My wife and I watched this documentary last night. It's about a man aggressively donating sperm by lying to sperm banks and to recipients of private donations, resulting in thousands of worldwide offspring (approximated). In the first episode, the sperm donor is shown eating raw meat in full sun, claiming sun on one's scalp prevents baldness, and my bitcoiner radar went off. In the second episode, it's confirmed, the dude is a bitcoiner (which was at least preceded by a "crypto" phase as other clips from his youtube channel reveal). Quite a few times in the documentary the victims are perplexed as to how he's funding his travels, further confirming his bitcoinerness, as half the bitcoiners I know (at least in my small austin/transplant/founder circle) appear to be full-blown or semi retired, either in anticipation of a come up or because they've experienced one.
There's lots of easy jokes to make about this, but my favorite is "he's putting his DNA in a globally decentralized ledger of other human beings." It's a joke, but I do wonder if bitcoin helped inform his exploit or merely gave him the free time to be a modern Genghis Kahn.
This is the third time in recent memory that I've seen bitcoin casually mentioned, where it isn't the subject matter, in popular media. Watching the normalization happen in real time is awesome.
That's funny! you reminded me of a movie I saw that casually uses bitcoin as a plot device. It's called The Lost City, and stars Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum. A silly romcom, but there's a matter of kidnapping, and in order to appease captors, they send bitcoin over an app.
I forgot about the bitcoin payment in The Lost City. Fun movie.
He better be stacking a lot of sats. He must have some civil cases coming his way.
Most of the doc took place in the Netherlands, and while I'm not sure what constitutes a reasonable civil case anywhere, it sounded like there weren't really laws protecting the parents there given how novel the situation is.
A lot the parents were also conflicted because they didn't want to punish/destroy/upset the biological father of their children.
Ok you twisted my arm. I will watch this now to see how it all plays out.
This is absolutely hilarious
Its a bit of a stretch to say he has 1000 kids. Its not like Genghis Khan who had to do the deed himself.
True. Offspring then?
It's nice to get Genghis Khn mentioned here!
Bin Laden in recent times had more than 100 children!!
There's a movie in Bollywood by the name 'Vicky Donor' in Bollywood where Doctor also mentions that your sperm donation is recorded in a private ledger. Although, it didn't mention Bitcoin and the movie was released in 2012.
People who are mostly uninformed often ask me about the real use cases or normal daily life uses of Bitcoin. I think I may now add it as a casual answer. The possibilities with Bitcoin are unlimited!
I think this is a fascinating example of a human-to-human “asymmetry of knowledge” problem: if the mothers had full knowledge of the situation, would they have consented?
I’m beginning to wonder if “asymmetry of knowledge” is the best ethical ground to call for better regulations in medicine and technology and who knows, government and even education reform - what puts the safety of the consumer/citizen first? How do you protect the many from the actions of one?
There’s a lot of grayness in terms of the morality of this particular situation. However, I wonder if the implied threat to abandon the children based on the mothers’ behavior is any indication of his true magnanimity.
What we do in the shadows
Women being narcissistic and going this route to procreation is such a shame. No one ever calls this type of behavior out. Not trying to point fingers but the lack of responsibility is ridiculous.
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I missed something by the sound of it. I didn't watch his videos. In the doc, in one video he's talking about bitcoin specifically. In another, he was altcoining, but I optimistically assumed that was an earlier video.