Ben McKenzie talks about his crypto-skeptic documentary, the scams he investigated, and why he believes the industry still poses real risks.
In 2003, audiences fell for Ryan Atwood, the moody, brooding coronary heart of the teen community drama The O.C. He was performed by Ben McKenzie, who additional leveraged his small-screen charms and millennial Robert Redford seems to be to land extra starring gigs in reveals like Southland and Gotham. But throughout COVID-19, the stressed actor caught wind of one thing new: cryptocurrency. You know, like bitcoin, dogecoin, and no matter Hawk Tuah coin was. But in contrast to different Hollywood celebrities who signed endorsement offers and launched just a few cash themselves, McKenzie referred to as bullshit. On all of it.
“I’m an actor. I’m also a bullshitter,” McKenzie tells Esquire. “And these guys are bullshitting us. There’s a lot of people lying to you for money.”
Ben McKenzie isn’t only a good-looking face. Armed with an economics diploma from the University of Virginia, McKenzie watched in horror at the meteoric rise of crypto and felt its potential for widespread hurt ought to it—and it doubtless will—fall. In 2021, McKenzie started working with journalist Jacob Silverman to probe the industry, from the ones driving its FOMO momentum to the victims who misplaced life financial savings chasing monetary freedom. Their efforts resulted in the 2023 New York Times bestseller Easy Money: Cryptocurrency, Casino Capitalism, and the Golden Age of Fraud, and now, Everyone Is Lying to You for Money, an acclaimed documentary launched in April.
Over Zoom, an eloquent—and at occasions, self-deprecating—McKenzie lays out crypto and its thornier corners with ease. He says making the film was virtually unintentional; the ebook got here first. “I had taken edibles and thought it was a good idea,” the actor says about embarking on his skeptic period. “I needed to discover somebody to assist me. I took extra edibles to summon the braveness to DM Jacob Silverman, who had written a really humorous article: “Even Donald Trump Knows Bitcoin is a Scam.” We had beers in Brooklyn, and I satisfied him to go on this journey.”
That’s how the book happened. The documentary? With his own cash (remember: he was a TV star), McKenzie got a camera crew to follow them as they worked. “I figured I’d turn a camera on and see what happens.” Day one of filming was at the 2022 South By Southwest festival in Austin, Texas—McKenzie’s hometown—where Alex Mashinsky of the now-bankrupt crypto company Celsius was on the floor. (Spoilers: Mashinsky is now serving twelve years in federal prison on commodities and securities fraud.) “I saw Celsius, which was being sued by multiple state regulators, trying to sell people on this scheme. I was like, ‘This is shocking.’” When McKenzie saw Mashinsky, “I figured, what the hell? I mic’d up and went over to him, and had the most bizarre, hilarious-slash-terrifying conversation where he’s so full of it. Like a used-car salesman. That was our first day, so I felt like I should keep going.”
McKenzie isn’t shaming anyone who buys into crypto, or worse, loses everything. He knows changing minds is impossible. In his movie, McKenzie interviews people who lost financial footing after investing in Celsius. He later catches up with them and learns they’re still all-in on investing in crypto to fulfill their American dreams. Talk about a sunk-cost fallacy.
“When people are scammed, we judge. We go, ‘You should have known,’” McKenzie observes. “I don’t look at it that way. Crypto appeals to people with high, medium, and low financial literacy. It’s not that you’re not smart. There’s lots of smart people who believe in it—I think they’re wrong—but I’m trying to say, it’s a scam, and these guys are screwing us. And they’re not just screwing the retail public.”
As the Trump administration embraces crypto, McKenzie says his fear is its calcifying place in the economy. If it goes down, we go down with it, he says. “If there’s a downturn, which there may will be with a war and slowing economy, crypto can crash again. But this time it could take the whole system down. We’d all end up bailing these jerks out.”
In an interview with Esquire, Ben McKenzie walks through the making of his documentary, and why he feels crypto is a danger to not only individual wallets, but democracy, too.
This interview has been edited for readability.
MCKENZIE: It was when I started running out of money. [Laughs.] I self-funded it. The theme that emerged as we tried to wrap it up is, “This is just a story.” It ends on a reflective note: I was as right, yet I had less of an effect. These things take a life of their own. I tried to present the movie in a fun way; it’s a 90-minute comedy with dick jokes and poop emojis. It’s not what you expect when you think “documentary about cryptocurrency.”
We did a postscript “Where Are They Now?” It ends with Trump saying, “Have fun with bitcoin.” This is when he turned to crypto in 2024. The song that plays is called “Joining a Cult,” about how nice it is to be in a cult because you don’t have to think for yourself. It works because we were at a stage we needed to wrap. The election results hadn’t come in. Trump’s embrace was a sign that this was gonna come back.
It also ends with you and your wife, actress Morena Baccarin, breaking the fourth wall.
It’s what I do for a living, as a creative person. I’m also a bullshitter. When the book finished in 2023, I turned my attention to the doc full time. It needed a narrative thread that would tie all this stuff I’d accumulated. None of it is scripted. But there’s stuff that’s improvised. Morena and I reference the fact we have a shooting schedule and another scene that evening. It has a meta narrative to it.
The movie doesn’t shy from the toll this endeavor had on your family. How did you balance between being a present father and husband, and an active character in a documentary? Were there doubts if making the film was even worth it?
Absolutely. How I navigated it? As best I could, and probably not well. My wife was really gracious to allow me to do this insane thing. But it was hard. Not as hard compared to the people who lost their savings. That’s why I included the interviews with victims of Celsius.
People are surprised to learn you have an economics degree. You didn’t study theater or the arts like your peers in Hollywood. What about economics interested an 18-year-old Ben McKenzie in college?
I did not intend to be an actor. I come from a family of lawyers, so I figured I would broadly prepare for law school. I got a degree in economics and foreign affairs. My love of econ isn’t the dry math. It’s the behavioral stuff. How people interact in a group setting, and that is not rational. There’s a lot of research into deconstructing myths that people behave rationally that feed the “free market,” which is a very ill-defined and mythic creature itself. There’s never been a free market in the history of mankind.
Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert Schiller influenced me. He observes what he calls naturally-occurring Ponzi schemes. The price of a speculative asset—crypto, in this case—rises beyond value. The price goes up, people buy it thinking it’s going to keep going up, which sends the price higher. It goes around and around. Because we all think of ourselves as rational, [we think] that can’t last long. But Bernie Madoff ran a Ponzi scheme for decades. That’s the stuff I find fascinating.
In one of the most compelling parts of McKenzie’s movie, he interviews Sam Bankman-Fried, the FTX founder who is now serving 25 years in prison for wire fraud and conspiracy.
What are the biggest commonalities among people who buy into crypto?
Fifteen-ish percent of the American public has bought cryptocurrency. That’s 40 million Americans. I don’t want to stereotype, other than to say it is predominantly male. Which is interesting. Gamblers are often male, and there’s a correlation between cryptocurrency and gambling. But crypto doesn’t have a product it’s selling. It’s a projection of the hopes and dreams of investors, and hopes and dreams are as unique as individuals. I don’t begrudge having hopes and dreams. A heartbreaking moment in the movie is where I’m interviewing a guy from Texas, where I grew up. He was just trying to make a little money so he didn’t have to work as much construction and spend more time with his daughter.
The real takeaway is about us. If crypto serves any purpose, it’s to highlight the myriad failures of our system. We live in the wealthiest society in the history of mankind. Yet parents can’t afford childcare, people don’t have health care. Classify me a liberal or whatever, but this is nonsense. Some of this is a call to action of addressing issues that have become so crystallized in the corruption of the Trump administration, and the complacency of not just the Republican Party but Democratic leadership. The good news is that if we still live in a democracy, we can change things for the better if we’re brave enough.
You end the movie circa 2024. What’s the state of crypto right now two years later?
Crypto is kind of down and out. It’s going to exist as long as people believe in it. We could outlaw it tomorrow and it’s gonna be there. But it was down after these guys had been arrested, after all this enforcement action. Bitcoin’s price plunged and tens of millions of Americans lost money. In summer 2024, Donald Trump decided he loved bitcoin. People assumed Trump might win the election, and if he does and he’s pro-crypto, he’s gonna do all the things he’s subsequently done to have favorable legislation and weaken regulation that keeps investors protected. By the time Trump was in office, the price [of bitcoin] reached an all-time high of $120,000. It’s since gone back down to where it was in 2022. 60-something thousand a coin.
But the price is a distraction from what’s going on. It doesn’t capture that crypto is infiltrating a regulated system. Stablecoins is where things get dangerous because those are trading on the value of a dollar, but they’re not backed by the full faith and credit of the United States. It’s a black market dollar. An enormous amount of criminal activity is facilitated via stablecoins. A crypto company estimated that in 2025, $150 billion of illegal activity was facilitated using cryptocurrency. This is dangerous.
“It’s not a foreign money, it’s a speculative funding,” says Ben McKenzie. “Some individuals win, most individuals lose. It’s playing in an unregulated on line casino.”
I’m proud of that line. Honestly, it came from experimentation. We tried to figure out, How do we simplify this? I had a great team of editors. A particular editor, Drew Blatman, kept insisting, “You’re way too in the weeds. You have to step back and imagine people don’t know anything or even care.” That was a great exercise in storytelling and structure—how you create a hero’s journey.
I may yell at the high of my lungs and shame Matt Damon. But crypto is only a story. We’ve seen the story change so many occasions it’s inconceivable to maintain observe. It was initially about how crypto was in opposition of presidency and not require banks and regulation. Now it’s begging Trump, the strongest member of the authorities, to present it favorable guidelines. It mentioned it was decentralized. It’s not. It’s lie after lie, however that’s not going to cease. Almost everyone is aware of someone who misplaced cash in crypto. It destroys households as a result of they cover from disgrace and guilt, which is heartbreaking to me as a father, as a husband.
There are absolutely similarities. They’re different; AI is a real technology that has real-world ramifications. Crypto is an old technology, and it really only has use for gambling and crime. But in terms of why people invest, the answer is simple. It’s FOMO. We used to call it greed. People see the price going up, they want to buy it because they can sell it and make money. It’s a get-rich-quick scheme. Sometimes technologies really do transform things. Crypto isn’t one of them. AI is gonna change stuff. That said, there’s grifters in AI too. There’s a thing called the grift shift, where people started in crypto switched to hawking AI.
Have you heard of the boom in Pokémon trading cards as a speculative asset? How might this concern you like it does crypto?
[Laughs.] I have a 12-year-old. He is convinced his Pokémon card collection is worth thousands. I kept asking him, “Can you actually sell these things?” In economics, that’s called greater fool theory. You think you can sell this thing, which isn’t worth much in practical value, to someone else. You buy high and try to sell higher, but eventually you run out of fools to sell to and you are left holding the bag. In my son’s defense, he was able to sell one of them for some money. But I had baseball cards growing up, and I tried to sell them at fairs. The middle-aged guys running the booths would be like, “No, kid.” Twenty-five bucks for a frickin’ Mattingly fifth-year? It’s a dollar.
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