Ben McKenzie

It's totally legitimate and fine.

But this was a financial product.

This was an investment of some kind in something.

If you're not a licensed financial advisor, which is a very obscure rule and is never enforced.

And it's also sort of like, why do we even have that on some level?

Because you're telling your buddy about stock.

Yeah.

It's not like you're committing a crime, you know, no one's going to come in and arrest you.

But I think it is there, quite frankly, not that they could have anticipated this, but in a sense to deal with this issue.

Yeah.

where someone with a lot of influence is kind of quasi giving you financial, like they're not telling you to invest in particular things, but they are particular cryptos, generally speaking.

Some of them did, like Kim Kardashian showed this thing called Ethereum Max, which is not Ethereum, it's another one.

and did a post about it.

And it went to all her followers and then it crashed fantastically.

And the guy that I wrote the book with, Jacob Silverman, we wrote an article.

Our first article was like criticizing celebrities and using this as an example.

And she ultimately had to pay a fine to the Securities and Exchange Commission because you're not allowed to sell a specific...

financial product.

Like, I can't go on this podcast and pitch you on a specific stock that I think is great without disclosing how much do I own?

What's my financial incentive?