Code Is Law’ Sparks $100M DeFi Heist Debate and Legal Turmoil
While museum jewel thefts make headlines, digital heists worth hundreds of millions vanish quietly across the blockchain.
Quick overview
- The documentary 'Code Is Law' explores the hidden world of digital heists in decentralized finance (DeFi), highlighting the lack of accountability for stolen millions.
- It begins with the infamous 2016 DAO hack that led to a split in the Ethereum blockchain, showcasing the ethical dilemmas faced by developers.
- The film profiles notorious figures like Andean Medjedovic and Avi Eisenberg, illustrating the moral grey areas in DeFi where technical skill meets legal ambiguity.
- Ultimately, 'Code Is Law' raises critical questions about justice in a landscape where code governs transactions and traditional laws struggle to keep up.
While museum jewel thefts make headlines, digital heists worth hundreds of millions vanish quietly across the blockchain. Code Is Law, a new documentary now streaming on Amazon Prime Video, exposes this hidden world — the first serious cinematic look at decentralized finance (DeFi) hacks and the fragile ethics that govern them.
Directed by James Craig and Louis Giles, the film blends investigative storytelling with human drama. Doing interviews with founders, coders, and blockchain sleuths, it tries to unravel how millions can disappear in seconds. That also without triggering any alarms, arrests, or accountability.
“Someone can steal $25 million from a protocol, and you’ll never hear about it,” says analyst Ogle, setting the film’s haunting tone.
The Hack That Split Ethereum
The story of the movie begins with the infamous 2016 DAO hack, which drained roughly $60 million from an early Ethereum smart contract. That breach forced developers into a controversial decision — a “hard fork” that split the blockchain into Ethereum (ETH) and Ethereum Classic (ETC).
Founders Griff Green, Christoph Jentzsch, and Lefteris Karapetsas recount those chaotic days, describing how moral and technical debates reshaped the entire crypto landscape. While the film avoids directly naming the alleged hacker, Toby Hoenisch, it focuses instead on the ethical dilemma of the DeFi creed: “code is law.”
The Phantom Hacker: $65 Million Gone
One of the film’s most chilling profiles centers on Andean Medjedovic, a Canadian coder tied to the $65 million hacks of Indexed Finance (2021) and KyberSwap (2023). Identified through a tiny digital clue, a Wikipedia edit, Medjedovic vanished soon after, allegedly living “on an island somewhere.”
- Total stolen: ~$65 million
- Method: Exploited smart contract flaws
- Status: Still at large; calls himself a “white-hat” hacker
He declined to participate in the film, yet his story captures DeFi’s moral grey zone — where technical skill collides with legal ambiguity and personal conscience.
When DeFi Meets the Courtroom
The documentary also examines Avi Eisenberg, the trader behind the $110 million Mango Markets exploit on Solana. Eisenberg tries to hide behind a story, calling his actions a “profitable trading strategy” and claiming he followed the platform’s own rules.
His case rattled the legal system. Though initially convicted, Eisenberg’s wire-fraud charge was overturned in May 2025, highlighting how traditional laws struggle to define crimes in self-governing digital markets. “We’re in uncharted legal territory,” director Craig notes.
A Cautionary Tale for the Digital Age
Code Is Law doesn’t preach or pick sides — it documents a turning point in financial history. As DeFi blurs the boundaries between innovation and exploitation, the film leaves viewers with one unsettling question: When code becomes law, who enforces justice?
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