$5 haircuts, a 40-liter backpack, and no Lamborghinis

(Isstories Editorial):- New York City, New York May 22, 2025 (Issuewire.com) – $5 haircuts, a 40-liter backpack, and no Lamborghinis

Swapspace podcast hosts the directors of the new documentary “Vitalik: An Ethereum Story”

On May 20, a new episode of the SwapSpace Huddle podcast was released on YouTube — featuring Zach Ingrasci and Chris Temple, directors of the 2024 documentary “Vitalik: An Ethereum Story”. The film is now available on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, and Vimeo.

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In this exclusive interview, the directors share what it was like to spend two years filming one of the most iconic and unconventional figures in the crypto space — and how it changed their view of Web3 forever.

Quotes from the directors:

“We started with a YouTube video in Guatemala. A few years later, we were featured alongside “House of Cards” on the Netflix homepage,” Zach Ingrasci

“We shot over 300 hours of footage and edited it down to 90 minutes — all to show that crypto is really about people,” Chris Temple

“He’s not a cryptobro. He’s a philosopher in shorts — and he’s hilarious,” Chris Temple

“You could show this film to your mom — and she’d finally get that crypto isn’t all just scams,” Zach Ingrasci

 

Most people know Vitalik Buterin as a billionaire tech founder. But in both the documentary and the podcast, he appears very differently — someone who gets $5 haircuts, lives out of a 40-liter backpack, and takes the ethical responsibilities of technology seriously. What emerges is a portrait not of a coder, but of a philosopher for a decentralized age — and that’s exactly how the filmmakers chose to frame him.

The film wasn’t born out of a desire to hype the crypto market, but to tell human stories behind Web3. Zach and Chris recorded hundreds of hours of footage to capture Vitalik’s self-deprecating humor, humility, idealism, and open-source mindset. One of the film’s most powerful moments is Vitalik’s reflection on whether he bears responsibility for how his technology is used — drawing a comparison to Einstein and the atomic bomb.

The filmmakers’ own journey is just as compelling. They began with YouTube videos about poverty in rural Guatemala, followed by “This Is Not Financial Advice” — a documentary exploring the psychology of retail crypto investors. Eventually, they were invited by Vitalik to join Zuzulu, a pop-up “city” he organized in Montenegro that brought together engineers, philosophers, and futurists from around the world. For the directors, it became a living example of Ethereum’s ideals in action.

This episode of SwapSpace Huddle isn’t just about a film — it’s about understanding how public figures are shaped in the decentralized age, and why Vitalik’s vision resonates far beyond the blockchain.

SwapSpace Huddle is a podcast by crypto aggregator SwapSpace. While the platform focuses on seamless crypto exchanges, the podcast goes deeper — spotlighting the people behind the protocols, the thinkers behind the trends. Each episode offers a thoughtful, human-first look at the world of Web3.

The full video interview with the filmmakers is now live — exclusively on the

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