Mired in Controversy, A Film Gives HEX and Richard Heart the Hollywood Treatment

On a current Friday night at a downtown Los Angeles multiplex, a flock of males in brilliant neon weaved their method by crowds of pink-clad “Barbie” revelers and fedora-donning, would-be fathers of the atomic bomb, en path to a screening that featured their very own hero.

Their protagonist of alternative was Richard Schueler, aka Richard Coronary heart, the gaudy crypto shock jock greatest identified for founding HEX—a cryptocurrency that gained each steam and fraud accusations in equal measure after launching in 2019 with guarantees of 1,400% returns.

It was premiere night time for “The Highest of Stakes,” a documentary about Coronary heart that—based on one high-octane trailer—promised to interrogate whether or not the person had engineered “the funding of a lifetime” or “the steal of the century.”

Most viewers members didn’t want any assist figuring that one out. The overwhelming majority of them have been self-described “Hexicans,” loyal disciples of Coronary heart usually recognizable by their costume in magenta and orange, HEX’s signature colours.

As they mingled exterior earlier than the premiere, buzzing with promenade night time giddiness, some Hexicans posed with a poster for the film that prominently options Coronary heart at heart, his face caressed by the jewel-laden fingers of an unseen girl. 

The documentary’s administrators, Grant Peelle and Patrick Moreau, have been intent on crafting a nuanced portrait of their topic, Moreau instructed Decrypt—one unafraid to pose laborious questions each to Coronary heart’s advocates and detractors. 

“I feel that we’re gonna have folks on either side,” Moreau stated when requested how audiences would possibly reply to the movie. “It might be my hope that it is fairly darn near 50/50.”

What precisely that’s imagined to imply received somewhat murkier three days earlier than the movie’s premiere, when the SEC filed a slew of prices towards Coronary heart. The company alleged that the YouTube persona fraudulently spent over $12 million price of investor funds on exorbitant luxurious items, “recycled” investments in HEX’s presale to falsely inflate the token’s early success by nearly 2,000%, and bought greater than $1 billion price of unregistered securities. 

Moreau stated he was excited by the event, which he believes will make his film extra well timed in its exploration of the occasions that precipitated the SEC prices.

“I feel the movie will assist folks make extra sense of what is going on on,” he stated. 

Requested whether or not he or the movie had any perspective on whether or not Coronary heart in reality defrauded HEX holders or in any other case knowingly deceived them, Moreau demured, saying he had no authorized background and due to this fact no authorized understanding of fraud. Additional requested how he would really feel if a viewer elected to spend money on HEX after viewing his movie, Moreau stated all potential crypto traders ought to all the time do their very own analysis. Apparently, due to this fact, that analysis mustn’t consist primarily of viewing “The Highest of Stakes.” 

That wouldn’t be for lack of entry. Moreau and his co-director have been talking with Coronary heart since August 2021, and the crypto founder was an lively participant within the movie’s creation.

Throughout manufacturing on “The Highest of Stakes,” Coronary heart and the film’s manufacturing crew traveled across the globe to movie quite a few scenes on-location, together with a number of helicopter rides and high-speed automobile sequences. Interviews with Coronary heart have been shot in settings together with an underground cave, a European fortress, and a coastal Spanish property. 

The movie’s producers say they raised an preliminary $1 million finances for the movie from personal traders. Additionally they, nonetheless, solicited donations from the crypto group to bolster that finances. Crypto donations, sourced largely from the HEX group, quickly amounted to over $1 million, based on Moreau, greater than doubling the whole outlay.

This extra funding allowed manufacturing to “scale up” in enjoyable methods, Moreau stated. The manufacturing crew, as an example, acquired and made use of a Russian Arm, a gyro-stabilized crane mounted on the roof of a automobile that’s been used to movie motion sequences for multi-billion-dollar franchises together with “Mission: Unimaginable,” “Quick and Livid,” and “Surprise Lady.” 

Moreau insists that neither the movie’s slew of crypto donors nor its proximity to Coronary heart impacted its important skill to “tackle Richard and tackle HEX.” He is also cautious to level out that Coronary heart himself didn’t fund the movie—though typically, Coronary heart would reimburse manufacturing for personal flights and luxurious stays booked on his behalf.

Decrypt tried to get Coronary heart’s perspective on the movie and the SEC prices. Representatives for the movie stated that Coronary heart would reply Decrypt‘s questions by way of e-mail solely, however the HEX founder finally didn’t comply with by regardless of repeated makes an attempt to acquire the responses.

“The Highest of Stakes” does platform some critics of Coronary heart’s. However these criticisms are inclined to fixate on HEX’s underlying worth and the trustworthiness of cryptocurrency versus fiat cash, not Coronary heart’s conduct in allegedly deceiving his traders with intent and stealing their funds to bankroll his ostentatious life-style.

Moreau says the movie is basically about cryptocurrency basically, not Coronary heart specifically: that, by 50/50, he means he hopes 50% of audiences come away with a optimistic view of crypto as one thing price studying extra about. That’s a harmful conflation to make, although: for years, leaders in crypto have warned that Coronary heart’s monetary merchandise are scams, extra much like pyramid schemes than one thing like Ethereum. 

Inescapably, because the movie’s premise and advertising rightfully recommend, “The Highest of Stakes” actually is about Coronary heart. It swings from praising him as a benevolent genius to condemning him as an evil one; the likelihood that the person—who commonly invokes his claimed penis measurement as proof of his investing bona fides—is something lower than a world-historical determine is rarely examined. 

Within the time for the reason that SEC introduced its prices towards Coronary heart, the HEX.com web site has not been up to date to warn potential traders of the pending litigation, and even to contextualize it. It does, nonetheless, now prominently function the trailer for “The Highest of Stakes,” and a hyperlink to purchase tickets.