Chapter 1: What led Ben McKenzie to become an anti-cryptocurrency advocate?
From Wired, this is The Big Interview, where we'll get to know the people behind the headlines in conversations that explore the intersection of technology, power, and culture.
I'm Katie Drummond, Wired's Global Editorial Director, and people of a certain age may know my next guest as an actor, but these days you're equally likely to know him for his other leading role, crusading against cryptocurrency.
In my opinion, the cryptocurrency industry represents the largest Ponzi scheme in history. Surveying the cryptocurrency mania during the summer of last year, I came to a terrifying conclusion. The supposedly multi-trillion dollar industry was nothing more than a massive speculative bubble bound to pop.
That's Ben McKenzie testifying before Congress on the spectacular collapse of cryptocurrency exchange FTX in late November 2022. McKenzie, who has an undergrad degree in economics, has written a book on the subject. And now he's out with a new documentary, Everyone is Lying to You for Money. Very good name, I must say. Ben's here now. Thank you so much for joining me. Thanks for having me, Katie.
It's an honor to be here. We are delighted to have you here. And I had intended to start with that congressional testimony, and I want to get back to that in a minute. But I actually was just at my desk upstairs and was reading this New York Times piece that came out today. We're talking in early April. This episode will come out in a few weeks.
But it was this sweeping investigation, yet another sweeping investigation into the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of Bitcoin. And I'm not even interested in talking about who Satoshi is. Me either, actually.
Interestingly enough.
I haven't cared about that for a really long time. But this piece came out and I knew we were talking. And I'm just so curious about your impressions of this sort of like mythology experience. And online fascination and almost sort of obsession with this like mythical figure, this magician, this wizard who created Bitcoin and sort of catalyzed this entire movement that we're now talking about.
What are your thoughts on that? Sort of like why does that exist and how does it feed into what you're sort of getting at around cryptocurrency today?
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Chapter 2: What are the main arguments against cryptocurrency presented by McKenzie?
It's sort of a speculative thing. You can bet on the price going up and down. You can use it for committing crime, for getting paid for committing crime. But it's a story with this really devoted small following.
Mm-hmm.
And it has a lot of aspects of a cult. And one great thing for a cult is to have this deified figure who only exists as a pseudonym. Because in reality, it might be maybe this guy Adam Back, who we can talk about, who's a very interesting character, or some other cypherpunk cryptographer from that era.
But then it would be a real person, and a real person would be a little bit of a letdown probably, right? Whoever it is, yeah. Yeah, right? I mean, it's just such a better story to have it be a mystery and to have the code take on this mythological status as like... You know, it's going to fix everything that ails our traditional financial sector. Because the crypto story is really simple.
It's basically, do you hate our current system? Everybody raises their hand. And then, well, Bitcoin fixes this. And it's the second part that's the lie. I would argue it's far worse if we were to try to somehow use cryptocurrency as a form of money on a global scale or even a national scale.
But the story is really simple and it's so powerful because the first part we all agree on, you know, our current system sucks. And so it gets them pretty far.
I will admit, I mean, I love a long story. I did finally at one point was like, oh, I gotta just scroll to the end. Like, did they get the guy? And yet again... We are not sort of like dead to rights, it's this guy. He's not like, yes, you got me, it's me.
And I would imagine that whoever it is, it is advantageous for that person, if they are still alive, to retain that sort of mysterious, mythical air about them, right? Because as you said, as soon as everybody knows who you are and it's you, that sort of like veil of mystery and the sense of like nobility and a noble cause is... or at least starts to dissipate.
Yeah, I mean, I would be happy to talk about Adam Back specifically.
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Chapter 3: How does McKenzie describe the cryptocurrency industry?
And the first use case was crime. It was the Silk Road, this dark web drug marketplace. And, you know, that has been just a through line throughout cryptocurrency for forever, far before the retail public got really involved in it. Because that's what you can use it for. Crypto's really only good for speculation, gambling, betting the price is going to go up and down, or crime.
It's trying to get outside the regulated system. It's a tool. So, like, could you use crypto for good? Sure, right? You can imagine you're trying to send money to a country under sanctions that you don't believe in, and so you're trying to work around it. Sure, but, I mean, let's be adults.
How are people actually using it?
How are they actually using it? They're using it for crime, and the amount of crime is staggering. There's a crypto company that did an analysis study last year And found that something like $150 billion of illicit activity is financed via cryptocurrency. $150 billion in a year.
That is just a shocking amount.
And that's from a crypto company. Yeah. So it might be on the low end. You know what I mean? So we're talking about like just a staggering amount of crime. And some of the worst people in the world, you know, Jeffrey Epstein, Love Crypto. You know, it's like Russian oligarchs selling sanctioned oil to the Chinese in exchange for drones that they're going to send to Ukraine.
And it's all done via cryptocurrency. You know, it's like all of the terrible stuff. And so that's really, you know, like that's my hobby horse. That's the thing I'm beating on is like, what are we doing? What good is this doing? I'm not saying to outlaw it because I don't think that would do any good. But we do have to regulate it stringently and treat it for what it is, which is good.
both a Ponzi scheme on the speculative side, in terms of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, and Melania coin, Trump coin, fart coin, Come Rocket, my favorite meme coin. There are Ponzi schemes on that side, and then there are black market money on the other side, which is the stable coins, which is really where the game is headed.
The other thing you get, and this is really important for people to understand, the libertarians that love crypto will say, oh, this is great. This is money that's free from the dead hand of state. Well, first of all, we live in a democracy, at least theoretically. So like that seems a little over overwrought. But if the money doesn't come from the government, where does it come from?
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Chapter 4: What insights does McKenzie share about his congressional testimony?
It's World Liberty Financial, but it's also Bitcoin. The Bitcoin that's mined today, the vast majority of it, is mined by multi-billion dollar corporations, some of which are publicly traded. So we're talking about literal corporate money. And if that seems like a good idea to you, then okay.
But the vast majority of the public already hates corporations for good reason and is skeptical of them having even more power over our daily lives. And so, you know, this is a terrible idea.
We played a little bit of that tape of you giving this testimony in 2022. And I want to back up to that. You were invited to testify.
Yeah.
Which I think says a lot about sort of the expertise and the reputation you've built for yourself as a crisis actor and also a leading expert on the sort of real story, the underpinnings of what is actually happening in the crypto industry. What is it like to get an invitation like that? Is it a phone call? Is it an email? Like, how did you react to that invitation?
What did you think when that came up?
I, over the summer that year, as I was really, you know, fully into this crypto-investigatory stuff and sort of writing articles with my co-author Jacob Silverman and working on this book that we would publish and interviewing people and being very vocal online, I was trying to get the attention of people on Capitol Hill. So I met with a couple of folks over the summer
And I kept saying, look, the only hearings that are happening are just glorifying crypto and talking about how wonderful it is. And it was finally crashing over the summer. And I said, you got to have hearing for the victims. You got to talk about the cost because all people are seeing is the, like, you know, one in a million person that makes a fortune on it. And that's all the media focuses on.
And basically, they were... The staffs were sympathetic, but this just wasn't the right time. It was with the vibe. And then that fall, Sam got arrested. Sam Beckman Freed of FTX. His empire exploded fantastically. He was kind of the figurehead of crypto at the time. He was arrested in the Bahamas and eventually extradited, and there was a chance for a hearing. And I got the call, and...
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Chapter 5: What are the implications of cryptocurrency on crime and scams?
Some of them, not all of them. But there is a troubling disconnect between often what is said and what is understood and then what is done. When you walked out of that room that day and sort of in the ensuing weeks and months, did you feel like anything would materially change? Do you feel like they actually understood what was happening and sort of what the stakes were?
I think some of them did. Yeah.
Sure. I mean, it's not a monolith.
Exactly.
Yeah.
So as to whether I felt like things were going to change, you know, I can't remember what I felt at the time. It felt good to clear the air. It felt necessary. I went hard, as you showed in the clips. I did not mess around. I remember asking my wife, like, do I use Biggest Ponzi Scheme in history? Is that, like, too simplistic? She's like, no, you have to say that because that's how—
People understand these things popularly. You can be nuanced in a 300-page book, but in five minutes on Capitol Hill and in a specific clip that you're going to be clipped for, you need to be as direct and as hard-hitting as possible. And so, you know, I wrote my remarks. And, you know, the good part about being an actor and a writer is you specialize in communications.
And I knew, I think I knew how to hit my marks. And what's so fascinating about actually testifying is how similar to showbiz it was. Mm-hmm.
It was like you're up there, you're giving your speech, you're on camera, but off camera you're seeing people milling about and the Republicans only come in to – the hearing was two cryptoskeptics, me and this wonderful professor of law at American University, Hillary Allen – And a couple of pro-crypto people, including Kevin O'Leary.
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Chapter 6: How does McKenzie view the role of government in regulating cryptocurrency?
I mean, it's just like nightmare upon nightmare. And that's just in crypto, not even getting into everything else going on. Has that made your life and this pursuit, this project around crypto harder? Has it made it easier? Like, how has Donald Trump's full-throated endorsement of cryptocurrency affected what you were trying to do and the change you're trying to affect?
That's a great question. So this film has taken a long time to make. The events of the film are largely in 2022. And it's a completely independent movie that I financed myself, Gulp. So it took a long time because you don't have any money. It's the opposite of I directed on TV and in TV directing, you have all of the money and none of the time. You have to do it very quickly.
And doc directing, you have all the time and none of the money. But eventually we had to stop. And it was right before the election. And Trump had just pivoted to supporting crypto because as recently as 2021, Donald Trump called Bitcoin a scam.
He sure did. Yeah.
And my personal theory is that, you know, what Trump's business model was prior to being elected president was sort of branding himself and sort of putting his name on hotel properties and things like that. And so, you know, Trump wasn't getting a cut of it. He probably didn't like crypto that much. But then he figured out how to get a cut, and he was all in.
And as he embraced it over the summer of 2024, very publicly, investors realized that if he were to be elected president, the price would go up. So the price started going up in anticipation of that. Sure enough, he was elected, and then it just kept going and going. And sure enough, he's done it pretty much, not everything he can, but a lot to really further crypto's rise.
dismantling the SEC, dismantling the literal crypto crime task force that the Biden administration had created. Trump being the sort of leader of this cult-like
fraudulent coin is it's dark for the world but it is kind of chef's kiss for like it's the themes of the it does track it tracks it definitely tracks you know what's interesting about trying to get the movie out though that's what's interesting so i finished the movie like so we we needed to wrap production in 2024 or sort of start the editing and then there's graphics and stuff so we finally finished it in in the summer of 25 about a year ago and
Then I needed to sell it. And I was initially thinking, oh, this is an hour and a half comedy starring Ryan Atwood from The O.C. and my much more famous wife, who's awesome in this movie. Miranda just kills it. And it's like it's a comedy about a topic that's in the news. It's going to be slam dunk. I'm going to have meetings with Netflix and, like, it's going to be done.
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Chapter 7: What personal experiences influenced McKenzie's views on cryptocurrency?
You've been on this war path for years. You wrote a book already. Tell me about the origins of the documentary. I mean, as you say, this goes back like many, many years now.
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.
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. And I, you know, what are you going to do?
So I miked up, I went over and I had this whole conversation with him that is really wild. Some of it's in the movie. He's just like such a used car salesman, right? Just like obviously kind of blustery and full of it. And, um, That was the first day. So I figured I should keep going. So yeah, that's how it started. And I just kept going. And I needed to also finish the book.
So 2022 was documenting and 2023 was the book. And then the book came out in the summer. And then I could really turn to all this random footage that I had, which was like interviewing these guys like Alex and Sam Beckman-Fried, testifying to Capitol Hill, going to El Salvador. We can talk about that. But I didn't have a narrative. I needed to create a narrative spine. And the spine became...
Me my story, you know, why the hell was I doing this? Like both personally and then sort of like in terms of my cause or more ideals here and that works because I basically was able to use my My much more famous and talented wife and get her for free to have to be in the movie and wrote my kids into it and it worked out but it took a while to create the narrative and
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Chapter 8: What future does McKenzie envision for cryptocurrency and its regulation?
Yeah. And there's the people at the top of the pyramid and then there's everybody else at the bottom. And the people at the top are the insiders, people that own the exchanges, issue the coins, hawk the coins, offer various sort of fintech-y type access to crypto. They usually do pretty well.
And they're not the ones holding the bag at the end because they're not putting their own money into it necessarily. Everybody else... Almost everybody else loses. And that's just true of MLMs. I mean, in terms of the people that invest in the retail public, it's everybody. I mean, it is very male, I will say. It is very, very male.
But 40 million people, 40 million Americans have invested in cryptocurrency?
40 million?
I think so. It's like 16% of the adult public, which is, I know, it's sad. Now, that being said, most of those people only put a little money in
Just like an experiment.
Yeah.
A little hobby.
Yeah. They saw Matt Damon selling it and they're like, sure, I'll put a hundred bucks on it. Right. And try it. And my buddy Dave, in the movie, I try to explain how I got into it because a friend of this really happened. A friend of mine said in the depths of COVID, I should buy Bitcoin. And
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