Laura Shin’s ‘The Cryptopians’ Drama Series Playground – Deadline

EXCLUSIVE: Crypto page-turner The Cryptopians, written by Laura Shin, is in the works for the small screen.

Playground Entertainment, the company behind series such as Starz’s Dangerous Liaisons and Peacock/Channel 4’s Undeclared War, has optioned the rights to the non-fiction book with plans to turn it into a television drama series.

The Cryptopians: Idealism, Greed, Lies, and the Making of the First Big Cryptocurrency Craze tells the inside story of the meteoric rise of cryptocurrency giant Ethereum. It features interviews with more than 200 people.

It follows brilliant young man named Vitalik Buterin and the fight for his multi-billion-dollar creation: Ethereum – the Bitcoin rival that added fuel to the cryptocurrency craze and gave rise to NFTs.

With access to the larger-than-life characters responsible for bringing Ethereum’s remarkable technology to the masses, the globe-trotting story tracks these young geniuses, hustlers, hackers and millionaires from beachfront mansions in Miami to the mountains of Switzerland and beyond as they jockey for control of a revolutionary technology.

Shin is a writer, crypto journalist, and podcaster, who hosts the Unchained podcast, which has had over 20M downloads.

Playground’s joint Managing Directors Scott Huff and David Stern oversaw the acquisition of the book and will executive produce for Playground.

“With the world of crypto and web3 becoming increasingly enmeshed in our financial, political and cultural lives, now feels like the perfect time to examine how we got here,” said Huff and Stern. “Laura’s brilliant book uses high-stakes human drama to demystify and make accessible an emergent technology still misunderstood by so many. We’re thrilled to be partnered with her to help bring to the screen the story of these trailblazers who are shaping the future of the internet and the world.”

Shin is represented by WME and Janklow & Nesbit.