April 12, 2025
by Carla Hay
Directed by Cutter Hodierne
Culture Representation: Taking place in Massachusetts, the comedy/drama film “Cold Wallet” features a predominantly white group of people (with a few Latin people) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.
Culture Clash: Three disgruntled investors, who lost thousands of dollars in a cryptocurrency fraud, kidnap the company’s CEO, who faked his own death, and try to force him to tell them where he hid the fortune that he got from scamming people.
Culture Audience: “Cold Wallet” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in stories about cryptocurrency scams, even if some of the plot developments in “Cold Wallet” look too contrived for the movie.
“Cold Wallet” is not a great movie about the consequences of cryptocurrency scamming. It’s better taken as a dark comedy instead of a serious thriller. The performances are watchable, and there’s enough suspense to keep most viewers engaged in the story. There are some plot holes, but the movie’s often-absurd tone gives this entire film an aura of hyper-realism that’s not meant to be taken too seriously.
Directed by Cutter Hodierne and written by John Hibey, “Cold Wallet” had its world premiere at the 2024 SXSW Film & TV Festival. The movie takes place in the Berkshires region of Massachusetts. The movie’s title refers to virtual cryptocurrency wallets that are in “cold storage”—meaning kept off of the Internet. A “cold wallet” is device or method to store cryptocurrency keys that are hidden and untraceable, similar to offshore accounts in traditional banking.
“Cold Wallet” is loosely based on the real-life scandal of the cryptocurrency company Quadriga, but the vigilante plot was fabricated for the movie. In 2018, Quadriga founder/CEO Gerald William Cotton reportedly died when he was traveling in India, but there has been speculation that he faked his death in order to take a fortune that only he could access through cryptocurrency. According to news reports, $190 million went missing or could not be accessed, with much of the money in “cold wallet” accounts, where only Cotton knew the password. About 115,000 Quadriga investors were affected.
“Cold Wallet” takes a fictional look at what would happen in a similar situation if the company CEO faked his own death, and then three vengeful investors tracked him down, kidnapped him at his hideout place, and forced him to give them the passwords to these “cold wallet” accounts. The movie’s main protagonist is a sad sack named Billy (played by Raúl Castillo), who wants to prove to his ex-wife Eileen (played by Zoe Winters) that he’s not a deadbeat dad. Billy and Eileen have a daughter named Steph (played by Joanna Sylvie Weinig), who’s about 8 or 9 years old.
Eileen and her current husband or partner Justin live with Steph in a house owned by Billy. However, Billy hasn’t paid the house’s mortgage for the past 10 months. Eileen is very resentful that she and Justin have had to cover the mortgage payments during this time period. Not much else is mentioned about Billy’s background except he is currently unemployed and almost financially broke. He’s taken a big gamble by investing in a cryptocurrency company named Tulip.
Billy brags to a skeptical Eileen and Justin that this investment will pay off very well and will result in Billy having enough money to pay his debts and have enough left over to buy a new house for himself. Billy promises Steph that he’s going to buy a bigger and better house that she can go to when he visits her. The relationship between Billy and Eileen is still fraught with a lot of anger and bitterness. Their interactions in the movie show her mostly yelling at and insulting him.
Billy soon gets very bad news when he finds out that he’s lost a little more than $42,000 from online trading of Tulip stocks. And the news gets worse: The CEO of Tulip, Charles Hegel (played by Josh Brener), died in Kenya over the weekend, according to media reports. Charles is the only one with access to unlock the Tulip Exchange. Investors in Tulip can no longer buy or sell their Tulip stock, which gets delisted. This delisting leaves thousands of customers with worthless Tulip stock and financial losses totaling millions of dollars for all of these scammed customers.
Billy’s closest friend Dom (played by Tony Cavalero) is one of these Tulip investors too. Dom is a semi-professional wrestler who does wrestling training at a local gym that is financially struggling. Dom, who lost about $25,000 in the Tulip scam, took out a personal loan to help save the gym. Dom had been counting on the Tulip investment to pay back the loan. And now, Dom (just like Billy) is financially broke, wth both of ther losses totaling $67,000.
Unlike volatile Billy, Dom likes to think he has a calm spirit who wants to be at peace and harmony in the world. Dom is the type of person who meditates. Billy most definitely is not that type of person. Although Dom is not very smart, he has a moral compass which makes it harder for him to go along with the criminal plan that is hatched in the story.
For about a year, Billy has been communicating on Reddit with another Tulip investor, who uses the name Eva Zero (played by Melonie Diaz) and who has also lost her money in the Tulip scam. Eva messages Billy after this financial fiasco to tell him that she has proof that Charles is still alive. She believes that he bought a fake death certificate. Through some amateur detective work, Eva says that she’s tracked down Charles’ hiding place at a mansion in Lenox, Massachusetts.
Eva tells Billy that they should do a home invasion of this hideout, hold Charles captive, and force Charles to give them the password for Charles’ “cold wallet.” Billy is desperate to get his money back, so he tells Dom about this plan and says they should do this home invasion. Dom immediately says no. Billy persuades Dom to at least go with him to meet Eva in person.
Billy and Dom meet Eva at a diner. She is forceful, intense and very bossy. Eva is a skilled computer hacker and is the mastermind of the plan, but she needs Billy and Dom to be the physical enforcers. Dom agrees to the home invasion and kidnapping on the condition that if they steal a fortune from Charles, they should keep for themselves only the amounts that they lost in their Tulip investments and give the rest of the money to all the other cheated Tulip investors that they know about.
Billy, Dom and Eva do a lot of things that show they’re really bungling criminals. They buy a gun and other items used in the home invasion that could easily be traced back to them. They also use Billy’s car to drive to the mansion (which is in a remote wooded area) and don’t even try to hide the license plate. The kidnapping takes place during a winter month when there is icy snow covering the ground, which means their footprints and tire tracks could be left in the snow as evidence.
Here’s where the movie starts to get a bit unrealistic: The only person who seems to be guarding the mansion is an unnamed elderly groundskeeper (played by Nigel Gore), who is immediately suspicious when Billy, Dom and Eva drive up to the mansion. Billy pretends that he is there to deliver food that was ordered by Charles. The groundskeeper doesn’t quite believe this story and orders them off of the property.
However, the groundskeeper tells Billy to “tell corporate what’s going on,” in case Billy is telling the truth. The groundskeeper isn’t shown checking with anyone inside the mansion to see if Billy’s story is true. This mansion is also too accessible, since there is no security gate.
The three vigilantes drive away but eventually go back to the mansion at night. The groundskeeper is nowhere in sight, so they just sneak into the mansion. It looks too easy. For a fugitive who’s in hiding, Charles hasn’t made it very hard for people to find him in a house that doesn’t have a security gate or other security precautions.
Charles has camera surveillance inside the house, but that’s not enough to prevent anyone from breaking into the house. The movie also shows that Charles is in the mansion by himself and has no bodyguards or other security personnel. This lack of protection looks very foolish for a multimillionaire fugitive. However, some disbelief can be suspended if you consider that many real-life financial criminals have made more foolish mistakes.
As already revealed in the “Cold Wallet” trailer, the three home invaders succeed in taking Charles hostage. (He’s a cliché of an arrogant and nerdy computer tech millionaire.) What happens after that is a battle of wits, fueled by greed, as Charles and the vigilantes try to outsmart each other. Charles uses manipulation to try to turn the vigilantes against each other. The vigilantes use threats and guesses to try to get access to Charles’ cold wallet information.
“Cold Wallet” is sometimes unevenly paced. It’s also a movie where viewers should not expect to like many of the characters. One of the saving graces of the story is that it doesn’t completely glorify vigilantism, because there are many dangerous things that happen to the three home invaders. Ultimately, the movie is less about the kidnapping and more about the “get rich quick” mentality that causes people to get into these messes in the first place.
Well Go USA released “Cold Wallet” in select U.S. cinemas and on digital and VOD on February 28, 2025.
