The Little Black Book of Billionaire Secrets Is Crypto the Future of Film Funding?

Steve Forbes , FORBES STAFF
“With all thy getting, get understanding."
Naomi Brockwell—entertainer, producer and noted cryptocurrency expert—gives here a fascinating analysis of an overlooked aspect of this phenomenon.

TODAY EVERYONE talks about the price of bitcoin. It rallies, and your taxi driver tells you to invest. It tanks, and the media tells you it’s dead. But this talk about volatility is only scratching the surface of what the cryptocurrency revolution really means. The technology has caused an upheaval in the traditional financial sector, creating new ways to invest and a new class of nouveau-crypto-riche, who are eager to put their fortunes into worthy projects. Furthermore, once the mainstream begins to understand how the tech works, we could see even more money pour into the sector.

What does this mean for those trying to raise capital? It means the landscape has completely changed. In 2017 VCs raised a total of $200 million dollars in capital for blockchain and crypto technology. ICOs (initial coin offerings), which are a new vehicle for raising investment capital using tokens and cryptocurrency, raised $3.8 billion total. This freeing of the capital markets created a $3.6 billion increase in the amount of money raised. The effects of this spread across all industries. One sector in which it could really be a game changer is entertainment.

We have already seen the democratization of the entertainment industry and the weakening of Hollywood’s control. We’ve seen the rise of independent studios, and smaller platforms like Netflix coming out of nowhere and taking center stage with their original productions, as well as untouchables, such as Harvey Weinstein, finally being held accountable for their actions. All of this spells a huge change in how film and television are being made, and we’re seeing a significant decline in the influence that large, top-down studios have.

Enter HardFork, a new television series from a Sundance alumni, director Doug Karr. This series is set in a dystopian future where cryptocurrency and augmented reality rule. A group of renogades uses blockchain tech to hack the system and decentralize the power structures. This multimillion-dollar series is the first large-scale, mainstream production to be focused on what a new cryptocurrency and blockchain world might look like. But there’s a twist: The funding for the series is being raised entirely with cryptocurrency.

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“The HardFork series is one of the first projects of its scope to take this nontraditional, decentralized fundraising path,” explains Karr, who early on saw cryptocurrency’s potential for his projects. “For HardFork, Steemit.com was an obvious place to start with our community building and initial funding; it’s where we raised our incubation money.”

Steemit.com is a cryptocurrency-backed social media platform where artists earn money for content they post. The team raised an initial 30k on the platform by creating and sharing content, which was enough to produce a teaser trailer. The teaser debuted at Steemit’s annual conference in Lisbon, Portugal last November, where it received tremendous audience support.

“We met people in Lisbon who had been following the HardFork series for months and were just as excited about it as we were. This new fundraising vehicle allowed us to create an audience around the project as we were raising capital. That’s ultimately what distributors want to see, that you have an in-built audience. So it was really a win-win for us.”

Audience building has been vital as the team continues to seek support from various crypto communities. In December HardFork’s team submitted a proposal to the DASH cryptocurrency team--which earmarks a significant amount of the coins it mines monthly to fund crypto-related projects. The campaign was successful, raising the equivalent of nearly a million dollars from DASH. This moved the production into high gear, speeding it out of incubation.

“The ease with which we've been able to get things moving is unlike anything I've experienced in film,” say Karr. “Studios move slowly, but the crypto world--they move at light speed.”

A gaming company is part of the HardFork series, so AR games will be released in tandem with the series. It could be that this project is of unique interest to the community and that other projects might not have such good luck at fundraising. But the HardFork team doesn't think so.

“There’s no reason this funding model couldn’t be adapted to work for any creative project, whether it be music, a major motion picture or even theater,” says Eric Vance Walton, HardFork co-creator. “It seems the main barrier to adoption is understanding. The HardFork series is providing an example for others to follow and raising awareness about the fascinating technological advances in this space, while aiming to bring down those barriers in a fun and engaging way.”

The HardFork team members--comprised of blockchain specialists, crypto influencers, Sundance alumni filmmakers and Hollywood talent--has joined forces to create a professional-grade, sci-fi thriller geared toward streaming services, both conventional (Netflix, Amazon Prime) and decentralized. Coming soon to screens near you--and, if this new wave of fundraising pans out, so may many other new series.