Ben McKenzie Exposes Crypto Scams and Misinformation in New Documentary

right there. What's that? That's how you enter. That's how you do this. That's how you enter a late night show right there. You are. You guys excited for this movie? He's They're excited. You excited for this movie? Hell yeah. Yeah, cryptocurrency. Very exciting. You're you're pumped about it. Thank you. Um I don't mean this to be insulting. I actually don't know you from the OC. Okay. And I know you from crypto.

Wow. Isn't that crazy? Kiss you right now. Okay, great. Is that Can we do that again? Is that what we want? I mean, you know, I mean, look, people want to OC. Fantastic. Southland, which was a fairly good show for uh there's like There we go. There's like two dudes in the audience. Super happy about that. Uh Gotham, uh you know, look, much like you, Michael, I contain multitudes. That's right. Why crypto? What struck a nerve for you on this? The movie is great. Your book You really know what the [__] you're talking about. Yeah. Which uh I was like, whoa, this guy's not just an actor. He's got this guy's got a brain on him.

Why crypto? I have an undergraduate economics degree. It was the pandemic. I was bored as [__] Can I say bored? I was bored as and uh and a buddy of mine came to me and said I should buy crypto. A lot of people have had this experience, but my buddy has given me terrible financial advice before. Uh and I was like, Dave, I'm not going to do this, but uh what is it? And he was like, it's a cryptocurrency. What is that? It's so I was like, it's it's money, right? Right. Uh so you can buy stuff with it. Uh not quite. Not really. you know, and so I just got obsessed with it. I saw the obsession come on the movie, man.

The obs your obsession comes through. Yeah. Yeah, I bet. No, I mean that. And like I mean, you really dove in. I did. And I was really frustrated originally by the celebrities selling it because of course like if there's one thing that I knew, it was that Matt Damon doesn't know all about blockchain. Yeah. Exactly. No offense to Matt. Great actor. Probably not going to get cast in one of his movies now. That's okay. we all suffer. Uh well, I actually really appreciate you speaking up because you have a public um you are a public figure and to just sit around passively when you know something is wrong is [__] And I'm sure it maybe has cost you. I don't know. I mean uh but you really believe that this is a scam.

Yeah. And I mean I think we all are so many of us feel lack of agency. Yeah. And we want to know what we can do. Yeah. This is a weird thing for me to have done, but I do believe in it quite a lot. Yeah. And what's wonderful is to get the response from not just you and not just the folks here, but like audiences. Um, people are ready for this. Yeah. They're tired of being told uh what's true and what's not true. Even they're TIME they're tired of being lied to for money, if you will. Right. Yep. and uh and they can't control us. We get to determine uh what kind of country we want to live in. I love that. Um you ready for a tough question?

Let's hit me. What is money? Love this question. You spell it out wonderfully in the book and in the documentary, but I mean, isn't all of this a little bit [__] We're all just kind of agreeing on this paper. Yeah. So, money's made up, right? It's all made up. It's all fake. It's all real. Uh so, it's a social construct just like government or religion, right? And it's only as strong as the co social consensus that uh underlies it, right? And obviously at the at this moment in history in America are the social consensus is quite fragile, which has given crypto, you know, quite a lot of uh room and latitude to sort of infect the public, if you will, or a small segment of it. But, um at the end of the day, it's all

made up. Now the distinction here between crypto and our money, our dollar is that um if money is made up, what is it? It's trust, right? You take a dollar from me, not because you trust me, but because you trust that you can use that dollar for what you want to use. Crypto says we can replace all of that pesky human interaction with computer code. All you have to do is trust the code.

Well, that's a lie. uh it's a fundamental misunderstanding of what money is and um uh and the social construct nature of it. To give you a specific example, Sam Bankman Freed, now doing 25 years in jail. I mean, you sat down with him in maybe one of the more awkward documentary interviews I've ever seen in my life. Wow. I appreciate that. The high praise. Well, I mean, it was apparent that he thought it was going to be an easy, chill interview, and all of a sudden, he's talking to someone that knows some [__] Boom. Yeah, Ryan Atwood that guy up.

Exactly. Yeah. He's now 25 years in a federal prison for fraud. So, how did he run a scam? Yeah. He instructed one of his employees to change a single line of code which allowed him to borrow his customers assets. So, I can't think of a more vivid illustration of the intellectual fallacy that you can trust code. Code does not fall from the sky. People write code. Right. Right. And in this case, he changed the code and he stole the money. Right. So, Bitcoin is full of lies. It's full of misinformation. It's full of lies. It's also full of criminals, right?

Um Jeffrey Epstein funded Bitcoin development in 2015 secretly via the MIT Media Lab, right? Um he was a convicted sex offender. Um the guy who the New York Times thinks is Satoshi, uh Adam Back. Okay. Um his company Blockstream. Satoshi is kind of what started all this. Satoshi is like the mystical cultlike figure who like Yeah. The Wizard of Oz. Exactly. And so you peak behind the curtain and it's this guy. Well, it's New York Times thinks it might be Adam back. Adam Back's company, Blockstream, received funding from Jeffrey Epstein.

Wow. Okay. So, Satoshi potentially, right, getting funding from the world's most notorious pedophile. That's what we're talking about. Um, I sold my Bitcoin after watching your documentary. So, good for me. Um, but I made some money. Great. Made some money. And also before I bought it on Fidelity, I had to check all these boxes, right? I This is a high This is high risk. I may not really know what's going on here. Are you sure you want to do this? I exactly I mean there was a lot of boxes to check.

Yeah. So to push back on you a little bit is I mean I was aware that this was a high-risk venture. I made a little bit of money. Good. Hey. Um, but what's this say? Okay, there's criminals in this field. There's scammers, but people are going in knowingly. What's the big deal? They're not being treated properly under US law. Um, the cryptocurrency industry does not want the cryptos to be treated as investments. Uh, my buddy Dave, who's putting money into it, hoping to make money off of it through no work of own.

That's that's that's literally the definition of investment under American law. Um, but the cryptocurrency industry doesn't want to be regulated like securities like investments because of course securities laws are predicated on disclosure. You need to know who you're giving your money to and what they're doing with the money. Crypto doesn't want that. I think that's very telling. So look, I am not arguing that people can't gamble on cryptocurrency. I am not saying it should be outlawed. I am simply asking for it to be regulated properly. And I'm also asking politely for the criminals to go to jail.

Right. Well, yeah. And um including perhaps our president who has benefited who has benefited he and his family to the tune of billions of dollars in cryptocurrency, right? Sorry, real money via cryptocurrency. Yeah. In a year and a half. Wow. And you know, you bring up the celebrities. What did they get paid in for these endorsements? You'll never guess. You'll Yeah. And they were paid in real dollars to convince you to take your right real dollars and turn them into something else. What why you know you brought up boredom and I think about boredom a little bit too with crypto and some of that stems from COVID possibly. We were sitting around we were bored as hell whether you're making sourdough bread or

sewing machines, bicycles, you know, we all didn't know what to do. But this was also a time that crypto really took off. Absolutely. You got a lot of young guys. So, crypto is really a phenomenon amongst young guys. Why is that? Uh, young guys are So, the switching to gender now, but Well, let's do it. I uh I was once a young guy. Uh our prefrontal cortex are not developed. No, I mean I'm I'm okay. This is Yeah, it's science, you know. Yeah. Uh and so young men have always had uh let's say a higher risk tolerance. uh smoking more, drinking more, drinking and driving more, uh doing all sorts of stupid stuff. Um but right now we're

barging them with ads telling them that not only should they, you know, they should engage in this, but if they don't, I mean, to paraphrase Matt Damon's ad, what are you a [__] Buy crypto. Um you know, so we're really like hammering them in a way that is exploitative. and young men and men in general are better marks than women because they have a sense of sort of like shame and pride. They don't like to they don't like to talk we don't like to talk about our feelings as much. Yeah. Uh and so it was really telling. I mean, in the movie, I um I interviewed se many victims of a scam called Celsius. And uh it was one of the more, you know, moving parts of the film because you literally

in such a kind way talked to these men who just lost a shitload of money. And I asked them at the end of the movie, "Do you still believe in crypto?" Yeah. That blew me away. And some of them um well, all of them said yes. Yeah. Um so, look, I say this with love. when people the ind so the industry the crypto industry doesn't give a [__] about its customers right they're they're perfectly willing otherwise they would regulate it properly right so they're totally fine with these guys actually losing their money they'll do a little performative like so sorry uh d yo do your own research it's your fault

that you lost the money that's the like the neatest trick of crypto the crulest trick is to turn the blame back on the mark themselves um but I genuinely do care about these guys um and I genuinely want to protect them. Yeah. And the industry is not protecting them. I really appreciate you. If more people with who are public figures speak out, it just it's helpful. And you know, men are so shitty at connecting with other men. And when you get swindled for money, it's even a worse time to connect with another man because you're embarrassed. Of course. So, uh I just I found that really powerful. What do you say to people who are still considering crypto or for the millions of Americans who are still in it? Sure.

There's a movie playing in theaters. I knew it. Okay. Besides see the movies, besides see the movies, how should they approach this gamble? Let's call it that. Uh only uh 5 to 6% of the population is really into crypto if you look at the polling. There's another about 10% that are sort of playing around with it. Um, if you're part of the 84% of the country that has never with crypto Yeah. congratulations, right? Well, even those numbers are helpful.

Yeah. We are the majority and I made the movie for you. Yeah. Uh to tell you that uh it's not you, right? It's them. They're lying to you for money, right? That's it. It's a perfect name for the film. Thank you for being here. Everyone is lying to you for money is now playing in select theaters. Ben McKenzie.