Ben McKenzie urges crypto skepticism after documentary

Actor Ben McKenzie says his new documentary, “Everyone Is Lying to You for Money,” lays bare crypto’s appeal and its damage—fueling fresh public outrage and renewed worries that Washington is moving too fast in the industry’s favor. Speaking on the film’s impa

Ben McKenzie didn’t set out to build a political weapon. He set out, he said, to figure out why a friend suggested he buy Bitcoin during the Covid pandemic—and why he’d been burned before.

“When he walked out of the building, he knew it was over,” is the kind of line that belongs in a thriller. McKenzie’s version came in slower motion, on a laptop, after that late-night skepticism curdled into hours of research.

What he found led him to a second career as a crypto critic, culminating in his documentary “Everyone Is Lying to You for Money,” which he says is now being met with sharp questions and anger at screenings across the country.

McKenzie is best known for playing Ryan Atwood on “The O.C.” and Detective Jim Gordon on “Gotham.” But the film frames an origin story: a former teen heartthrob turning into one of crypto’s most prominent antagonists. It also functions as a primer. he says. with a 90-minute run time built to explain crypto’s rise. what he calls its scamminess. and what he believes it threatens to do to the financial system—and to ordinary people.

His guiding rule started simple: you should not invest in something you don’t understand.

He traces that suspicion to the financial crash of 2007. when many people were furious at what he described as a system rigged by Wall Street predators for the wealthy. Against that backdrop, the promise that cryptocurrency could decentralize and democratize finance sounded appealing. But McKenzie questioned the “free lunch” pitch tied to Bitcoin—especially as celebrities promoted it for the industry and exploited fear of missing out.

In the documentary, McKenzie asks, “What does Matt Damon know about crypto?” and answers, “Nothing.”

The film also sends him into the language of economists and fraud analysts. In London, he talks with Dan Davies, the economist and author of “Lying for Money,” asking, “All of crypto can’t be a scam, right?” Davies responds, “I don’t like that word ‘can’t.’”

From there. McKenzie visits crypto conventions and talks with disciples—including one cryptocurrency founder. featured in the documentary. who ended up in prison for fraud. He travels to El Salvador. where the nation’s authoritarian leader embraced crypto and promised to build a “Bitcoin City” powered by geothermal energy from a volcano. McKenzie calls it a promise with no such city yet.

In July 2022. he interviews Sam Bankman-Fried—then a fast-rising billionaire built on the FTX cryptocurrency exchange—pressing him on what crypto was good for beyond speculation and criminal operations. Bankman-Fried told him. “There needs to be more oversight.” Four months later. FTX would collapse and Bankman-Fried would be arrested for fraud and money-laundering.

McKenzie also brings the political fight into the story. He says he testified before Congress and described the crypto industry as “the largest Ponzi scheme in history,” warning that it could infect the entire financial system if not regulated properly.

For McKenzie, the most disturbing parts aren’t limited to founders or executives. He points to scenes with everyday people who still believed in crypto even after being fleeced in a crypto scheme that crashed.

That’s where the documentary’s reach, he says, is starting to show.

Speaking during a conversation in which he was asked about the film’s impact. McKenzie said he had underestimated how much difference the documentary could make compared with his previous efforts: congressional testimony. advocacy. and a 2023 book—co-written with journalist Jacob Silverman—called “Easy Money: Cryptocurrency. Casino Capitalism. and the Golden Age of Fraud.”.

“I have,” he said, when asked whether the film had reached more people than his prior work. He described going to screenings as often as he can and doing Q&As afterward. saying audiences respond with “a lot of questions” and “a lot of anger”—directed not only at crypto but also at prediction markets and AI.

He said he’s had “incredible conversations with strangers,” adding, “Like I’m not crazy.”

He also suggested the film’s timing is helping people connect crypto to broader concerns they already have about AI—especially AI data centers and their effects on local communities. including who is “in charge” of them. He said more people will watch a 90-minute documentary at home than will read a 300-page economics book. and he built the movie to be entertaining.

He doesn’t address AI directly in the film, but he said the overlap is visible in how people talk about it.

McKenzie described “disruption to communities” and the costs that come from data centers and crypto mining operations in the same places. He said they use “an enormous amount of electricity,” which can push up prices for residents. He also said some operations are “incredibly loud.”

He used a phrase he called “the grift shift,” describing how grifters move from one con to another. In his telling, there was a shift between the last crypto crash and what he calls the current AI boom: companies that mined Bitcoin began deciding they were going to become data centers.

Still, he drew a line between the technologies. “AI is a real technology,” he said, while “blockchain used for crypto is quite old and isn’t used for much of anything outside of cryptocurrency.”

Underlying that critique is a question that comes up again and again in his comments: who controls the technology, and what motives they bring.

McKenzie said he read a profile of Sam Altman. the OpenAI head. in “The New Yorker. ” and saw a quote from an unnamed Microsoft executive warning that there is “a small but real chance he’s eventually remembered as a Bernie Madoff- or Sam Bankman-Fried-level scammer.” McKenzie said he’s “not nearly qualified to make grandiose statements. ” but he feels the country is colliding with problems the current version of capitalism “doesn’t solve. ” reinforcing dynamics he describes as concentrating extraordinary wealth in the hands of a few while spreading costs to the broader public.

He linked that to a sense that the system is rigged, and he singled out what he called a “con-man-in-chief president.”

Within Congress, McKenzie said there is “a bad crypto bill” moving through the legislative process. He named it as the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, saying it would set up a regulatory regimen with less stringent rules for crypto.

He said Republicans are voting for it for reasons he associates with the crypto lobby’s influence. He also suggested some Democrats might vote for it because they’re afraid of that lobby, which he said has “a lot of money.”

He described the backlash he faced while making the movie as different from the harassment he has heard about online. He said he got “a lot of hate mail and harassment online from crypto fans” when he became a public crypto critic—but for this film he said. “Not that I’m aware of.” He added he isn’t on X anymore after Elon Musk took it over: his account was hacked and he couldn’t recover it because there was “no customer service” at X. He said he hasn’t been able to access the account for years.

That makes the screening experience feel like a different kind of confrontation. He said the questions at screenings range from “completely lovely” to “very, quite frankly, reasonable questions” from an audience member pushing back politely.

“What’s harder,” he said, is being harsh in real life than online. He argued that crypto exists “exclusively on the internet,” with “no there there,” and that many crypto “communities” aren’t communities at all—people trying to sell products while hiding behind pseudonyms.

He tied that to a broader reality he said many Americans don’t share: “80-plus percent of the country has never bought cryptocurrency.” When he asks what they think, he said, they often respond that it seems complicated but scammy—maybe they just “aren’t smart enough” to understand.

For McKenzie, the core logic of why people keep buying doesn’t hold up.

“If this thing is really based on no underlying asset,” he said, “you’re basically putting money in because you hope that someone else will buy it from you.”

He said the film is meant to argue, bluntly, “No, you are. You know it sounds too good to be true. It is.” He said he doesn’t expect to convince the 5 to 6 percent of people who are heavily into crypto; he described them as “sort of members of a cult.” He said there may be another 10 percent who are just “playing around.”.

The political consequence, he said, is what troubles him: 5 to 6 percent of the population can “dictate policy on Capitol Hill,” overrunning democratic processes.

His comments turned to Bitcoin’s price, too. He said when he was making the movie, Bitcoin was worth about $44,000. He said today it is $80,960.

He also put the movement in context: Bitcoin was $60,000 in the fall of 2021, he said. He described the market as having recovered from 2022 when companies went bust and “several people went to jail,” calling the recovery more than a rebound but not spectacular.

For him, the swing factor was Donald Trump. “Now it’s very simple: Donald Trump is most of the answer,” he said.

McKenzie said the market was recovering slowly until summer of 2024, when Trump embraced Bitcoin after calling it a scam as recently as 2021. He suggested the shift may have been about making money and appealing to a constituency of “young men.”

In McKenzie’s telling. people made a rational calculation: if Bitcoin lacks underlying value. the only reason to hold is that someone else will buy it. If other people buy it because Trump has a 50-50 chance at the presidency and can push the price higher. then betting on it becomes. in his framing. rational. He said that is part of how the price started going up—then kept rising.

He said by the time Trump took office, Bitcoin was $100,000 a coin.

He then linked that shift to what he described as Trump and his administration dismantling safeguards and accountability.

McKenzie said Trump has done “an incredible amount to take apart” what he called safeguards and accountability: he cited pardoning Changpeng Zhao (a.k.a. “CZ”). the founder of Binance; ripping apart the Justice Department cryptocurrency task force; and passing a “bad bill called the Genius Act. ” which he said allows corporations to issue their own form of crypto.

He added that it was “absurd any Democrat voted for it. ” and said “100 Democrats did.” He also named Howard Lutnick. Marc Andreessen. and Elon Musk as people he believes were associated with the effort to move crypto into the system while taking apart the rules. regulations. and law enforcement apparatus meant to keep it in check.

McKenzie said that by moving crypto into the political world, it changed everything. “Definitely,” he said, when asked whether this has given crypto political status.

He called it “deeply ironic” because crypto was supposed to be a reaction to government excesses, money outside of government. Now, he said, the U.S. president is issuing his own “versions” of these “currencies.” He also pointed to a specific irony he said is unfolding: Trump—who he described as being in a major conflict of interest and acting in a corrupt manner—has been accused of fraud by one of his top investors.

That accusation, he said, echoes the core questions he carried into his interview with Bankman-Fried.

When asked whether he sensed Bankman-Fried was “blowing smoke,” McKenzie said he had trouble answering basic questions. He said the simple question was, “what good does crypto do?” and that Bankman-Fried mentioned remittances.

McKenzie said he had just come from El Salvador, where he saw that crypto was not being used for remittances, and he told Bankman-Fried “bullshit.” He said the head of the industry couldn’t tell him one good thing a trillion-dollar industry does.

McKenzie said that created “a sinking feeling” while they were still talking—that if this person was in charge, something bad would happen. “And sure enough, it did,” he said.

In his view, the interview’s most alarming moment came when he asked about donations to politicians. He said Bankman-Fried had a hard time answering, couldn’t look him in the eye, and couldn’t tell him how much money he gave, despite being openly supportive of Democrats.

McKenzie said it was public that Bankman-Fried gave “$40 million or whatever” to Democrats. He said he wondered why he was lying or struggling with the question. He added that later it was learned Bankman-Fried was allegedly running a $100 million straw-donors game—giving to Democrats publicly while secretly giving to Republicans via cutouts.

McKenzie said he felt good about the interview from a journalistic standpoint. Personally, he said, he still felt that the situation was headed toward something ugly.

The film’s most human scenes, he said, come from retail investors who lost money in a crypto bust-up yet still believe in crypto.

McKenzie called that “powerful,” saying even he was surprised by it. He described what he thinks is at work: the dynamics of a cult. He said the investors he met were far outside a rational investment where losing money would produce either simple regret or the conclusion that they’d been scammed.

Instead, he said, they twist themselves into explaining: “I got scammed here in this one crypto thing. But the bigger idea still works, even if I’ve still lost money in it.” He said that requires rationalizations and that acknowledging they were duped would be “very painful.”

He also raised what he called a “gender dynamic” he found “fascinating. ” though “sad.” He said men are better marks. partly because they find it harder to talk about feelings and admit they’ve been duped. and because pride leads them to blame themselves. He said the crypto industry’s “genius” is getting them to point inward.

He described common crypto slogans—“DYOR. ” or “do your own research”—arguing it pushes responsibility onto the buyer if money is lost. He said it benefits fraudsters and insiders who make money while keeping outsiders “regular guys” in the game. He also referenced “HODL—hold on for dear life,” saying you can’t sell your Bitcoin no matter what.

In one chilling exchange, McKenzie asked Dan Davies whether all of crypto is a scam, and he said Davies does not challenge the idea.

McKenzie said his bottom-line belief hasn’t changed: crypto is only good for two things—gambling and crime. He framed gambling as a question of whether the price will go up or down. He framed crime as a broad, enabling reality.

He said the amount of crime crypto facilitates is “staggering,” citing Chainanalysis’s estimate that $154 billion of criminal activity was facilitated via crypto “last year alone.”

He connected that to the bubble logic that prices could keep rising as more people join and spread the story. Crime, he said, provides a reason for value.

In his congressional testimony, McKenzie said he described crypto as a Ponzi scheme. He asked rhetorically what Trump’s thing is if not a Ponzi scheme. He said Trump’s meme coin is down 96 percent and that. in his framing. it’s a “penny stock” and “a pump-and-dump” and “a Ponzi scheme—pick your metaphor.”.

He said it is “not a legitimate investment,” which he pegged at “99 percent of it,” with crime layered on top.

For him, the danger expands if crypto gets further inside regulated systems—especially as he said it threatens to do so through the Genius Act he cited as passed and through the proposed Clarity Act.

He warned that if crypto crashes again—and reminded readers that crypto has crashed many times in its brief but “sordid history”—it could help contribute to “the next version of a subprime crisis.” He called that “incredibly ironic. ” because he says crypto was supposedly a reaction to that kind of crisis.

Near the end of the conversation. he was asked whether he’s heard from Matt Damon. who he said he roasts in the film for being a pitchman for crypto. McKenzie said he tries to keep his head down in “weekly celebrity meetings” where people talk about the industry. but he said he doesn’t know Matt Damon. He also said he doesn’t know anyone personally who has sold crypto and doesn’t expect to get a Matt Damon movie anytime soon.

The film’s trailer is available online, and McKenzie said he hopes it will reach streaming service soon.

For McKenzie, the point is not just that he thinks crypto is a con. It’s that the politics now move with it—through Washington bills, corporate access, enforcement decisions, and presidential attention—while ordinary people keep paying the price when the story turns.

And at the screenings, he said, that’s the part audiences are gripping: not just the mechanics, but the feeling that they’ve been lied to—and that the damage might still be about to spread.

Ben McKenzie Everyone Is Lying to You for Money cryptocurrency Bitcoin FTX Sam Bankman-Fried Digital Asset Market Clarity Act Genius Act Changpeng Zhao Justice Department crypto task force Howard Lutnick Marc Andreessen Elon Musk Clarity Act Congress U.S. politics