Unbanked
October 28th, 2025
MOVIE: UNBANKED
STARRING: JACK DORSEY, TED CRUZ, NIALL FERGUSON
DIRECTED BY: DAVID KUHN, LAUREN SIECKMANN
AMovieGuy.com’s RATING: 1 STAR (Out of 4)
RATED: PG
RUN TIME: 86 MINUTES
Cryptocurrency and Bitcoin are two words I know absolutely nothing about. I understand they’re forms of digital currency- that much I can glean- but if I had to explain them to my 78-year-old mother, I’d fail miserably. Unbanked, a documentary about Bitcoin directed by David Kuhn and Lauren Sieckmann, didn’t help much either. What I did learn, however, is that Unbanked isn’t really a documentary at all. It’s a painfully biased, tone-deaf promotional video for the entire crypto industry. Much like the digital currency it champions- and the talking heads who push it- this film is a shady piece of work.
The truth is, Bitcoin is an industry I would never touch. I don’t know enough about it, and I’m not confident I ever could. The supposed goal of Unbanked seems to be to briefly educate viewers about cryptocurrency while convincing them it’s a safe and simple way to take their money out of big banks and put it back into their own pockets. The problem is that no reasonable person could take this film as anything more than a glossy puff piece. A recruiting ad dressed up as a documentary. And if this movie manages to persuade you, well, I’ve got a few investments of my own I’d love to tell you about.
It might sound harsh to criticize what appears to be a well-intentioned film, but directors Kuhn and Sieckmann dedicate about two minutes to the negatives and spend the rest of the runtime glorifying crypto. The FTX scandal with Sam Bankman-Fried is barely mentioned. Senators Elizabeth Warren and Dick Durbin briefly warn about crypto’s predatory nature, but their concerns vanish under an avalanche of pro-Bitcoin soundbites. From Jack Dorsey to a dataminer in Des Moines to a bright-eyed twenty-something in Uganda, every talking head gushes about crypto’s potential- often while wearing a T-shirt promoting a different Bitcoin company. Even a glance at Sieckmann’s Instagram reveals her clear pro-Bitcoin bias. The result isn’t just an unbalanced film; it’s an unethical one. The entire project oozes a kind of slimy insincerity, as if no one involved cared about informing viewers, only about recruiting the next sucker to buy in.
Beyond its dubious motives, Unbanked is also mind-numbingly repetitive. By the third or fourth person insisting that cryptocurrency isn’t a scam and it’s the “future of banking,” you’ll start to feel like a half-asleep student in a high school economics class. And the final insult? The documentary proudly features Ted Cruz- yes, that Ted Cruz- as one of its champions. If you’re trying to convince people that cryptocurrency is cool, then you should not have that turd as a voice.
Frankly, Unbanked just isn’t a real documentary. It’s as tangible as digital currency itself and just as hard to trust.
1 STAR
UNBANKED IS AVAILABLE ON AMAZON PRIME, GOOGLE, APPLE, AND VIMEO ON DEMAND ON FRIDAY, OCTOBER 31ST, 2025.
Written by: Leo Brady
