S11.E09: The Bitcoin Entanglement

[Zahdii]

Sheldon tries to teach the guys a lesson after they cut him out of a potentially valuable Bitcoin investment. Also, a seven-year-old video reveals a secret about Leonard and Penny's relationship.

[Spartan Girl]

"Why are they making four Avatar movies? The first one wasn't even that good!" Took the words right out of my mouth.

Even if it was just recycled footage, it was good to hear Howard's mom again.

I hate Stuart so I'm glad he unknowingly erased the flash drive and screwed himself out of the Bitcoin.

[anna0852]

Sheldon owes Howard, Raj and Leonard the amount of money that bitcoin would have been worth. There's no way Mr. Eidetic Memory doesn't know the amount. This is one of the most dickish things Sheldon has ever done and that is saying something. This wasn't him being quirky or weird. It was outright theft.

[CleoCaesar]

Bitcoin recently hit $10,000 so yeah...the guys should really just murder Sheldon at this point.

[anna0852]

I think Bernadette will take care of that for them once she's off bedrest. She volatile at the best of times and doesn't like Sheldon that much to begin with.

[TV Anonymous]

How is the end of this episode funny? IMO it is offensive. Sheldon wanted to be out of the deal then he broke into the computer and deleted the files, costing his colleagues - I can not consider them friends at this point - thousands of dollars? No matter that he moved it to Leonard's flash drive, without Sheldon telling Leonard it is theft plain and simple. Tell me, is there any conceivable reason why they still consider Sheldon their friend?

[jewel21]

I really enjoyed this episode. I loved the flashbacks. It was great seeing The Cheesecake Factory again, and having Bernadette and Penny back in their waitress uniforms. I was happy to see Zack and laughed at Penny's drunken video and her falling off the chair. And, I loved hearing Mrs. Wolowitz's voice again. It's something I've greatly missed. I kept this on the PVR so I can watch it again before eventually deleting it.

[chocolatine]

Sheldon is almost beyond redemption with all the crap he's pulled in the past few episodes. If he really just wanted to back up the Bitcoin, he would have COPIED it to the flash drive, not MOVED it. That's not how data backup works, and he bloody well knows it.

[BlossomCulp]

9 minutes ago, chocolatine said:

f he really just wanted to back up the Bitcoin, he would have COPIED it to the flash drive, not MOVED it. That's not how data backup works, and he bloody well knows it.

Haven't seen this episode yet so maybe there is more to it but let's not forget just because Sheldon Cooper, the character, should know something that doesn't mean the people who wrote the episode actually knew it.

[thebigboot]

Sheldon is an a$$, does something that any sane person would stop being friends with, and it’s some how funny, rinse and repeat.

Didnt realize it was so easy to be a writer for the show.

[hoodooznoodooz]

This is the first time I thought Zack was appealing. He was very sweet to Leonard. 

[SmithW6079]

2 hours ago, anna0852 said:

Sheldon owes Howard, Raj and Leonard the amount of money that bitcoin would have been worth. There's no way Mr. Eidetic Memory doesn't know the amount. This is one of the most dickish things Sheldon has ever done and that is saying something. This wasn't him being quirky or weird. It was outright theft.

 

1 hour ago, TV Anonymous said:

How is the end of this episode funny? IMO it is offensive. Sheldon wanted to be out of the deal then he broke into the computer and deleted the files, costing his colleagues - I can not consider them friends at this point - thousands of dollars? No matter that he moved it to Leonard's flash drive, without Sheldon telling Leonard it is theft plain and simple. Tell me, is there any conceivable reason why they still consider Sheldon their friend?

Yes, yet another episode of Sheldon being a dick and an ass (maybe he should just go fuck himself already) to his "friends," and then expecting them to forgive him and move on as though nothing happened. He stole from them and he lied to them.

[aemom]

I'm not a bitcoin expert, but I'm pretty sure that you can't copy a bitcoin onto a flash drive.

I'm also pretty sure that a simple laptop would not have the required juice to mine for bitcoin in the first place.

While I enjoyed the flashbacks, these points kept taking me out of the show.

[Snarklepuss]

I don't know why they think they have to keep making Sheldon an ass just for the plot's sake.  The audience wants to see him grow in a positive direction, not turn mean spirited.

I enjoyed the "flashback" scenes although it was pretty obvious that they were filmed in the present.  Good job, though and yes, nice to see their old haunts again.

And yes to it being implausible that Sheldon wouldn't have kept a copy of the bitcoin file when copying it to Leonard's flash drive.

[chocolatine]

1 hour ago, hoodooznoodooz said:

This is the first time I thought Zack was appealing. He was very sweet to Leonard. 

I always thought that Zack was a sweet-natured guy. He's not the brightest, but IMO his niceness makes up for it.

58 minutes ago, AEMom said:

I'm not a bitcoin expert, but I'm pretty sure that you can't copy a bitcoin onto a flash drive.

Isn't a Bitcoin just a directory of files? Or do you mean the files are too big for an old keychain flash drive?

1 hour ago, AEMom said:

I'm also pretty sure that a simple laptop would not have the required juice to mine for bitcoin in the first place.

Maybe they just wrote the code on the laptop but ran it on the cloud (or illegally on the CalTech machines)? I write and test all my code on my laptop, but run the compute-heavy stuff on AWS.

[Rascotes]

What the hell?  That was so messed up and wrong.  Why would the writers think this was in any way funny?

This show is starting to get to the point where watching it is more a chore than a pleasure.

[rmontro]

I really enjoyed all the flashback scenes in this episode.  Oddly enough, it made the show feel fresh again.  It just goes to show that the way the original concept was conceived was funnier and more entertaining (IMO), before they brought in all the character growth and all.  Which is not to say character growth is bad, but I do think the earlier seasons were the best.

[aemom]

6 hours ago, chocolatine said:

I always thought that Zack was a sweet-natured guy. He's not the brightest, but IMO his niceness makes up for it.

Isn't a Bitcoin just a directory of files? Or do you mean the files are too big for an old keychain flash drive?

Maybe they just wrote the code on the laptop but ran it on the cloud (or illegally on the CalTech machines)? I write and test all my code on my laptop, but run the compute-heavy stuff on AWS.

My limited understanding is that when you mine a bitcoin, the information about the computer's MAC adddress and the info about which bitcoin was mined is all saved in a very complicated hash. So it's not something that you can just copy somewhere.  But I'm not an expert so maybe it's feasible.  But I can see the show not thinking about it too much in the name of comedy. 

[LisaM]

First episode in a while that I have hated. 

[Ms Lark]

15 hours ago, AEMom said:

I'm also pretty sure that a simple laptop would not have the required juice to mine for bitcoin in the first place.

Geek stuff on Bitcoin Mining from Investopedia:

"In the earliest days of Bitcoin, mining was done with CPUs from normal desktop computers.  Graphics cards, or graphics processing units (GPUs), are more effective at mining than CPUs and as Bitcoin gained popularity, GPUs became dominant.  Eventually, hardware known as an ASIC, which stands for Application-Specific Integrated Circuit, was designed specifically for mining bitcoin.  The first ones were released in 2013 and have been improved upon since, with more efficient designs coming to market.  Mining is competitive and today can only be done profitably with the latest ASICs.  When using CPUs, GPUs, or even the older ASICs, the cost of energy consumption is greater than the revenue generated."

I enjoyed the flashbacks, but Sheldon is becoming a worse dick. Why do any of them still hang with him? Why is Amy still putting up with his crap? She's already proven she can attract men who will treat her better. Ah, well. Hard to believe Sheldon was once my favorite character. Anymore it's becoming a trial to watch.

Edited December 1, 2017 by Ms Lark

[buffynut]

I really liked this episode a lot... until the end.  Of course, I didn't expect them to be rich, but hated that yet again Sheldon ruined something for his "friends".

Other than the ending, there were a lot of laughs. And I loved seeing the Cheesecake Factory again. And Howard's bedroom, and hearing his mother's voice. And seeing Zack. As mentioned upthread, the original concept was the best. 

[iMonrey]

I enjoyed the flashback gimmick, but I agree what Sheldon did really crossed a line.

It's interesting that Mayim Bialik seems to recognize the difference between how she played Amy when she first joined the show versus how she plays her now (or, maybe the director did). Yet, she didn't quite nail the clipped manner of speaking she utilized in those first several episodes when she first started on the show. I wish she'd gone back and looked at them.

[Sarah 103]

10 hours ago, chocolatine said:

I always thought that Zack was a sweet-natured guy. He's not the brightest, but IMO his niceness makes up for it.

Me too. I always got the sense that in high school, Zack probably bullied nerds like Leonard and his friends, but that he was just going along with what his jock friends were doing. Since high school Zack has changed. Zack may not be the sharpest crayon in the box, but he is a very sweet and nice guy. At this point, I wish we could see more of Zack and less of Stuart.  

[highway61]

Quote

I loved seeing the Cheesecake Factory again. And Howard's bedroom, and hearing his mother's voice. And seeing Zack. As mentioned upthread, the original concept was the best. 

And Penny's cleavage...

 

Seriously, it reminded me of the backwards 'Seinfeld' episode. And it did make me miss the old funny. 

Edited December 1, 2017 by highway61

[Traveller519]

It was fun looking back in their lives, along with the little touches like Howard's monochromatic outfits and the pop culture references to 2010.

I didn't love the Amy "cameo" in the past, but I suppose it was fair. She definitely did breathe some life into the series shortly thereafter.

I wonder if the guys would have been smart enough to have dumped at least half their bitcoin in order to translate it into actual currency. It seemed like they had things they wanted to purchase so hopefully, but I worry they would talk themselves into bitcoin being the wave of the future and continued to hold it. I wonder if Sheldon separately mined bitcoin? He definitely seems like the type who would hold onto it with his perfect idea of the future basically being a computer mainframe, and not really having any use for his money in his present life.

[wendyg]

For sure, seven years ago (2010) you could mine bitcoin on an ordinary computer. Equally, you could buy them very cheaply. You can certainly copy your wallet, too. Bear in mind that seven years ago it was not at all obvious that today 1 bitcoin would be selling for thousands of dollars. It was an experiment like many previous cryptocurrencies before it (look up David Chaum and Digicash). Lots of academics bought or mined bitcoin in those years to research it and its inner workings (I think Sarah Meiklejohn's group, who did the work to establish that bitcoin is not anonymous, bought theirs for around $5). At that time, it was a curiosity, nothing more. It's a bit of a stretch that the characters never remembered they mined it before now - there was a lot of publicity when it hit $1,000 for the first time in 2014, but they do have a lot on their minds, and the recent rise has been very fast. (Notice that it was $5,000 when they scripted and shot this, and this week it hit $10,000; that's probably only about a month.)

[TigerLynx]

Zack was always nice.  He was never a bully.  Penny called Leonard, Sheldon, Howard and Raj out on their bullying of Zack because he wasn't as smart as them.

I don't know if I'm supposed to find what Sheldon did with the bitcoin funny or infuriating.  It was just boring.  The guys didn't even remember about the bitcoin until Sheldon reminded them.  Sheldon came up with the idea in the first place, ended up not being a part of the mining, moved the bitcoin (which no one remembered where it was until Sheldon took them down the path from laptop to laptop (Howard, Leonard, Penny to Zack)), and then revealed he had moved it to the flashdrive.

[Newberry]

The way the show ended, I got to wondering if Stuart even actually deleted the stuff on the flash drive, or if perhaps he got distracted and never went thru it, forgetting about it. Maybe it will turn up later in the season, or perhaps next? It just didn't seem final to me.

[OtterMommy]

I can't think too hard about this episode or it will piss me off.  I'm often amused by Sheldon, but this one was over the line. However, I did find a lot of the jokes funny on a very superficial level.  It was also nice to see what Penny and Leonard were like before they became an old married couple and, frankly, boring.  

Is it wrong that I find Raj-who-cannot-speak-to-women far more tolerable than current Raj?

And this was the second show I've seen in a relatively short period of time that talked about Bitcoin and now I know enough about it to think it is completely ridiculous.

[iMonrey]

Quote

 I always got the sense that in high school, Zack probably bullied nerds like Leonard and his friends, but that he was just going along with what his jock friends were doing. 

Oh, I don't know. It wouldn't surprise me if Zack was bullied himself. He was awfully excited when he first met Leonard and his friends because he thought all that Sci-Fi stuff was cool and even wanted to be part of the comic book store's costume competition. I suppose he probably was a jock in school but possibly the one the other jocks picked on, good naturedly. (And Zack might not even have been aware of it.)

[Amarsir]

3 hours ago, TigerLynx said:

Zack was always nice.  He was never a bully.

True. Her ex in the pilot was a bully, but that was Kurt not Zack.

[hoodooznoodooz]

I'm glad that you're all reminding me that Zack has always been nice. I don't remember shows very well. I seem to remember only that everyone thought of him as not very bright. 

[shapeshifter]

7 hours ago, Newberry said:

The way the show ended, I got to wondering if Stuart even actually deleted the stuff on the flash drive, or if perhaps he got distracted and never went thru it, forgetting about it. Maybe it will turn up later in the season, or perhaps next? It just didn't seem final to me.

I hope the writers see this theory and use it in the series finale. It's much more satisfying than anything they've thrown out there thus far for poor Stuart since he earned his first date with Penny by skillfully drawing a flattering caricature of her. 

[Pop Tart]

The problem with the “Sheldon is a jerk” episodes is that, because this is a sitcom, it’s as if after each episode the slate is wiped clean (in terms of Sheldon’s behavior). After last week where he went behind their backs to work on an off shoot of their project for the army my greatest hope was that they’d be allowed to be irritated by this for more then one episode. But it’s as if it never happened. And then this week...here Sheldon was just out and out horrible in what he did, but other then an exasperated “Sheldon!” from Leonard, we’ll get nothing. Next week it will be as though this never happened. When instead there should be comments from all of them about how he’s twice now cost them money and that he’s about as far from a friend as you can get.

I get that many sitcoms follow this pattern where all is forgiven and forgotten by eps.’ end, but as viewers who have just had two weeks in a row of jerky Sheldon behavior, it gets harder to take.

Edited December 2, 2017 by Pop Tart

[Meushell]

What are the writers thinking?

This week he robs his friends of bitcoin. Last week, he goes behind their backs in a project. Before that, he was an ass to Bert. Before that he declares himself an enemy of Wheaton again. Before that, he didn’t like Amy and Howard working together. Next week, it looks like the whole “You can plan the wedding” promise was for nothing.

If they want me to start hating him again while thinking he’s badly written (or rather, everyone else is badly written for still spending any time with him), they have succeeded.

[displayname]

Shelly really is smelly.

[Amarsir]

What’s really annoying is that it would have been so much easier for a better ending. Just have them remember that they spent it! 7 years ago a famous bitcoin transaction involved someone buying two pizzas for 10,000 BTC. That would be worth $100 million today. Wouldn’t it have been less of a character implosion - AND funnier - to realize they could have been millionaires but spent it on something stupid?

[Driad]

36 minutes ago, Amarsir said:

What’s really annoying is that it would have been so much easier for a better ending. Just have them remember that they spent it!

Yes, this would have been much better.  The writers have been showing very little imagination.  Each character has a trait or two (Sheldon is arrogant and self-serving, Bernadette is a bully, etc.) and we rarely see other aspects of their personalities.  In such a long running show, many viewers want to see more than Sheldon "Sheldoning" for 17 minutes a week.

P.S.  What if they spent it at the comic book store, and Stuart realizes he still has it?

[TigerLynx]

It would be nice if the writers did do something new and different, but they seemed married to the idea of Sheldon as a jackass, and everyone puts up with it.  At least in some episodes of the early seasons, Sheldon would be a jerk, Leonard would point out that Sheldon was being a jerk (because they always played the Sheldon doesn't understand he's a jerk card), and occasionally Sheldon would apologize.  Now it's Sheldon is a jackass, everyone including Sheldon knows he's a jackass, everyone puts up with his behavior, and Sheldon faces no consequences.

[wendyg]

He didn't *rob* his friends of bitcoin. He *hid* the bitcoin, which at the time had the approximate value of a couple of Chinese dumplings. And when they remembered it existed, he admitted it and told them where it was.

[anna0852]

He took their possesions without their permission. If I do that with someones car or computer or jewelry, it doesn't matter if I tell them later where it is. It's still theft.

[CherryAmes]

On 11/30/2017 at 10:16 PM, jewel21 said:

I really enjoyed this episode. I loved the flashbacks. It was great seeing The Cheesecake Factory again, and having Bernadette and Penny back in their waitress uniforms. I was happy to see Zack and laughed at Penny's drunken video and her falling off the chair. And, I loved hearing Mrs. Wolowitz's voice again. It's something I've greatly missed. I kept this on the PVR so I can watch it again before eventually deleting it.

Same here.  I read the comments here before watching so wasn't prepared to like it but it was good!  I loved the flashbacks especially as well but liked the whole storyline.

IMO anyway Sheldon didn't actually steal or destroy the bitcoin.  He just wanted to prove a point.  And since the guys had totally forgotten about it and there were numerous opportunities for it to go missing without Sheldon being involved I can't get too worked up that they aren't bitcoinaires after all.  

My only criticism of this episode is that once again we keep hearing about how poor Stuart is - I thought him re-opening his comic book store was supposed to be a fresh beginning for him.  Instead it's just more of the same.  It's just not funny anymore.

Edited December 2, 2017 by CherryAmes

[HoboClayton]

I fully admit to having absolutely no idea what a bitcoin is, or how it works. And, reading about them, just makes it more confusing. I like Zack, and would like to see more of him. 

[MissLucas]

Penny's drunken declaration of love saved this episode. As others have said Sheldon being a complete jerk and getting away with it has been done way too many times.

[BlossomCulp]

I felt like the Bitcoin thing was just the excuse for the flashbacks.  It could have been anything.  The flashbacks were great and made the episode for me.

[shapeshifter]

13 hours ago, anna0852 said:

He took their possesions without their permission. If I do that with someones car or computer or jewelry, it doesn't matter if I tell them later where it is. It's still theft.

Technically Sheldon just moved the Bitcoin code from Leonard's computer hard drive to Leonard's flash drive, intending to make them think it was gone, very soon after which he would reveal its true whereabouts so as not to be too mean. Since a hard drive is only a marginally safer place than a flash drive to store anything important, I can't be too annoyed at Sheldon for that aspect, but a warmer, fuzzier ending would have been if Sheldon had moved it to a cloud location, where it was now still available, while the old laptop's hard drive had suffered too much damage for any information to have been retrieved anyway. 

[biakbiak]

33 minutes ago, shapeshifter said:

intending to make them think it was gone, very soon after which he would reveal its true whereabouts so as not to be too mean. Since a hard drive is only a marginally safer place than a flash drive to store anything important,

If he was planning on revealing it very shortly why didn't he? Also, a flash drive on Leonard's keys that he takes everywhere and doesn't realize it was on it is much less safer than his laptop as evidenced by the fact that they were able to track down the laptop. Sheldon is an inconsiderate asshole who acted like an annoying child.

[wendyg]

It's not at all uncommon to store bitcoin on a flash drive - in fact, it can be preferable, since it's easier to keep with you than a laptop (and people like these guys replace their laptops fairly frequently anyway). Storing your wallet in the cloud is not generally recommended because it means uploading your private keys.

[BlossomCulp]

6 hours ago, shapeshifter said:

Since a hard drive is only a marginally safer place than a flash drive to store anything importan

Agreed.  In fairness to Sheldon, while he absolutely had no business moving anything off Leonard's computer without his permission it's also just lucky for Leonard that the computer was even still around and intact after 7 years.  We don't habitually keep our old laptops and the few times we've regifted one to someone else we've usually wiped the hard drive (I think that's what it's called) when we do.  No Asian porn to hide (unlike Raj) but still sometimes personal financial info and the like.  I suspect if Leonard had given his laptop to anyone but Penny he would have done that and the bitcoin would have been erased.  I'm guessing...

[shapeshifter]

3 hours ago, wendyg said:

It's not at all uncommon to store bitcoin on a flash drive - in fact, it can be preferable, since it's easier to keep with you than a laptop (and people like these guys replace their laptops fairly frequently anyway). Storing your wallet in the cloud is not generally recommended because it means uploading your private keys.

Yeah, when I suggested the cloud, I also considered the greater risk of potential hacking, but didn't mention it. At the time that they "mined" the Bitcoin (2010?) I put my latest backup of important files (e.g., taxes, passwords, family pictures) on a flash drive instead of my external drive because multi-gigabyte-sized flash drives had relatively recently become inexpensively available, and my IT colleague advised it based on the fact that flash drives have no moving parts to go bad, and I'd experienced and observed many fatal hard drive crashes. Fortunately I also never back up in just one place (so, at least 3 copies of crucial files) because in 2016 the backup flash drive failed. Now, in 2017, the new, younger IT guy points out that it is now more possible to get data off of a crashed hard drive than it used to be, and that when flash drives get corrupted, there is nothing you can do.

If this episode had focused on just the storage of the Bitcoins (but then no drunken Penny video, so, boo to that, IMO), they could have flashed forward to maybe 2022 and showed whoever bought the Batman flash drive from Stuart (Captain Sweatpants?) experimenting with new data retrieval techniques on the drive and discovering the Bitcoin. Of course, if it was Stuart who still had the drive, the 2022 value of Bitcoins would be pennies.

Anyway, technically, based on 2010 technology, Sheldon putting the Bitcoin on the flash drive would have been considered a technologically superior storage place, but given the advent of skinny jeans with small pockets at that time, not generally a physically more secure place. Still, in Sheldon's defense, I could imagine him assuming that Leonard would not lose his car keys. But to really excuse Sheldon, he would also have to have secured the flash drive onto the key chain in some superior manner and have noticed if Leonard ever changed key fobs—because Sheldon could be expected to do both, as well as be aware of the rising value of Bitcoin.
Plus what @BlossomCulp just posted.

Edited December 3, 2017 by shapeshifter