David Pearce

It's out this week.

If you can go find a theater that's playing it, it's playing in a bunch of big cities.

I think it'll probably get released more widely soon.

If you can see it, go see it.

But even if you don't, I think you'll enjoy this conversation.

I wanted to have him on to talk about what it's been like to be down this rabbit hole for so long and what he's learned about what crypto is and how it got to be like that.

I really enjoyed it.

I think you will too.

Let's get into it.

Ben McKenzie, welcome to The Verge Cast.

Thank you.

Thank you for being here.

We're going to talk about crypto and our feelings, which is, I would say, fundamentally what your documentary is about.

But I had this thought at the very beginning of the documentary, which I think is where I want to start, where you sort of as a joke start like all the way back with the origin of money.

And the very first thought I had like 10 seconds into the documentary is like, are we sure the story of crypto is actually a story about money?

And so this is my first question to you.

Is the story of crypto actually a story about money?

So but this idea of like it might work, but it doesn't yet.

It's sort of a running theme of crypto throughout the whole story and is I think part of the reason I like the doc is because I spent a lot of my time covering crypto wrestling with the same thing that I think you're wrestling with, which is that there is something at the beginning of the pitch for crypto that is really compelling.

That is like, we can agree on a bunch of things, right?