‘Misinformation, hype, and fraud’: Inside Ben McKenzie’s scathing new crypto doc—featuring Sam Bankman-Fried

FastCompany: Ben McKenzie knows that his main claim to fame is, still, starring in The O.C ., a Fox TV series that bowed out nearly 20 years ago. That’s why he begins his new documentary with a self-deprecating medley of clips featuring him being introduced as such. It’s a disarming transition to the film itself, which is a dire warning about what he views as possibly “the largest Ponzi scheme in history.” When the pandemic hit, and acting work vanished, McKenzie, who majored in economics at the University of Virginia, began a now six-year-long quest to understand the crypto industry, a research odyssey that he developed into a 2023 book, Easy Money .

Now he’s turned that book into a scathing new documentary that he wrote, directed, stars in, and funded called Everyone is Lying to You for Money . It hits theaters in New York and Los Angeles on April 17, followed by Boston, Washington D.C., Austin, San Francisco, and Portland. The movie depicts McKenzie’s journey toward trying to understand crypto, one that took him from Miami to London to El Salvador. It includes footage from interviews he did with victims and fraudsters alike, including the industry’s now-fallen hero, Sam Bankman-Fried.

Bankman-Fried spoke with McKenzie in July 2022, months before being arrested and consequently beginning his 25-year federal sentence for seven counts of fraud, including stealing $8 billion from customers. Since Bankman-Fried’s conviction, decentralized digital currency has risen again, and McKenzie believes that his movie is even more relevant now. The documentary’s basic thesis is that no matter what crypto can make possible in theory, in practice it is barely a currency; it is used for digital payments far less often than crypto boosters claim. Rather, it’s just a form of gambling.

Cryptocurrency is a “weird” investment because “you don’t own anything,” McKenzie tells me when we meet at a Brooklyn café in March. “You own a piece of code.” What’s more, he says, the crypto companies know this and exploit the individuals buying in, like a classic pyramid scheme: People are paying to have their real money turned into magic numbers. The industry’s “entire existence depends on misinformation, hype, and fraud,” McKenzie says. Beer, Matt Damon, and an airport in El Salvador McKenzie is aware that the concept of cryptocurrency can be complex to the point of brain-boggling.

To make it accessible to filmgoers, he includes light moments with dark humor, such as a scene of him not being able to buy beer with Bitcoin at the Bitcoin conference, and a bit where his wife, actress Morena Baccarin, asks him if he’s just mad at Matt Damon—who did a TV ad for Crypto.com —because he’s more famous. (“And taller?” she adds.) He also makes effective use of real victims’ often touching stories, such as those who invested in Celsius in order to set up a passive investment for retirement or spend more time with their kids. (According to the U.S.

Department of Justice , Celsius was found to have “artificially inflated” and “illegally manipulated” the value of its coin; the company froze user account access in June 2022, and customers lost billions.) He also speaks with an El Salvadorian citizen kicked off his land after the country’s pro-crypto president, Nayib Bukele, decided to build an airport for his so-called Bitcoin City.

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The documentary addresses significant issues within the cryptocurrency industry that directly affect brand trust and strategy, making it highly relevant and impactful for professionals in the field.