Chapter 1: What is discussed at the start of this section?
Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert, experts on expert. I'm Dan Shepard. You're Lily Padman.
I am.
And we have an expert that will be confusing to people.
I was confused.
You were very confused. You saw Ben in the yard and you said, oh my God, it's that Ben.
Yeah. When I read that we were having Ben McKenzie on, and I knew it was an expert episode and I saw what the episode was about. I read the write-up. I was like, oh, okay. So there's an expert with the same name. And then Walk in and it is the actor.
It is. And I got to tell you, I say this in the fact check, he's one of the smartest actors I've ever met in my life.
Incredibly smart.
He's so fucking smart. I had such a blast talking to him. Yeah. And yes, he has done his homework. He has an incredible...
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Chapter 2: How did Ben McKenzie transition from acting to investigating cryptocurrency?
Anyways, I just saw Monica in the yard and she goes, Oh my God, I thought it was the actor.
I thought it was an expert separately just with the same name. Are you serious?
Yeah, I didn't know you also did this.
That makes me so happy.
And they're like, I really like your book. I didn't know you were an actor.
I didn't know you were an expert.
Oh, I'm always trying to snatch another identity away from acting. First it was writing, then directing, and then, yeah, anything else. I'm like, yeah, please validate me in another way.
I know, right? Because I think it is hard. As an actor, you're so not in control. and people prejudge you based off the work you've done or whatever, and it's just like a very vulnerable place to be in.
And I had made a career of playing idiots, particularly, so. Yeah, you want to show off. Yeah, yeah, I had a little bit of a chip on my shoulder. You should try teen idol, you know, it's a different. I think all these things come with their trade-offs, don't they? They do. Pull that fucker a little closer to you.
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Chapter 3: What insights does Ben provide about behavioral economics?
I want to hear that.
Dulcet tone. Dulcet tone.
That's the word I couldn't remember. Feel free to... Oh, look at this.
Don't worry. Wow.
Ben is mechanical. He's a man. Oh, my God. I have the longest legs for this couch.
But that's okay.
It's not a great couch, okay?
This is a great couch. I am just too short for couches today. All couches are too deep for me. They really did go deep.
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Chapter 4: What are the implications of cryptocurrency on traditional financial systems?
They're fine for you. You can do this. Yeah, there was a paradigm shift about 18 years ago in couches, and they got deeper and deeper. These are not the couches we grew up sitting on. No, they're not.
And they are more comfortable, except I just feel like such an old man saying this. My back is always like sharp. Feel free to take that pillow.
Oh, yeah. I'm going to do that. Yes, yes, yes.
Thank you. I want you to be comfortable. We're going to be here for four hours. Oh, it's going to go deep. My spiritual headquarters is Austin, and specifically my church is Barton Springs. Yeah, buddy. It is glorious, isn't it? Yeah, did you as a little kid? Yeah. It hasn't changed, right? They haven't, like, fucked with it, have they? No, the concrete's 75 years old, and it's a grass hill.
Great, yeah, I mean... So much has changed in that town since I grew up there. And to be blunt, Elon kind of fucked it up, in my opinion. Cybertrucks are not what I think of as the Austin vibe. When you think of weird, that doesn't... I mean, it is weird to be there.
It's not the same brand weird. Yeah, exactly. But I would argue that transformation was already happening when I did Idiocracy there in 2004 because Dell was there and a couple of big tech companies had already moved there. By the way, Idiocracy...
Wow, talk about a movie that was ahead of its time. I'm sure you've heard this a million times, but Jesus Christ.
Generally during elections, people like to talk about it. Indeed. There's been screenings at times. But you're multi-generation, Austin, right? Your grandfather.
No more Brian Cox anymore. He taught at UT. He founded the communications department, co-founded it, and started the public radio and television stations there.
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Chapter 5: What are the implications of fraud in cryptocurrency?
But I kind of admire it more. I guess. It's a very male thing, I will say. I'm a degen. You're like, okay. Sounds like it's a little bit... Yeah, a little bit.
A little adjacent.
Sounds like there might be some crossover.
Uh-huh. Uh-huh. He said some crazy stuff. Like, he said things like... I asked him about all the fraud in crypto, and he goes, you leave money on the street, you expect it to be there when you get back? And I'm like, so it's their fault?
So it's like the investor's fault for like just not, it's like, well, the marketing guy's like on the other side, and he's like, no, no, no, no, no, don't say that.
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Chapter 6: How does behavioral economics explain investor behavior?
You also ask him if he's being investigated for any criminal activity or there's any kind of legal cases. Legal proceedings. Yeah, and he claims zero. And there were multiple at that time.
In fact, I think they'd already been shut out of New Jersey. I think the New Jersey Securities Regulatory had already shut them down. Anyway, yeah, it was just nonsense. And so that's the first day. I'm like, well, I got to keep going. Yeah. And it got weirder from there, actually. Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.
So the part that was a revelation to me, you interviewed this crypto skeptic. He remains anonymous throughout this. If I sell my share of Amazon, someone has bought the Amazon at a certain price. And then we all kind of know what the value of that stock is because someone just was willing to pay that amount.
But then it was explained to you that some 95% of the trades in the crypto world are someone with two accounts. that's trading with themselves. So they bought $100 worth of crypto. They buy it for themselves for $200, which they didn't lose any money because they gave themselves the $200. Now it has the appearance of being worth $200 and then they sell it for $400.
That blew my mind that 95% of the trades are these bullshit trades. I don't know if the percentage. That's his claim. I'm not making that claim.
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Chapter 7: What challenges did El Salvador face with Bitcoin as currency?
But just the notion that's even an option to do. But it's a lot. It's especially a lot, I would say, on the overseas exchanges. And we should talk about that for a minute. Okay. Because especially at the time before they collapsed, when you were buying crypto on an exchange like FTX, what you were actually doing is send your money to the Bahamas because that's where FTX is based and banked.
And they told you you had X amount of Bitcoin. Right. The sort of trouble with that should be obvious, right? Like then you're sort of subject to Bahamian securities regulation, I guess, or Bahamian banking laws, which may not be quite as tight as American. But what's funny about it to me is that this has such a direct overlap with online poker. You were at a similar age.
Remember in the mid-aughts, all of a sudden you could gamble with real money online. Yeah, right, right. It was like full tilt and ultimate bet and things like that. And Dave was really into this.
Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, shockingly.
And I loved poker. I was living up in Nichols Canyon. I was single. I had an actual poker table in my house. It was that guy. But like, I loved it. It was fun. And we'd hang with buddies and drink a beer and take each other's money. But I never messed with online poker. And I remember asking Dave, so you're gambling with real money. Where are you sending the money?
And he goes, it's the same places. They were based in the same Caribbean countries that the crypto guys were running their companies out of, which is such a vivid illustration of what we're talking about to the retail public. This is gambling. It's
sports betting now too is it also those same places uh no those are probably american companies i would say i think the difference with sports betting is they can't manipulate the outcome well i mean i guess players could well that's one of the problems with making this gambling so ubiquitous it's like it just compromises everybody including the leagues i would say the leagues are in on it now yeah it's a mess it's all sponsored by michael lewis on to talk about his podcast on this interesting this is another terrible and again this is where i get
pretty sympathetic to these people.
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Chapter 8: How does the documentary 'Everyone Is Lying to You for Money' address cryptocurrency?
It's preying on a lot of young men that are increasingly not going to college. There's decreasing amount of jobs in their town. There are less and less options for young men. And they're just like, well, then what am I going to do? Oh, I guess I'm going to gamble or I'm going to get rich on crypto. That's filling a void of opportunity.
Yeah. And to give you a sense of like how strong it is in the young men, 42% of men 18 to 29 have dabbled in crypto, have traded crypto. 42%, almost half. That's a lot of young dudes, right? And look, most guys are just messing around. They're just messing around with a little bit of money.
And I never go off of financial advice, but if you're messing around with money you can afford to lose, that is a different story in terms of how I feel about you. I'm not worried about you if you can afford to lose. The thing I ask is like, just imagine you lost whatever you put in, like all of it, instantaneously. Would it affect your life? Right.
I think it's worth considering the arguments about the criminal activity because even though you aren't financing it, the real money you're putting into it is giving it value so that it has value for the criminals.
I'm more mad at the Wall Street dudes who have drank the Kool-Aid, the institutional banks that have drank it. Me too. You're already this huge institution that's worth all this money and you got it, you know?
Let's talk about that argument for a minute because the crypto guys are not like... Oh, I guess you know more than all the big banks. And it's like, first of all, that's deeply ironic. If you were set up in reaction to the banks and the subprime crisis, and now you're crowing about how the banks are on your side.
But it's also wrong because the banks aren't in it taking a directional bet on whether crypto is going up or down. They're just facilitating the game. They're just the house in Vegas, letting you gamble with your money and taking the rake, taking a tiny piece of the volume. There's a thing called ETS, exchange traded funds.
They're sort of like mutual funds where like put money into it and whatever money you put in represents a fractional share of the Bitcoin. And so BlackRock, which has the biggest Bitcoin ETF, you put money into BlackRock ETF. They just go to like Coinbase, this crypto exchange. And they're like, hey, hold this amount of Bitcoin for this customer. BlackRock never even touches the Bitcoin.
Also, do you think you know more than, we've had two guests with books on Bankman. And I think it was Peter Thiel. Don't sue me if it wasn't him. But I think it was him who said like, yeah, I sat with him and I funded FTX. I was an investor. And I'd do it again. Because the model of VC is like, yeah, I'm going to lose on a bunch of these, but the payoff is going to be so big.
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