DANCES WITH FILMS 2026 REVIEW! Writer/director Marcus Niehaus’s Tales from the Crypto takes you back to the early days of DeFi Summer, when cryptocurrency looked like the fastest shortcut to insane wealth. This is the story of a young immigrant who stumbles into that world out of pure desperation and quickly learns that opportunity and danger lurk at every turn.
Ravi (Aryaan Ohri) came to America to fulfill his parents’ dream — they saw great potential in him. His parents, back in India, mortgaged the family farm to pay for his education. While in school, Ravi was working as a programmer, trying to make it worth their sacrifice. Then COVID hits. His company shuts down, he’s back home working remotely, and the money isn’t stretching as far as he hoped. Worse, the lockdowns are killing the harvest in India, and his parents are running out of options.
Before the shutdown, Ravi noticed that his coworker, Nick (Marcus Niehaus), had been quietly messing around with cryptocurrency. With the financial pressure mounting, Ravi starts asking Nick questions, and Nick suggests he join the Crypto Discord group. Before long, he, Nick, Matt (Jason Hamilton), and Lucas (Paul Isakson) are all in — each one bringing specific skills to the table from technical analysis to programming — Ravi’s specialty. They go deep into DeFi Summer, chasing trades, watching charts, and taking their cues from a crypto YouTuber named CryptoCobra (Jeremy Urann). They open the Discord group to others in hopes of getting more eyes on different coins, and with their combined skills, things start to click into place.
“He thinks his programming skills and some well-placed bots might be the edge they need to not just survive the scam, but expose the people running it.”
There’s great opportunity in crypto, but there are wolves out there, and the boys run straight into one — the Sandwich Play. This play has been bleeding them dry. Essentially, traders pump coins through chats and videos, lure in buyers, and when the price hits the top, they pull the rug out from underneath them. Ravi is determined to beat it. He thinks his programming skills and some well-placed bots might be the edge they need to not just survive the scam, but expose the people running it.
Tales from the Crypto is one of those films that is not the typical drama we get at Film Threat. Yes, it’s a comedy, but I see it more as a light drama. This is a deep dive into the world of cryptocurrency. It’s a grind where unwitting investors chase coins, get burned, and try to figure out the winning play. Ravi’s journey from broke programmer to crypto trader hits every beat you’ve heard about in this world and makes it feel authentic.
What the film does well is lay out why people get into crypto in the first place — the desperation, the community they build, and obviously the thrill of the short play over the long haul. Here, the boys — Ravi, Nick, Matt, and Lucas — are trying to get ahead of the scam coins, spot them, and if they’re lucky, expose a weakness. The film doesn’t shy away from showing the losses alongside the wins, and it does a good job of capturing the diversity of investors and what’s at stake for each. Tales from the Crypto is not necessarily a pitch to its audience to get into cryptocurrency, but I walked away more open to understanding what it’s all about. More than that, it’s a solid drama about friendship — four guys building something together and fighting to protect it. If you’re already crypto-curious, this film is going to feel like someone finally made the movie about your world. And if you’re not, it might just scare you away from getting involved at all.
Tales from the Crypto screened at the 2026 Dances with Films.
"…cryptocurrency looked like the fastest shortcut to insane wealth."
