Netflix has announced a new comedy film centered on a familiar crypto nightmare, forgetting the password to a digital wallet holding millions of dollars in cryptocurrency. The streaming platform revealed that actor Jennifer Garner will star in the upcoming movie titled One Attempt Remaining.
According to Netflix, the film follows the story of a divorced couple who discover that cryptocurrency they once won together on a cruise is now worth millions. The problem is that neither of them remembers the password needed to access the funds. The story unfolds as they attempt to recover the wallet before a strict deadline expires.
The movie’s premise is rooted in real world crypto anxieties that have affected early adopters and investors for more than a decade. Netflix said the couple will have only 48 hours to retrieve roughly 35 million dollars from the wallet after receiving a notice from the US Securities and Exchange Commission, adding urgency to the storyline.
The title One Attempt Remaining reflects a recurring fear among crypto holders, where wallets and encrypted drives often allow only a limited number of login attempts before permanently locking or erasing data.
Netflix film draws from real crypto loss stories
While the film is fictional, its inspiration closely mirrors real events in the crypto industry. One of the most widely known cases is that of Stefan Thomas, the former chief technology officer at Ripple. Thomas lost access to an IronKey hard drive containing 7,002 Bitcoin that were deposited in 2011.
At the time of publication, those Bitcoin were valued at roughly 640 million dollars. The device is programmed to erase all stored data after ten incorrect password attempts. Thomas publicly confirmed he had already used eight attempts but has not disclosed whether he successfully recovered the funds as of December.
Netflix’s upcoming film also echoes the long running saga of James Howells, a Welsh entrepreneur who reported losing a hard drive containing private keys to 8,000 Bitcoin. The device was mistakenly discarded in 2013 and ended up in a landfill in the United Kingdom.
Howells has spent years attempting to secure permission from local authorities to excavate the landfill. As of March 2025, he had largely exhausted legal options to search the site, leaving the funds inaccessible despite their enormous value.
Although cryptocurrency and blockchain technology have appeared in films and television over the past 15 years, Netflix’s new project places crypto at the center of a mainstream comedy. Previous examples have largely treated the topic as background material rather than a central narrative.
Notable exceptions include the 2020 action film Money Plane, the 2022 documentary Trust No One: The Hunt for the Crypto King, which explored the collapse of the QuadrigaCX exchange, and the upcoming adaptation of Going Infinite, based on the rise and fall of FTX and its former CEO Sam Bankman Fried.
With One Attempt Remaining, Netflix appears to be tapping into a growing cultural awareness of digital finance risks, turning technical mishaps into relatable entertainment. As crypto stories continue to intersect with popular culture, the film highlights how lost passwords have become one of the most costly mistakes in the digital asset era.
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