Ben McKenzie
π€ SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
And the response so far has been fantastic because people are so angry at this stupid system and all these stupid people who, again, continue to lie to us for money.
So it's a wild ride.
Yeah.
So the documentary started off with I approached this journalist, Jacob Silverman, about writing a book, started writing articles.
We submitted a book proposal, sold the book proposal, and then we went out into the real world to start writing.
reporting on this because it was sort of coming out of COVID into 21, into 22.
And the first thing we went to in the real world was South by Southwest in 2022 in my hometown of Austin, Texas.
And I just figured, why not turn a camera on?
You know, these characters are wild.
Crypto has all this zany stuff.
Like, what's the worst that can happen?
And if it doesn't work, then, you know, just whatever, pretend like it never happened.
The first day we were filming, we're on the floor of the convention center, and I see this booth for a company called Celsius.
which was a very dodgy company where like you give them your crypto and they give you this like guaranteed return of like 15 or 20% or something ridiculous.
Sounds too good to be true.
And I'm thinking like, what's going on?
I knew they were being sued by the Texas state regulator and yet they hadn't been adjudicated yet.
And they're just like, they're still trying to sell people on this.
And I look over the other side of the room is the CEO.
Alex Mashinsky.