him. At the same time, he has also convinced his friend Dom (Tony Cavalero) to invest, telling him that this is the way to change both their fortunes. It all comes crashing down with the news that the cryptocurrency’s founder Charles Hegel (Josh Brener) died and all the money’s vanished. In Billy’s case, he ends up owing money.

Then, Billy receives a message from Eva (Melonie Diaz), a Redditor he’s been chatting to for a while, about how Hegel isn’t really dead but scammed everyone. She convinces Billy and a reluctant Dom to be like Robin Hood and find Hegel at his secluded mansion. Once there, they plan to force him to pay back everything he’s stolen. Yet, Eva, Billy, and Dom aren’t well versed in the art of home invasion or kidnapping, so their plan doesn’t go as swimmingly well as expected.

Four performances that keep the audience guessing

For the bulk of Cold Wallet, the film is carried by four characters – Raúl Castillo’s Billy, Melonie Diaz’s Eva, Tony Cavalero’s Dom and Josh Brener’s Charles Hegel. The actors create a knife-edge dynamic where the tension remains at an all-time high, and no one can be certain about which way the story will go as Hegel proves to be the devil on the protagonists’ shoulders and tempts them to turn on each other. John Hibey’s script plants enough seeds of doubt about the characters, leaving the audience wondering if someone might cave in and accept what Hegel offers. In fact, Hegel’s propensity to be a heinous P.O.S. is the only certainty here. 

In Billy’s case, everyone senses the desperation, as everything he does is for the benefit of his daughter. Desperate times call for desperate measures, and if he’s already gone this far, how much further is he prepared to go? 

For Dom, he’s here to recover his investment, but he values peace over violence. He never wanted to invade Hegel’s mansion, and he begins to question if Billy is going down a path that he isn’t prepared to walk.

In terms of Eva, she remains the enigma. She’s someone who Billy met on Reddit and suggested the plan of stealing back the crypto from Hegel and giving it back to everyone. While it sounds Robin Hood-esque, is she being genuine?

It’s a nibble rather than biting commentary about crypto and financial markets

Look, let’s be real here for a second: There are various debates about cryptocurrency and if it’s the solution to de-centralizing authority over money. Even if someone is in favor of it, there’s no disputing that crypto scams are a major issue around the world, and a lot of people have lost their life savings to them like the characters in Cold Wallet. 

The film does a good job in portraying how people are preyed upon by those who have the means and the scammers are remorseless about their actions. Cold Wallet also showcases how we live in a dog-eat-dog world, and we need to protect ourselves from scenarios where if something looks too good to be true, it is. 

That said, the film never really dives into the mechanics of the crypto scams – specifically this one – and how they succeed in catching people off guard beyond showing how Billy’s biggest failure is doing his research on Reddit. It could have been an opportunity to educate viewers – perhaps even pulling apart how Charles Hegel executed his scam in finer detail – but it’s more of a plot device to lead to the action rather than a social commentary about a huge problem we face in a digitally connected world. Instead, the only real message is: Capitalism is bad.

Is ‘Cold Wallet’ worth watching?

Despite its failure to say something of substance about cryptocurrency scams, Cold Wallet succeeds in generating a suspenseful thriller that scratches at anxiety levels. No one ever knows if the protagonists might be tempted to turn on each other, or if Charles Hegel will get away with his scheme like other crypto bros – and the film toys with both possibilities. All in all, Cold Wallet is a well-acted and tense thriller that entertains for 93 minutes and might make you think twice about the next [INSERT STUPID NAME]coin that gets launched.