- 44 minutes ago
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00Ben McKenzie, director and producer of Everyone is Lying to You for Money, joins us now.
00:03Ben, thanks so much for joining us.
00:05And can I say, that interview was actually a lot more tough than I feel like a lot of people
00:08in our industry,
00:10even delivered with Sam Bankman-Fried.
00:12So how did this change?
00:14Again, your acting and directing accolades are many.
00:17You, of course, have your credentials from the University of Virginia, which is very important.
00:20So when...
00:20Wahoo-wah, baby.
00:22Wahoo-wah, I love it.
00:23So when did this kind of turn from being a curiosity to a mission and leading to conversations like that?
00:28Yeah, I mean, it was a gradual process to some degree.
00:30It was the pandemic, and showbiz was on ice.
00:32There was nothing for me to do as an actor.
00:34I was kind of looking for something new to do anyway.
00:37You know, I don't want to call it a midlife crisis, but like a midlife questioning, I guess, over the
00:42pandemic, like so many of us did.
00:44And I do have a degree in economics as an undergraduate.
00:46I hadn't used it much in showbiz.
00:48But a buddy of mine came to me and said I should buy Bitcoin.
00:52But my buddy had given me terrible financial advice before.
00:54And I was like, Dave, I'm not going to do that.
00:56What is it?
00:57And he said it's a cryptocurrency.
00:59I said, OK, so it's money.
01:00You can buy and sell stuff with it.
01:03And he's like, eh.
01:05I just thought, what is going on?
01:06So I got obsessed with it.
01:08And it had a slow process.
01:10But eventually, you know, reached out to a journalist.
01:14We started reporting on it and sold a book.
01:17And then I turned the camera on in the middle of that experience because I figured crypto is full of
01:21very colorful characters.
01:22And maybe I'll document something.
01:23And the first day of filming, I met a guy named Alex Mashensky, who is now in jail for running
01:29a Ponzi scheme.
01:30Two people you interviewed in jail for this film.
01:32Is that right, too?
01:32Are now in jail, yes.
01:33Are now in jail, yes.
01:34I interviewed them before, yes.
01:35Before the blowup.
01:36That SBF interview was before we knew he was a bad actor.
01:41I have to say, I, in 2013, I lived on Bitcoin for a couple weeks as an experiment, kind of
01:47a gag for Bloomberg.
01:49And back then, it was a very different ethos.
01:52It was more of a libertarian thing.
01:54It was less of a rug pull, you know, con artist scam.
01:58And do you document the change that we've seen in crypto?
02:02I mean, the events of the film, this is a tight 90-minute comedy.
02:06So there's only so much bandwidth that I could cover.
02:08In the book, I talk about the origins of Bitcoin.
02:10And you're right that it sort of came out of the cypherpunk thing, which is sort of libertarian-ish.
02:16Although, I will say, really, Bitcoin's first use case was crime, because it was through the Silk Road, that dark
02:22web drug marketplace.
02:23So there was this still a little...
02:25Right, crime and pizza.
02:26Yeah, that's right.
02:27Pizza first.
02:28Yeah, that guy.
02:29Oof.
02:29Bad trade.
02:30Someone bought 10,000.
02:32Two pizzas for 10,000 Bitcoin.
02:34Yes.
02:34Very logical.
02:35Now worth billions, I'm sure.
02:39Yeah, I...
02:41Sorry, I lost my train of thought.
02:42Well, you did talk to a lot of people in the film.
02:44I saw a clip of it as well.
02:45Like, Gerard Butler, who says, like, I made a ton of money on this.
02:48Yeah, except, but I don't understand it.
02:50You know, which is, like, a perfect illustration of a lot of what happens in crypto, which is, like...
02:56I also feel like in the film, you were getting a lot of questions that were, like, is any part
02:59of the crypto industry legitimate?
03:01And I feel like you kind of struggled to answer that question, to see, like, where the real legitimacy was.
03:06Right.
03:06Could anything happen in this industry to convince you that it could be a thing for good, that it does
03:11make sense, that it has merit to exist?
03:14I'm not advocating that it be outlawed.
03:16Sure.
03:16I don't think that would work.
03:17I think it has to be properly regulated.
03:19In my opinion, and it's a little bit more nuanced than what's presented in the film.
03:23But I basically believe that all of the speculative cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin, Ethereum, Melania coin, Trump coin, Fartcoin, I believe all
03:32the ones that price can go up and down, I believe those are really investments for the retail public and
03:36should be treated as securities.
03:38The industry does not want them to be treated as securities because, of course, securities laws are predicated on disclosure
03:43and you're supposed to know who you're giving your money to and what they're doing with the money.
03:46And crypto really doesn't want that, which I think is worth crypto industry, which is, I think, worth pondering why.
03:52So the speculative side, they should be regulated securities.
03:55On the stablecoin side, the stablecoins are cryptocurrencies peg one-to-one with real dollars.
04:00I think we have to ask ourselves, so it's a thing that's claiming to be a dollar and yet it's
04:04not backed by the full faith and credit of the United States.
04:07Isn't that a counterfeit dollar?
04:08Because what those stablecoins are used for is crime, primarily.
04:12A crypto company estimated that last year, $154 billion of criminal activity was facilitated via cryptocurrency and most of it
04:19is facilitated via stablecoins.
04:21Right now, ships are passing through the Strait of Ramos, paying tolls in cryptocurrency.
04:26North Russian oligarchs are buying, selling sanctioned oil to the Chinese in exchange for drones they're sending to Ukraine, all
04:35facilitated via cryptocurrency.
04:36So is this something that we want?
04:38I would argue quite strongly that it is not.
04:41One of the things that the pro-crypto crowd would argue is that everything is documented on the blockchain.
04:50So they would say, they would say, like, but it's also synonymous, but it's also synonymous, right?
04:56So you also have privacy, but it's also clear as day.
04:59And that's just not true.
05:00I mean, there's a fundamental tension there.
05:02So a blockchain is just a ledger, but it is a synonymous ledger.
05:06And it is quite difficult to track transactions on the blockchain, or I should say it's quite difficult to track
05:12transactions because many of them don't happen on chain.
05:15There's over-the-counter desks where people are exchanging dollars for crypto.
05:19So it doesn't look like the money has changed hands, but it has.
05:22The crypto has changed hands.
05:23So there's a lot of different – there's these things called crypto mixers where, you know, you put your crypto
05:28onto this thing and it jumbles it with all these other cryptocurrencies, which makes it very hard for law enforcement
05:32to catch up.
05:33And then, of course, the Trump administration has gone out of its way.
05:36They disbanded the Cryptocurrency Crime Task Force.
05:40They've gutted the SEC.
05:42You know, they passed this thing called the Genius Act, which is – allows corporations to issue their own money
05:47in the form of stable coins.
05:49It's a literal –
05:50Stable Genius Act.
05:51Yeah, exactly.
05:51I mean, if it's called the Genius Act with this Congress, you know it's got to be stupid.
05:56Anyway, they're doing what they can to make different rules for themselves.
06:01And why?
06:02Because they don't want the scrutiny that applies to other securities or applies to banks, right?
06:07There's a whole battle right now on Capitol Hill between the banks and Coinbase over this thing called the Clarity
06:11Act.
06:11I was going to say, and yet the biggest – I mean, look, there are critics on Wall Street, Jamie
06:16Dimon, like chief among them.
06:18And yet, J.P. Morgan and the biggest banks have, you know, crypto trading desks.
06:22Exactly.
06:22And what are they doing?
06:23They're just – they're not taking a directional bet.
06:26They're just facilitating the trade.
06:28This is the oldest time.
06:30Wall Street is just – you know, there's a BlackRock ETF.
06:33They don't even touch the Bitcoin.
06:35BlackRock – Bitcoin.
06:36They don't even touch the Bitcoin.
06:37Right.
06:37You give them the money.
06:38BlackRock goes to Coinbase.
06:39Says, hey, you know, this represents a share of a Bitcoin.
06:42Hold the Bitcoin for us.
06:44By the way –
06:44The decentralized, democratized future of money brought to you by BlackRock?
06:48I mean, what are we talking about?
06:49It's all nonsense.
06:49And for those that have experienced the rug pulls, like the Celsius, the people you interviewed, obviously for them, it's
06:55an extremely painful thing.
06:57For many of them, it was deeply embarrassing.
06:58But I wonder if this industry is big enough that you worry about wider economic consequences.
07:03I do.
07:04I mean, the thing that's changed since 2022, because of the Genius Act, because of Trump's promotion of this, is
07:09crypto has integrated itself much more fully into our regulated economy.
07:15In the film, we document the three banks that failed in the spring of 2023, just months after I testified
07:21to Congress and said, if we don't get a hold of this, you know, there's going to be hell to
07:24pay.
07:24And sure enough, the three banks all had ties to cryptocurrency.
07:27Doesn't matter what the crypto industry said.
07:29That says that's the truth.
07:31It could be far worse.
07:32If there's a downturn, right, the things that are most speculative fall the fastest.
07:37Historically, that's what happened in 2022.
07:38Let's say crypto experiences a real downturn.
07:40Let's say ETF holders want to sell $10 billion of a Bitcoin ETF in one day as opposed to one.
07:47Is there really liquidity on the other side?
07:49Are there really $10 billion worth of buyers?
07:51I would argue we don't know.
07:54But that seems very, very dangerous.
07:55And then what happens if that downturn leads to a bigger downturn and then the fake money has been mixed
08:00with the real money, the crypto with the real stuff, and now we end up bailing them out?
08:05Which would be incredibly ironic, of course, because crypto was set up supposedly in opposition to the subprime crisis and
08:11the failures, and they would have recreated the same thing.
08:14Ben, I wonder what kind of feedback you've got.
08:16The film's not out yet.
08:17It's out this week.
08:18Okay.
08:19I wonder what kind of feedback you've gotten because everyone knows about the project in the industry and the book
08:24from people, big names in the industry who aren't in prison or in the White House.
08:30Oh, I have a great example of that.
08:32Can I just jump in?
08:33So New York Times has said Adam Back is potentially Satoshi, if I follow this.
08:39I don't know that that's proven to be blunt.
08:40I didn't see incontrovertible evidence.
08:42There's a lot of circumstantial evidence.
08:44But he's a likely candidate.
08:45He's a British cryptographer.
08:46He was the first person Satoshi emailed.
08:48Certainly could be.
08:49Here's some fun facts about Adam Back.
08:51Adam Back, his company Blockstream received funding from Jeffrey Epstein.
08:56That's in the Epstein files.
08:58Also, Adam Back hates me.
08:59I never met him, never interviewed him.
09:01He's referred to me as a crisis actor, which is funny because I am an actor and it is a
09:05crisis.
09:05So he's very close to getting it.
09:07But I don't know.
09:08Maybe he's just not a fan of the OC.
09:10I don't know why he's so upset with me.
09:11Everyone's a fan of the OC.
09:12There we go.
09:13That's what I was looking for.
09:14What about, you know, there are reasonable people in this industry.
09:19Mike Novogratz, for example.
09:20Oh, he's the reasonable person?
09:21The guy that got the tattoo of Luna Coin is the reasonable guy?
09:24I mean, he's not Michael Saylor, is what I'm saying, you know?
09:26Oh, on the sliding scale of Michael Saylor and Mike Novogratz.
09:29You are correct, sir.
09:30Mike Novogratz.
09:31Very level-headed.
09:33Only got a Luna tattoo.
09:35Then lots of people lost money on that Ponzi scheme.
09:38Love you, Mike.
09:38Love you.
09:39Trying to push back a little.
09:40Baby, baby, I can do this all day long.
09:43Ben, what's next?
09:44I don't know.
09:45Prediction markets?
09:46Have you looked at those at all?
09:47No, man, I'm so tired of doing this.
09:48I want to get back to the TV.
09:49I have a TV show I'm developing with David E. Kelly, who is an original idea that I have
09:54about a legal show, legal drama, political thriller, early stages, so who knows if it'll
09:59happen.
09:59But it's my newest true crime obsession, which is Eric Adams and all the corruption surrounding
10:03his administration.
10:04Definitely would want to watch it.
10:05By the way, so acting and producing and directing is less demanding than trying to chase after
10:12crypto people and understand this industry.
10:14Oh, absolutely.
10:15The only thing that's harder is parenting.
Comments