Actor and economist Ben McKenzie calls crypto BS

For this week’s MVP, we’re chatting with Ben McKenzie.

When Ben McKenzie—yes, that Ben McKenzie, from The O.C. and all your teen fantasies—first heard the word “Bitcoin,” he reacted just like the rest of us: “I don’t even know what the f*ck it is,” he told a friend over Zoom, mid-pandemic. The NYC-based actor, who has an economics degree in his pocket and a knack for investigative journalism, spent the next few years diving into the world of cryptocurrency.

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McKenzie didn’t like what he found. Despite whatever you’ve read, even right here from us, and heard from celebs like Kim Kardashian, Matt Damon and Snoop Dogg, he’s calling out what he refers to as “the largest Ponzi scheme in history,” first with the 2023 bestselling book Easy Money: Cryptocurrency, Casino Capitalism, and the Golden Age of Fraud, and now with its companion documentary, Everyone is Lying to You for Money, which you can stream on CBC Gem. But first, in this week’s MVP, we talk to the actor/writer/filmmaker about why and how he’s busting the myth of cryptocurrency.

I feel like everyone knows you from The O.C., but few people know you’re an economist too.

I have a degree in economics from the University of Virginia, which I had before I started acting professionally. I played a high-school character, but I was actually 24 when the show started, and I’d already graduated from university. I was particularly interested in the behavioural side of economics. I’m fascinated by how people make decisions and how they interact with this thing that we made up, called “money,” that makes another thing we made up, called “the economy.”

When did you learn people had made a thing called “crypto”?

I’d heard the word, of course, but hadn’t really paid any attention to it until the pandemic. My buddy Dave told me I should buy it. I love Dave, but I don’t take financial advice from him because I’ve been burned by Dave’s bad advice before.

I started researching and fell down a rabbit hole. Crypto was in the news all over the place, and all the celebrities were selling it, so I was very suspicious of that. They’re selling it to the general public with no investor protections—what could possibly go wrong? It seemed like a recipe for disaster.

I confess that I don’t really understand crypto. But is that the point?

To some degree, yes. I use the emperor’s new clothes as the metaphor in my book, because crypto is one of those things where you try to understand it but it seems impossible because the words don’t really make sense. You’re told that if you don’t understand it, it’s because you’re not smart enough. Only the people of the highest station get it, just like only the smartest people are able to perceive the imaginary clothes.

Crypto is preying on guys who want to feel like they are the smartest guy in the world, even if they don’t necessarily understand what the hell they’re buying.

Why did you say “guys” there?

Because crypto is primarily a phenomenon amongst young men. Stats show 42% of men 18 to 29 have purchased cryptocurrency. That’s nearly half of us, and there are a couple of reasons for that.

The first is that young guys like to gamble. That’s always been true.

The second is that the industry is relentlessly selling them this idea that they’re going to get rich. Advertising, particularly around sports, is constantly trying to convince guys that if they just put some real money into it then they’re going to make a lot of money. It appeals to the male ego and to our sense of risk-taking, and it’s become pervasive.

What happens when and if they lose?

That’s the other part that makes men easy marks: Many of us have been taught from an early age to feel shame when we make a mistake or do something stupid and foolish. We’re told to not admit it and not talk about it. When men get scammed, they are much more willing to blame themselves, be embarrassed and not tell anyone.

The ultimate trick of crypto, I think, is to turn the mark’s anger—which should be directed at the people that scammed them—back on themselves. If you sent your real money to a regulated financial entity and it suddenly disappeared, you would be furious and you would have legal recourse.

You could sue. But the way crypto works, where you can’t reverse a transaction, it’s a lot harder to get your money back and virtually impossible for many people to get their money back. It’s the perfect way for criminals to continue defrauding people.

Famous faces like Bill Clinton, Elon Musk and Kevin O’Leary are all championing cryptocurrency. Why are you the guy to push back?

I was taught a sense of social justice from a very young age. My grandfather helped get funding for PBS and start public radio and television in my hometown of Austin, Texas. My father and mother were very involved members of the community and were very civically minded.

I never really had a role to fill in public life beyond acting and being an entertainer, up to the point when I diverged into crypto, when I realized I was occupying a unique space to communicate economic ideas and try to make these somewhat abstract concepts like money, finance and investments more concrete for people.

I’ve become an advocate for a version of our financial system that’s more equitable, but crypto isn’t that. Crypto says if you don’t like the regulated financial system, try crypto, it’s way better. But that’s not true; it’s worse.

Read more from this issue of The Get:

1. Can a restaurant owner keep the servers’ tips?
2. Stealth wealth: How to be secretly rich
3. Need new winter tires? Here’s how to get a good deal
4. How to get into the stock market in a safe way