May 18, 2026 • 34 mins
Here’s a recent favorite of ours from our friends at the Uncanny Valley podcast.
Actor Ben McKenzie (The O.C.) is out with a new documentary, Everyone Is Lying to You for Money, which follows his journey into becoming an anti-cryptocurrency advocate. He says we should all stop trying to unmask the presumed original developer(s) of bitcoin known as Satoshi Nakamoto because it benefits only the mysterious inventor. The actor-director talks with Katie about why he thinks crypto is a scam, and why he says people are falling for it.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
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.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
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
supposed the multi trillion dollar industry was nothing more than
a massive speculative bubble bound to pomp.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
That's Ben Mackenzie testifying before Congress on the spectacular collapse
of cryptocurrency exchange FTX in late November twenty twenty two. Mackenzie,
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.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
Thanks for having me, Katy's.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
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 this sweeping investigation,
yet another sweeping investigation into the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto,
(01:30):
the creator of bitcoin. And I'm not even interested in
talking about who Satoshi is, Like I I'm not. I
actually 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 and online fascination and almost sort
(01:52):
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.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
Yeah, I mean, if you think of crypto as a story, right,
as not really, it doesn't really function as a currency
unless it's sort of a black market currency. It's sort
of speculative thing. You can bet on the price going
up and down, can use it for committing crime, for
getting paid for committing crime. But it's a story with
this really devoted small following, and it has a lot
(02:37):
of aspects of a cult. And one great thing for
a cult is to have this you know, deified figure
who only exists as a pseudonym, because in reality it
might be maybe this guy Adam Back who we can
talk about is a very interesting character, or some other
cipherpunk cryptographer from that era, but then it would be
(02:59):
a real person, and a real person would be a
little bit of a letdown.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
Probably, right, whoever it is, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (03:04):
Yeah, right, I mean it would just be 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 we'll Bitcoin fixes this.
(03:26):
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.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
I will admit. I mean, I love a long story.
I did finally at one point was like I got
to 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,
(04:05):
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 dissipates, or at
least starts to dissipate.
Speaker 3 (04:18):
Yeah, I mean, I would be happy to talk about
Adam Back specifically.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
I mean, what do we what do we know about
Adam Back?
Speaker 3 (04:24):
So a couple of things. I've never met him, and
I've interviewed him. He does not like me. He's referred
to me as a crisis actor. No, well, I am
an actor and it is a crisis so, you know,
kind kind of you know, points for creativity. Adam cryptographer,
he's the first person that Satoshi emailed. So this person
(04:44):
that doesn't exist, this real person. That's interesting. And then
I guess in the article, apparently there's a lot of
similarities in terms of how Adam writes and Satoshi wrote,
but in terms of Adam himself. He started this company
called Blockstream, and Adam met with with Jeffrey Epstein in
the sort of mid twenty tens, and apparently there was
some sort of financial relationship, there was some sort of
(05:06):
investment of some kind at some point. I think that's
really interesting because of course, cryptocurrency, when it started with
the white paper in two thousand and eight and then
came into existence in reality in two thousand and nine,
there really wasn't a use case for it. What could
you really do with this stuff? It's just lines of
code on ledgers called blockchains, And the first use case
was crime. It was the silk Road of this dark
(05:27):
web drug marketplace. And you know that has been in
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's trying to get outside the
regulated system. It's a tool. So like, could you use
(05:48):
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, like how are people
actually use how are they actually using it? 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 one hundred and fifty billion
(06:09):
dollars of illicit activities is finance via cryptocurrency. One hundred
and fifty billion in a year. That is just a
shocking moment. And that's from a crypto company. Yeah, analysis,
so it might be on the low it, 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
(06:33):
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 both a Ponzi scheme. On the
(06:54):
speculative side in terms of cryptocurrency is like bitcoin at
Meloannia coin, trump Coin, fart Coin, common Rocket, my favorite
meme coin. There are pols these games on that side,
and then their 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 this is
really important for people to understand. The libertarians that of
crypto will say this is great, this is money that's
(07:16):
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 overwrought. But if the money doesn't
come from the government, where does it come from? They
don't like to talk about it, But the answer in
cryptocurrency is corporations. It's world liberty, financial, but it's also bitcoin.
The bitcoin that's mine today, the vast majority of it
(07:36):
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.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
We played a little bit of that tape of you
giving this testimony in twenty twenty two, 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
(08:16):
in the crypto industry. What is it like to get
an invitation like that? Is it a phone call? Is
it an email?
Speaker 3 (08:22):
Like?
Speaker 1 (08:22):
How did you react to that invitation? What did you
think when that came up?
Speaker 3 (08:26):
I over the summer that year, as I was really
fully into the scrypto 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,
(08:48):
the only hearings that are happening aren't 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
(09:10):
just wasn't the right time. That was what the vibe.
And then that fall Sam got a Sam bankmfrid of FDx.
His empire exploited fantastically. He was kind of the figurehead
of crypto at the time. He was arrested in the
Bahamas and eventually extradited and there's a chance for hearing
and I got the call, and uh, yeah, it was.
(09:31):
It was a really nice moment. I mean, to be honest,
iast of course it's instantaneously incredibly er. Yeah, no, of course,
of course you've never done it before.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
One of the observations that I have that I have
made many many times around congressional testimony of this nature.
When it's anything technology related, you sort of you sit
and you watch and you listen, and you you look
at the lawmakers who were listening, and you hear their questions,
and you sort of think to yourself, like, oh my god,
how are we ever going to get anywhere? And I
say that with all respect to some of the political
(10:02):
leaders of this cast, 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
(10:23):
the stakes were.
Speaker 3 (10:25):
I think some of them did.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
Yeah, sure, I mean it's not a monolith exactly.
Speaker 3 (10:31):
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 I like too simplistic? She's like, no, you have
to say that, because that's how people understand these things. Popularly.
(10:55):
You can be nuanced in a three hundred page book,
but in five minutes on Capitol Hill and specific clip
that you're going to be clipped for, you need to
be as direct and as hard hitting as possible. And
so I wrote my remarks. And you know, the good
part about being an actor is and a writer is
you specialize in communications. And I knew, I think I
knew how to hit my marks. And then what was
(11:16):
so fascinating about actually testifying is how similar to showbiz
it was. You know, 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 quite the hearing was too cryptoskeptics. Me and
this wonderful professor of law at American University, Hillary Allen,
(11:39):
and a couple of pro crypto people, including Kevin O'Leary.
Speaker 1 (11:42):
Oh fantastic. Yeah, so glad Kevin was able to be there.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (11:46):
Yeah, So I mean, I just want you to I
think that's really important for me to remember. It's like, oh,
it's a wonderful So what an honor to testify, But
you're testifying, obviously Kevin O'Leary's that should ground me in
a certain humility. Republicans would ask questions of the pro
crypto people, and mcrats would ask questions, so none of
us were really engaged in that. It wasn't a debate,
Yeah right, It was sort of like a performative thing
(12:06):
where we were just going to hit our marks. And
I get that, but that obviously is not you know,
a real conversation. So yeah, I can't remember what I
felt at the time, but I definitely. I remember other
skeptics saying, yeah, it's over.
Speaker 1 (12:21):
It's over in twenty twenty two.
Speaker 3 (12:23):
Yeah, or you know it's going to die out. Not
all of them, but some of them. And I just
remember thinking, I don't think that's true.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
Well, which brings me to there's a lot that I
want to get into and I want to make sure
we spend time on the doc. But I have to
ask you about President Trump, because crypto was sort of
you know, it was bouncing along. There would be these
spectacular moments of catastrophe, right SBF being a great example,
(12:49):
you have the President of the United States come back
into office for a second term and become, you know,
a crypto evangelist, vowed to make the un United States
the quote crypto capital of the world. So crypt in
the United States is back in a big way, right,
I mean, it has been endorsed by the President of
the United States. There's Malania coin. I mean, it's just
(13:11):
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 in the change you're trying to effect.
Speaker 3 (13:30):
That's a great question. So this film has taken a
long time to make. The events of the film are
largely in twenty twenty two, and it's a completely independent
movie that I financed myself a 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. On
(13:50):
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 twenty twenty one,
Donald Trump called bit gwenna 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
(14:11):
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 twenty twenty four,
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
(14:32):
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 this sort
of leader of this cult, like fraudulent coin is. It's
(14:57):
dark for the world, but it is kind of Chef's
kiss for it's the themes of the It does track.
Speaker 1 (15:03):
It tracks, It definitely tracks.
Speaker 3 (15:05):
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 needed to wrap production in twenty twenty
four or sort of start the editing, and then there's
graphics and stuff. So we finally finished it in the
summer of twenty five, 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
(15:28):
Otwood from The OC and my much more famous wife,
who's awesome in this movie, and Mariana just kills it.
And it's like it's a comedy about a topic that's
in the news. This is gonna be slam dunk. I'm
gonna have meetings with Netflix and like it's gonna be done. Interesting,
had some meetings with some streamers, but this was at
the time when you know, he was going after Kimmel,
he was going after Colbert. I mean, they're still doing it,
(15:49):
but they were really at that point dangerously close to
kind of like succeeding in the censorship. And here was
a movie that's a little political, more than real political.
I mean the titles, everyone's lining you from Yeah, and
I made sure the lying part when you see the
the intro is over Trump's face, so yeah, you know,
not trying to hide the ball. You know, the movie
(16:09):
didn't sell. Now that being said, Crimee River, the movie's
coming out. It's in theaters. People can see it at
least briefly, and their response so far has been fantastic
because people are so angry at this stupid system and
all these stupid people who get again continue to life
to us for money. So it's it's a wild ride.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
We're going to take a quick break and we'll be
right back. You've been on this war path for years.
You wrote a book already. Tell me about the origins
(16:49):
of the documentary. I mean, as you say, this goes
back like many many years now.
Speaker 3 (16:54):
Yeah. So the documentary started off with I approached the
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
reporting on this because it was sort of coming out
of COVID into twenty one into twenty two. And the
first thing we went to in the real world was
south By Southwest in twenty twenty two in my hometown
of Boston, Texas, and I just figured, why not turn
(17:18):
a camera on. You know, these characters are wild. The
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 go
with Celsius, which was a very dodgy company, where like
you give them your crypto and they give you this
(17:38):
like guaranteed return of like fifteen or twenty percent or
something ridiculous.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
It sounds too good to be true.
Speaker 3 (17:43):
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 again,
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 CEO Alex Meshensky, and I you know, what are
you gonna do? So I miked up, I want to
and I had a this whole conversation with him that's
really wild. Some of it's in the movie. He's just
(18:03):
like such a used car salesman, right, just like obviously
kind of blustery and full of it. And that was
the first day, so I figured I should keep going.
So yeah, so that's how it started, and I just
kept going, and I needed to also finish the book.
So twenty twenty two was documenting and twenty twenty three
was the book, and then the book came out of
the summer, and then I could really turn to all
(18:24):
this random footage that I had, which was like interviewing
these guys like Alex and Sam Big mcfred testifying the
Capitol Hill, going to El Salvador. We 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
(18:46):
my clause or more ideals here. And that worked because
I basically was able to use my much more famous
and talented wife and get her for free to be
in the movie and wrote my kids into it. It
worked out, but it took a while to create the narrative.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
And how do you think about it? I mean, you
interview Alex, you talk to SBF in the film too,
But this sort of culture of person who is drawn
to cryptocurrency, we could describe them as crypto bros. I mean,
there are women involved as well, but it's sort of
like the crypto guy, right, and they they're kind of slimy,
there's something really inauthentic about them, and they are essentially
(19:26):
you know, preying on more vulnerable people as part of
this massive exploit, right, this massive scheme. There are people
in my life who are of a certain generation, I mean,
many decades older than I am, who have invested retirement
money into cryptocurrency. I mean, it is a very scary thing.
How do you describe sort of what draws someone to
(19:49):
cryptocurrency sort of as a crypto bro, as someone who's
like all in on this community, and then as someone
on the other side, sort of like that vulnerable population.
I mean, these are the people I worry about when
we talk about someone like President Trump, who listen to
him talk about crypto and sort of watch his press
conferences or see that the beautiful first lady has a
coin out, you know, and they feel like, oh, I
(20:10):
should get in on that. Talk to me about those
two like cohorts. How do you see them?
Speaker 3 (20:15):
Yeah, there's the sort of if you think of it
as sort of like a multi level marketing scheme. Yeah,
then there's the people at the top of the paramid
and then there's everybody else at the bottom. And the
people at the top are the insiders, people that are
on the exchanges, the issue the coins hawk the coins
offer various sort of fintechy 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
(20:36):
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's it is very male. I will say
it's very male. But forty million people, forty million Americans
have invested in cryptocurrencies. Forty million, I think, so it's
(20:58):
like sixteen percent of the adult public, which is I
know it's that now. Now that being said, most of
those people only put a little money in.
Speaker 1 (21:06):
Just like an experiment, little hobby.
Speaker 3 (21:08):
Yeah, they still Matt Damon selling it and they're like, sure,
I'll put a one 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 a bitcoin.
And my buddy's great, but he's kind of been a
knucklehead about money. Yeah, Dave, and and so I was like,
I'm not going to do that, Dave, but I do,
(21:29):
I do, I do want to hear more tell me
about it, And he couldn't tell me about it, and
so I had to do my own research. But in
terms of the people that are into it, you know,
it's everybody. And I describe it in the movie is
Crypto's really just a story, a get rich quick scheme,
a story of sort of you're gonna be wealthy, and
also it's going to fix all these problems and it's
going to give you all this freedom, and it's the
story is always time really just wrapped in this sort
(21:50):
of technobabble stuff that appeals to just an extraordinary number
of people. So if you think of it that way,
then Crypto is really just a projection of the hopes
and dreams of so many people. And I interview a
bunch of the victims of the Celsius scam, you know,
after I met the CEO, I felt like I should
talk to these folks, and so we post on a
Reddit and all these guys replied. It was all guys,
(22:11):
And I had really good conversations with them, you know,
and in very sincere conversations about Okay, well, what did
you want this money to do? You know, you were
going to make money. What was it going to do
for you? I had various answers, but the most sort
of heartbreaking was a guy working construction in Texas who
just he said he wanted to make a little money
to spend more time with his daughter.
Speaker 1 (22:28):
Oh, that's really sad.
Speaker 3 (22:30):
That's really sad. And then you know he felt like
a let her down and he lost the money. You know,
I'm crying. He's crying like, you know, I'm dad, He's
a dad like it. Do you know, so you feel sympathy.
I do. I feel a lot of sympathy. At the
same time. I came back to these guys at the
end of the movie and I say, do you still
believe in crypto? They all said yes, every single one
of them, amongst the hardcore five to six percent of
the population. I'm never going to be able to convince them.
(22:53):
This is the thing that scam. No one else is
going to be able to convince them. They're going to
have to go that journey on their own and maybe
they'll come out of the Puz said, but they're most
likely on the negative.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
I didn't make They unfortunately all hate wired too, so
we're not going to get Yeah.
Speaker 3 (23:06):
They're not listening to us anyway. But I didn't make
the movie for them. I mean the movie for everybody else.
I mean the movie for the eighty plus percent of
the country that's never bought crypto. The vast majority of
us are skeptical of crypto for good reason. And almost
everybody that I talked to who isn't into it says
the same thing to me. They say, I don't know,
it seems maybe I'm not that smart. It seems kind
of complicated, but also seems scammy, and I just want
to say, no, it's not you.
Speaker 1 (23:27):
Well, that's actually that's a question. People who say sort
of like the blockchain, I find that very intimidating. Cryptocurrency.
I don't quite get it. What is the clearest way
to explain to someone that you have found to just say, like, look,
this is what this is, here's the deal.
Speaker 3 (23:43):
Great. The thing you need to know is that blockchain
technology sucks. It's old. It's really old. It goes back
to nineteen ninety one.
Speaker 1 (23:51):
But I thought you could put everything on it.
Speaker 3 (23:53):
Yeah, and that was what we were efeciculally in twenty
twenty two or twenty one twenty two, there was all
the you know it was going to be like medical sure,
and oh.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
It's outrageous the press releases I got. You could I mean,
you could put farm animals on there, like literally whatever
you wanted to go on the blockchain.
Speaker 3 (24:07):
Yeah, and so like it's an old technology, it hasn't
found application outside of crypto, right, Like what companies they
now they don't even use the word blockchain now. They
use the word the term digital assets, which is wonderfully yeah,
wonderfully vague term. What is it? It's it's digital, It's
an asset of what what are you owning? Exactly? So
you just need to understand that the digtionality sucks. To
(24:29):
give you a sense of how much it sucks, Bitcoin
can only process five to seven transactions a second visa
into twenty four thousand, So it cannot scale as a
payment's method. You have to build all these layers on
top of it, which of defeats the purpose of having
it to begin with. And so even Sam bank Matrid
when I interviewed him, I was like, bitcoin can't work
as global payments and he was like yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.
(24:50):
And then he tried to pivot and sell me on
this other coin that worked better, but he also owned
a lot of which is very very funny, So it
can't work technologically. And you know, blockchain is really simple.
It's just a ledger, just a way of storing information.
The advantage that it has is it obscures the identity
of whoever's interacting, right, hence the crime exactly. Yeah, and
(25:11):
it's not anonymous, but it's synonymous, you know. So you
can have all these different addresses in the form of wallets,
and you can you know, you can also run your
crypto through these things called mixers, which sort of further
obscure the identity make it even harder to track. Your
colleague Andy Greenberg has done enormous wonderful work talking about
how law enforcement interacts with these things. So theoretically you
(25:32):
could trace who is committing what crime, except you can't. Really,
it's very difficult to do because you don't know who
who is, what what is who who is who is
who who was who within the on the ledger, and
that just requires a lot of like legwork that quite frankly,
the law enforcement agencies don't have, generally speaking. So the
crypto people will say no, no, it's open and its transparent,
(25:53):
but at the same time they benefit from the fact
that it isn't. So there's just a lot of talking
out of both sides of their mouths.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
So you basically would just say to someone it's not
actually that complicated and it doesn't work very well.
Speaker 3 (26:05):
Yeah, it just doesn't work that well. Like if someone
says blockchain is the future, ask them, doesn't go back
to like nineteen ninety one. Yeah, Like if you want
to find people that are skeptical of cryptocurrency, ask cryptographers,
Like cryptographers are skeptical of crypto because it's moved on.
They've moved on from that. I interviewed the guy. He
(26:25):
didn't have anything to do with bitcoin, but he did
a precursor to bitcoin. David Chalm, cryptographer, A nice guy.
I asked him, you know about this, like, it doesn't
seem like it's working that well, and he referred to
to bitcoin as primitive or blockchain is primitive.
Speaker 1 (26:39):
Where do you want to see this go? What is
for you after all of these years the ideal future
outcome for cryptocurrency, Well.
Speaker 3 (26:49):
I mean, we put ourselves in a really bad place here.
I mean to state the obvious where what should have happened,
in my opinion, is that cryptocurrency it doesn't really funk
as a currency except for sort of legal stuff. It
should have been classified properly as a security back in
the day, but it wasn't, and it was sort of
quasi classified as a commodity, and that's created a lot
(27:10):
of the problems. I know this is very like door key,
but it's really important. We're the only country in the
world that separates our commodities regulation from our securities regulation.
Every other country in the world they put these things
together because why wouldn't you If crypto were classified as securities,
they would have to follow securities laws, and securities laws
are predicated on disclosure. You have to know who you're
giving your money to and what they're doing with that money.
And the crypto industry really doesn't want that right obviously,
(27:33):
and so I think the temptation is to say to
outlaw it, right, but I just don't think that's going
to work. I'll just be honest. I just think it's
a global system at this point, and outlawing it is
just going to continue to push it into the dark corners.
So I think it's security's law. Stable coins are different.
Stable coins I think are extremely dangerous because so stable
coins are our cryptos that are pegged one to one
(27:54):
with a real currency like the US dollar. So it's
sort of a black market dollar, but of course it's
not back by the full faith in credit of the
United States. It's a privately issued form of money to me,
because they're trading on the trust that people have in
the stability of a dollar. It's a counterfeit dollar. It's
not a real dollar. And if we continue to allow
(28:16):
that to exist, and worse, we allow it to infiltrate
our banking system, which is what this legislation threatens to
do to sort of allow stable going companies to become
their own banks. It mixes the fake money with the
real money, and that introduces enormous systemic risk, and at
the end of the day, this could crash again, as
crypto has done repeatedly over its brief, tortured history, and
(28:39):
we could end up bailing these guys out like we
did in subprime crisis, which is hilarious because of course
that was the thing that crypto was supposedly set up
to be against.
Speaker 1 (28:48):
I have to ask you here with my optimist hat on.
Is there to you any redeeming value in cryptocurrency? Is
there a silver lining here? Is there a novel and
genuinely useful application of this technology?
Speaker 3 (29:03):
No, I think, but I do think there's a slight
silver lining, which is it points out the myriad failures
of our current system, and hopefully, as crazy as Trump is,
perhaps he's shifted the Overton window of what's possible on
the other side.
Speaker 1 (29:19):
Interesting. And what about you? I mean, this has been
a cause, a mission. There's something about it talking to
you that feels like it has been all consuming to
a certain extent. Are you going to keep going? Is this?
Is this an ongoing crusade for you? Or is there
something else you want to do?
Speaker 3 (29:40):
I wonder do a lot of different things, but I
want to keep doing here because this is probably the
best chance to reach the widest number of people. I mean,
I love writing a book was fantastic. I learned a lot,
especially from Jacob, and I'm very proud of that book.
But just you know, practically speaking, there's only so many
people that are going to read a three undred page
book on the economics, and a lot more people are
(30:00):
can see movie and so I'm really pushing that, and
I really want to keep that conversation going. As to
what happens after that, I really don't know. I'm not
someone who wants to run for office, so that's not
really a thing that wants to.
Speaker 1 (30:13):
You don't want to, but you might, right right.
Speaker 3 (30:15):
If the people want to be so much. Now that
sounds really obnoxious. No, I just I don't think that's
my role. I think my role is probably more communications
and quite frankly, sort of like a pr in terms
of helping people understand that we have the power, that
this is wrong, that you should trust your instincts, that
sort of thing. I don't know where that leads me
In terms of my next creative project. I'm actually trying
(30:37):
to get back into TV because I miss I miss
the collaboration of writing books and making documentaries. Especially the
post production process is very lonely. I miss the collaboration
on set, and so so I'm working on a series,
developing a series for myself to be in. We'll see
if that works. But I don't know what the future holds.
But nobody else does either, Right, all.
Speaker 1 (31:02):
Right, another quick break here and we'll be back with
our favorite game. Then we like to close each show
with a little game, if you would. It's called Control
(31:23):
All Delete. I think you're going to be very good
at this. I want to know what piece of tech
you would love to control, what piece you would love
to alt so alter or change, and what would you
vanquish from the earth if given the opportunity to.
Speaker 3 (31:40):
The last one. So let's start with control. Control would
be AI.
Speaker 1 (31:44):
What are we going to do to AI?
Speaker 3 (31:47):
So I have not spent the time on AI that
I've spent.
Speaker 1 (31:49):
On Crypto, So maybe this is your next project?
Speaker 3 (31:52):
Yeah, I mean I would love to talk to more
people and to be more informed about it. I think
that one of the things that's obviously so different about
AI from crypto is that it is a real technology
and it is actually changing things like right now, and
extremely powerful potentially. And I do not trust the guys
that are running it right now. There's a thing called
the grift shift. Do you know about this? It's grifters
that shifted from crypto into AI.
Speaker 1 (32:15):
Oh sure, I mean this makes yes, And they were
all in the metaverse hanging out and yeah, so.
Speaker 3 (32:19):
I don't trust them, and I feel like the control
I don't want to personally control it. I want society
control it in some sort of fair and sure balanced way.
But that seems like the best way to do that.
Let's see control ALT our financial system. You know, crypto
is a set up to like supposedly to be in
opposition to the banking system. One question I have is
(32:40):
why do we have banks? You know, banks are franchised
by the government and allowed to issue loans. Most of
the money that's created in this country is in the
form of loans. The government backstops that and the banks
profit and credit is extended, so it sort of works,
but we also end up bailing these guys out a
(33:02):
lot we do, And I just wonder if we should
cut out the middleman. I mean, everybody hates banks anyway,
So should we have banks or should we just have
accounts at the government and the government can control that. Now,
the crypto people are going to hate that, right, they're
not going to I'm so mad, But it makes a
certain amount of sense. So anyway, I guess that would
be my ALT. Whether it's destroying the banks or it's
just making the system more equitable and more more more
(33:23):
fair too.
Speaker 1 (33:24):
I'm so curious, what are you going to delete.
Speaker 3 (33:28):
Yeah, I think we know the answer to that crypto,
get rid of it. I'm pressing that button. Delete, Delete, Delete.
Speaker 1 (33:35):
Ben mackenzie is busy deleting cryptocurrency, and in the meantime
you should go see his documentary. Everyone is lying to
you for money, which they are. Ben, Thank you so
much for being here. This was great.
Speaker 3 (33:46):
Thanks for having this one.
Speaker 1 (33:51):
The Big Interview is a production of Wired and Kaleidoscope Content.
This episode was produced by our showrunner and Marie for Totally.
Kate Osborne is our executive producer. Music and mixing by
Pran Bandy. This episode was fact checked by Matt Giles
and I am, of course, your host Katie Drummond, Wired's
global editorial director. Check back here on Thursday for the
latest episode of Uncanny Valley, where wireds writers and editors
(34:13):
add you to their Slack channel.
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.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
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
supposed the multi trillion dollar industry was nothing more than
a massive speculative bubble bound to pomp.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
That's Ben Mackenzie testifying before Congress on the spectacular collapse
of cryptocurrency exchange FTX in late November twenty twenty two. Mackenzie,
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.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
Thanks for having me, Katy's.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
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 this sweeping investigation,
yet another sweeping investigation into the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto,
(01:30):
the creator of bitcoin. And I'm not even interested in
talking about who Satoshi is, Like I I'm not. I
actually 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 and online fascination and almost sort
(01:52):
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.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
Yeah, I mean, if you think of crypto as a story, right,
as not really, it doesn't really function as a currency
unless it's sort of a black market currency. It's sort
of speculative thing. You can bet on the price going
up and down, can use it for committing crime, for
getting paid for committing crime. But it's a story with
this really devoted small following, and it has a lot
(02:37):
of aspects of a cult. And one great thing for
a cult is to have this you know, deified figure
who only exists as a pseudonym, because in reality it
might be maybe this guy Adam Back who we can
talk about is a very interesting character, or some other
cipherpunk cryptographer from that era, but then it would be
(02:59):
a real person, and a real person would be a
little bit of a letdown.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
Probably, right, whoever it is, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (03:04):
Yeah, right, I mean it would just be 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 we'll Bitcoin fixes this.
(03:26):
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.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
I will admit. I mean, I love a long story.
I did finally at one point was like I got
to 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,
(04:05):
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 dissipates, or at
least starts to dissipate.
Speaker 3 (04:18):
Yeah, I mean, I would be happy to talk about
Adam Back specifically.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
I mean, what do we what do we know about
Adam Back?
Speaker 3 (04:24):
So a couple of things. I've never met him, and
I've interviewed him. He does not like me. He's referred
to me as a crisis actor. No, well, I am
an actor and it is a crisis so, you know,
kind kind of you know, points for creativity. Adam cryptographer,
he's the first person that Satoshi emailed. So this person
(04:44):
that doesn't exist, this real person. That's interesting. And then
I guess in the article, apparently there's a lot of
similarities in terms of how Adam writes and Satoshi wrote,
but in terms of Adam himself. He started this company
called Blockstream, and Adam met with with Jeffrey Epstein in
the sort of mid twenty tens, and apparently there was
some sort of financial relationship, there was some sort of
(05:06):
investment of some kind at some point. I think that's
really interesting because of course, cryptocurrency, when it started with
the white paper in two thousand and eight and then
came into existence in reality in two thousand and nine,
there really wasn't a use case for it. What could
you really do with this stuff? It's just lines of
code on ledgers called blockchains, And the first use case
was crime. It was the silk Road of this dark
(05:27):
web drug marketplace. And you know that has been in
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's trying to get outside the
regulated system. It's a tool. So like, could you use
(05:48):
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, like how are people
actually use how are they actually using it? 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 one hundred and fifty billion
(06:09):
dollars of illicit activities is finance via cryptocurrency. One hundred
and fifty billion in a year. That is just a
shocking moment. And that's from a crypto company. Yeah, analysis,
so it might be on the low it, 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
(06:33):
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 both a Ponzi scheme. On the
(06:54):
speculative side in terms of cryptocurrency is like bitcoin at
Meloannia coin, trump Coin, fart Coin, common Rocket, my favorite
meme coin. There are pols these games on that side,
and then their 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 this is
really important for people to understand. The libertarians that of
crypto will say this is great, this is money that's
(07:16):
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 overwrought. But if the money doesn't
come from the government, where does it come from? They
don't like to talk about it, But the answer in
cryptocurrency is corporations. It's world liberty, financial, but it's also bitcoin.
The bitcoin that's mine today, the vast majority of it
(07:36):
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.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
We played a little bit of that tape of you
giving this testimony in twenty twenty two, 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
(08:16):
in the crypto industry. What is it like to get
an invitation like that? Is it a phone call? Is
it an email?
Speaker 3 (08:22):
Like?
Speaker 1 (08:22):
How did you react to that invitation? What did you
think when that came up?
Speaker 3 (08:26):
I over the summer that year, as I was really
fully into the scrypto 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,
(08:48):
the only hearings that are happening aren't 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
(09:10):
just wasn't the right time. That was what the vibe.
And then that fall Sam got a Sam bankmfrid of FDx.
His empire exploited fantastically. He was kind of the figurehead
of crypto at the time. He was arrested in the
Bahamas and eventually extradited and there's a chance for hearing
and I got the call, and uh, yeah, it was.
(09:31):
It was a really nice moment. I mean, to be honest,
iast of course it's instantaneously incredibly er. Yeah, no, of course,
of course you've never done it before.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
One of the observations that I have that I have
made many many times around congressional testimony of this nature.
When it's anything technology related, you sort of you sit
and you watch and you listen, and you you look
at the lawmakers who were listening, and you hear their questions,
and you sort of think to yourself, like, oh my god,
how are we ever going to get anywhere? And I
say that with all respect to some of the political
(10:02):
leaders of this cast, 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
(10:23):
the stakes were.
Speaker 3 (10:25):
I think some of them did.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
Yeah, sure, I mean it's not a monolith exactly.
Speaker 3 (10:31):
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 I like too simplistic? She's like, no, you have
to say that, because that's how people understand these things. Popularly.
(10:55):
You can be nuanced in a three hundred page book,
but in five minutes on Capitol Hill and specific clip
that you're going to be clipped for, you need to
be as direct and as hard hitting as possible. And
so I wrote my remarks. And you know, the good
part about being an actor is and a writer is
you specialize in communications. And I knew, I think I
knew how to hit my marks. And then what was
(11:16):
so fascinating about actually testifying is how similar to showbiz
it was. You know, 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 quite the hearing was too cryptoskeptics. Me and
this wonderful professor of law at American University, Hillary Allen,
(11:39):
and a couple of pro crypto people, including Kevin O'Leary.
Speaker 1 (11:42):
Oh fantastic. Yeah, so glad Kevin was able to be there.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (11:46):
Yeah, So I mean, I just want you to I
think that's really important for me to remember. It's like, oh,
it's a wonderful So what an honor to testify, But
you're testifying, obviously Kevin O'Leary's that should ground me in
a certain humility. Republicans would ask questions of the pro
crypto people, and mcrats would ask questions, so none of
us were really engaged in that. It wasn't a debate,
Yeah right, It was sort of like a performative thing
(12:06):
where we were just going to hit our marks. And
I get that, but that obviously is not you know,
a real conversation. So yeah, I can't remember what I
felt at the time, but I definitely. I remember other
skeptics saying, yeah, it's over.
Speaker 1 (12:21):
It's over in twenty twenty two.
Speaker 3 (12:23):
Yeah, or you know it's going to die out. Not
all of them, but some of them. And I just
remember thinking, I don't think that's true.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
Well, which brings me to there's a lot that I
want to get into and I want to make sure
we spend time on the doc. But I have to
ask you about President Trump, because crypto was sort of
you know, it was bouncing along. There would be these
spectacular moments of catastrophe, right SBF being a great example,
(12:49):
you have the President of the United States come back
into office for a second term and become, you know,
a crypto evangelist, vowed to make the un United States
the quote crypto capital of the world. So crypt in
the United States is back in a big way, right,
I mean, it has been endorsed by the President of
the United States. There's Malania coin. I mean, it's just
(13:11):
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 in the change you're trying to effect.
Speaker 3 (13:30):
That's a great question. So this film has taken a
long time to make. The events of the film are
largely in twenty twenty two, and it's a completely independent
movie that I financed myself a 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. On
(13:50):
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 twenty twenty one,
Donald Trump called bit gwenna 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
(14:11):
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 twenty twenty four,
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
(14:32):
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 this sort
of leader of this cult, like fraudulent coin is. It's
(14:57):
dark for the world, but it is kind of Chef's
kiss for it's the themes of the It does track.
Speaker 1 (15:03):
It tracks, It definitely tracks.
Speaker 3 (15:05):
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 needed to wrap production in twenty twenty
four or sort of start the editing, and then there's
graphics and stuff. So we finally finished it in the
summer of twenty five, 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
(15:28):
Otwood from The OC and my much more famous wife,
who's awesome in this movie, and Mariana just kills it.
And it's like it's a comedy about a topic that's
in the news. This is gonna be slam dunk. I'm
gonna have meetings with Netflix and like it's gonna be done. Interesting,
had some meetings with some streamers, but this was at
the time when you know, he was going after Kimmel,
he was going after Colbert. I mean, they're still doing it,
(15:49):
but they were really at that point dangerously close to
kind of like succeeding in the censorship. And here was
a movie that's a little political, more than real political.
I mean the titles, everyone's lining you from Yeah, and
I made sure the lying part when you see the
the intro is over Trump's face, so yeah, you know,
not trying to hide the ball. You know, the movie
(16:09):
didn't sell. Now that being said, Crimee River, the movie's
coming out. It's in theaters. People can see it at
least briefly, and their response so far has been fantastic
because people are so angry at this stupid system and
all these stupid people who get again continue to life
to us for money. So it's it's a wild ride.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
We're going to take a quick break and we'll be
right back. You've been on this war path for years.
You wrote a book already. Tell me about the origins
(16:49):
of the documentary. I mean, as you say, this goes
back like many many years now.
Speaker 3 (16:54):
Yeah. So the documentary started off with I approached the
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
reporting on this because it was sort of coming out
of COVID into twenty one into twenty two. And the
first thing we went to in the real world was
south By Southwest in twenty twenty two in my hometown
of Boston, Texas, and I just figured, why not turn
(17:18):
a camera on. You know, these characters are wild. The
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 go
with Celsius, which was a very dodgy company, where like
you give them your crypto and they give you this
(17:38):
like guaranteed return of like fifteen or twenty percent or
something ridiculous.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
It sounds too good to be true.
Speaker 3 (17:43):
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 again,
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 CEO Alex Meshensky, and I you know, what are
you gonna do? So I miked up, I want to
and I had a this whole conversation with him that's
really wild. Some of it's in the movie. He's just
(18:03):
like such a used car salesman, right, just like obviously
kind of blustery and full of it. And that was
the first day, so I figured I should keep going.
So yeah, so that's how it started, and I just
kept going, and I needed to also finish the book.
So twenty twenty two was documenting and twenty twenty three
was the book, and then the book came out of
the summer, and then I could really turn to all
(18:24):
this random footage that I had, which was like interviewing
these guys like Alex and Sam Big mcfred testifying the
Capitol Hill, going to El Salvador. We 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
(18:46):
my clause or more ideals here. And that worked because
I basically was able to use my much more famous
and talented wife and get her for free to be
in the movie and wrote my kids into it. It
worked out, but it took a while to create the narrative.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
And how do you think about it? I mean, you
interview Alex, you talk to SBF in the film too,
But this sort of culture of person who is drawn
to cryptocurrency, we could describe them as crypto bros. I mean,
there are women involved as well, but it's sort of
like the crypto guy, right, and they they're kind of slimy,
there's something really inauthentic about them, and they are essentially
(19:26):
you know, preying on more vulnerable people as part of
this massive exploit, right, this massive scheme. There are people
in my life who are of a certain generation, I mean,
many decades older than I am, who have invested retirement
money into cryptocurrency. I mean, it is a very scary thing.
How do you describe sort of what draws someone to
(19:49):
cryptocurrency sort of as a crypto bro, as someone who's
like all in on this community, and then as someone
on the other side, sort of like that vulnerable population.
I mean, these are the people I worry about when
we talk about someone like President Trump, who listen to
him talk about crypto and sort of watch his press
conferences or see that the beautiful first lady has a
coin out, you know, and they feel like, oh, I
(20:10):
should get in on that. Talk to me about those
two like cohorts. How do you see them?
Speaker 3 (20:15):
Yeah, there's the sort of if you think of it
as sort of like a multi level marketing scheme. Yeah,
then there's the people at the top of the paramid
and then there's everybody else at the bottom. And the
people at the top are the insiders, people that are
on the exchanges, the issue the coins hawk the coins
offer various sort of fintechy 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
(20:36):
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's it is very male. I will say
it's very male. But forty million people, forty million Americans
have invested in cryptocurrencies. Forty million, I think, so it's
(20:58):
like sixteen percent of the adult public, which is I
know it's that now. Now that being said, most of
those people only put a little money in.
Speaker 1 (21:06):
Just like an experiment, little hobby.
Speaker 3 (21:08):
Yeah, they still Matt Damon selling it and they're like, sure,
I'll put a one 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 a bitcoin.
And my buddy's great, but he's kind of been a
knucklehead about money. Yeah, Dave, and and so I was like,
I'm not going to do that, Dave, but I do,
(21:29):
I do, I do want to hear more tell me
about it, And he couldn't tell me about it, and
so I had to do my own research. But in
terms of the people that are into it, you know,
it's everybody. And I describe it in the movie is
Crypto's really just a story, a get rich quick scheme,
a story of sort of you're gonna be wealthy, and
also it's going to fix all these problems and it's
going to give you all this freedom, and it's the
story is always time really just wrapped in this sort
(21:50):
of technobabble stuff that appeals to just an extraordinary number
of people. So if you think of it that way,
then Crypto is really just a projection of the hopes
and dreams of so many people. And I interview a
bunch of the victims of the Celsius scam, you know,
after I met the CEO, I felt like I should
talk to these folks, and so we post on a
Reddit and all these guys replied. It was all guys,
(22:11):
And I had really good conversations with them, you know,
and in very sincere conversations about Okay, well, what did
you want this money to do? You know, you were
going to make money. What was it going to do
for you? I had various answers, but the most sort
of heartbreaking was a guy working construction in Texas who
just he said he wanted to make a little money
to spend more time with his daughter.
Speaker 1 (22:28):
Oh, that's really sad.
Speaker 3 (22:30):
That's really sad. And then you know he felt like
a let her down and he lost the money. You know,
I'm crying. He's crying like, you know, I'm dad, He's
a dad like it. Do you know, so you feel sympathy.
I do. I feel a lot of sympathy. At the
same time. I came back to these guys at the
end of the movie and I say, do you still
believe in crypto? They all said yes, every single one
of them, amongst the hardcore five to six percent of
the population. I'm never going to be able to convince them.
(22:53):
This is the thing that scam. No one else is
going to be able to convince them. They're going to
have to go that journey on their own and maybe
they'll come out of the Puz said, but they're most
likely on the negative.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
I didn't make They unfortunately all hate wired too, so
we're not going to get Yeah.
Speaker 3 (23:06):
They're not listening to us anyway. But I didn't make
the movie for them. I mean the movie for everybody else.
I mean the movie for the eighty plus percent of
the country that's never bought crypto. The vast majority of
us are skeptical of crypto for good reason. And almost
everybody that I talked to who isn't into it says
the same thing to me. They say, I don't know,
it seems maybe I'm not that smart. It seems kind
of complicated, but also seems scammy, and I just want
to say, no, it's not you.
Speaker 1 (23:27):
Well, that's actually that's a question. People who say sort
of like the blockchain, I find that very intimidating. Cryptocurrency.
I don't quite get it. What is the clearest way
to explain to someone that you have found to just say, like, look,
this is what this is, here's the deal.
Speaker 3 (23:43):
Great. The thing you need to know is that blockchain
technology sucks. It's old. It's really old. It goes back
to nineteen ninety one.
Speaker 1 (23:51):
But I thought you could put everything on it.
Speaker 3 (23:53):
Yeah, and that was what we were efeciculally in twenty
twenty two or twenty one twenty two, there was all
the you know it was going to be like medical sure,
and oh.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
It's outrageous the press releases I got. You could I mean,
you could put farm animals on there, like literally whatever
you wanted to go on the blockchain.
Speaker 3 (24:07):
Yeah, and so like it's an old technology, it hasn't
found application outside of crypto, right, Like what companies they
now they don't even use the word blockchain now. They
use the word the term digital assets, which is wonderfully yeah,
wonderfully vague term. What is it? It's it's digital, It's
an asset of what what are you owning? Exactly? So
you just need to understand that the digtionality sucks. To
(24:29):
give you a sense of how much it sucks, Bitcoin
can only process five to seven transactions a second visa
into twenty four thousand, So it cannot scale as a
payment's method. You have to build all these layers on
top of it, which of defeats the purpose of having
it to begin with. And so even Sam bank Matrid
when I interviewed him, I was like, bitcoin can't work
as global payments and he was like yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.
(24:50):
And then he tried to pivot and sell me on
this other coin that worked better, but he also owned
a lot of which is very very funny, So it
can't work technologically. And you know, blockchain is really simple.
It's just a ledger, just a way of storing information.
The advantage that it has is it obscures the identity
of whoever's interacting, right, hence the crime exactly. Yeah, and
(25:11):
it's not anonymous, but it's synonymous, you know. So you
can have all these different addresses in the form of wallets,
and you can you know, you can also run your
crypto through these things called mixers, which sort of further
obscure the identity make it even harder to track. Your
colleague Andy Greenberg has done enormous wonderful work talking about
how law enforcement interacts with these things. So theoretically you
(25:32):
could trace who is committing what crime, except you can't. Really,
it's very difficult to do because you don't know who
who is, what what is who who is who is
who who was who within the on the ledger, and
that just requires a lot of like legwork that quite frankly,
the law enforcement agencies don't have, generally speaking. So the
crypto people will say no, no, it's open and its transparent,
(25:53):
but at the same time they benefit from the fact
that it isn't. So there's just a lot of talking
out of both sides of their mouths.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
So you basically would just say to someone it's not
actually that complicated and it doesn't work very well.
Speaker 3 (26:05):
Yeah, it just doesn't work that well. Like if someone
says blockchain is the future, ask them, doesn't go back
to like nineteen ninety one. Yeah, Like if you want
to find people that are skeptical of cryptocurrency, ask cryptographers,
Like cryptographers are skeptical of crypto because it's moved on.
They've moved on from that. I interviewed the guy. He
(26:25):
didn't have anything to do with bitcoin, but he did
a precursor to bitcoin. David Chalm, cryptographer, A nice guy.
I asked him, you know about this, like, it doesn't
seem like it's working that well, and he referred to
to bitcoin as primitive or blockchain is primitive.
Speaker 1 (26:39):
Where do you want to see this go? What is
for you after all of these years the ideal future
outcome for cryptocurrency, Well.
Speaker 3 (26:49):
I mean, we put ourselves in a really bad place here.
I mean to state the obvious where what should have happened,
in my opinion, is that cryptocurrency it doesn't really funk
as a currency except for sort of legal stuff. It
should have been classified properly as a security back in
the day, but it wasn't, and it was sort of
quasi classified as a commodity, and that's created a lot
(27:10):
of the problems. I know this is very like door key,
but it's really important. We're the only country in the
world that separates our commodities regulation from our securities regulation.
Every other country in the world they put these things
together because why wouldn't you If crypto were classified as securities,
they would have to follow securities laws, and securities laws
are predicated on disclosure. You have to know who you're
giving your money to and what they're doing with that money.
And the crypto industry really doesn't want that right obviously,
(27:33):
and so I think the temptation is to say to
outlaw it, right, but I just don't think that's going
to work. I'll just be honest. I just think it's
a global system at this point, and outlawing it is
just going to continue to push it into the dark corners.
So I think it's security's law. Stable coins are different.
Stable coins I think are extremely dangerous because so stable
coins are our cryptos that are pegged one to one
(27:54):
with a real currency like the US dollar. So it's
sort of a black market dollar, but of course it's
not back by the full faith in credit of the
United States. It's a privately issued form of money to me,
because they're trading on the trust that people have in
the stability of a dollar. It's a counterfeit dollar. It's
not a real dollar. And if we continue to allow
(28:16):
that to exist, and worse, we allow it to infiltrate
our banking system, which is what this legislation threatens to
do to sort of allow stable going companies to become
their own banks. It mixes the fake money with the
real money, and that introduces enormous systemic risk, and at
the end of the day, this could crash again, as
crypto has done repeatedly over its brief, tortured history, and
(28:39):
we could end up bailing these guys out like we
did in subprime crisis, which is hilarious because of course
that was the thing that crypto was supposedly set up
to be against.
Speaker 1 (28:48):
I have to ask you here with my optimist hat on.
Is there to you any redeeming value in cryptocurrency? Is
there a silver lining here? Is there a novel and
genuinely useful application of this technology?
Speaker 3 (29:03):
No, I think, but I do think there's a slight
silver lining, which is it points out the myriad failures
of our current system, and hopefully, as crazy as Trump is,
perhaps he's shifted the Overton window of what's possible on
the other side.
Speaker 1 (29:19):
Interesting. And what about you? I mean, this has been
a cause, a mission. There's something about it talking to
you that feels like it has been all consuming to
a certain extent. Are you going to keep going? Is this?
Is this an ongoing crusade for you? Or is there
something else you want to do?
Speaker 3 (29:40):
I wonder do a lot of different things, but I
want to keep doing here because this is probably the
best chance to reach the widest number of people. I mean,
I love writing a book was fantastic. I learned a lot,
especially from Jacob, and I'm very proud of that book.
But just you know, practically speaking, there's only so many
people that are going to read a three undred page
book on the economics, and a lot more people are
(30:00):
can see movie and so I'm really pushing that, and
I really want to keep that conversation going. As to
what happens after that, I really don't know. I'm not
someone who wants to run for office, so that's not
really a thing that wants to.
Speaker 1 (30:13):
You don't want to, but you might, right right.
Speaker 3 (30:15):
If the people want to be so much. Now that
sounds really obnoxious. No, I just I don't think that's
my role. I think my role is probably more communications
and quite frankly, sort of like a pr in terms
of helping people understand that we have the power, that
this is wrong, that you should trust your instincts, that
sort of thing. I don't know where that leads me
In terms of my next creative project. I'm actually trying
(30:37):
to get back into TV because I miss I miss
the collaboration of writing books and making documentaries. Especially the
post production process is very lonely. I miss the collaboration
on set, and so so I'm working on a series,
developing a series for myself to be in. We'll see
if that works. But I don't know what the future holds.
But nobody else does either, Right, all.
Speaker 1 (31:02):
Right, another quick break here and we'll be back with
our favorite game. Then we like to close each show
with a little game, if you would. It's called Control
(31:23):
All Delete. I think you're going to be very good
at this. I want to know what piece of tech
you would love to control, what piece you would love
to alt so alter or change, and what would you
vanquish from the earth if given the opportunity to.
Speaker 3 (31:40):
The last one. So let's start with control. Control would
be AI.
Speaker 1 (31:44):
What are we going to do to AI?
Speaker 3 (31:47):
So I have not spent the time on AI that
I've spent.
Speaker 1 (31:49):
On Crypto, So maybe this is your next project?
Speaker 3 (31:52):
Yeah, I mean I would love to talk to more
people and to be more informed about it. I think
that one of the things that's obviously so different about
AI from crypto is that it is a real technology
and it is actually changing things like right now, and
extremely powerful potentially. And I do not trust the guys
that are running it right now. There's a thing called
the grift shift. Do you know about this? It's grifters
that shifted from crypto into AI.
Speaker 1 (32:15):
Oh sure, I mean this makes yes, And they were
all in the metaverse hanging out and yeah, so.
Speaker 3 (32:19):
I don't trust them, and I feel like the control
I don't want to personally control it. I want society
control it in some sort of fair and sure balanced way.
But that seems like the best way to do that.
Let's see control ALT our financial system. You know, crypto
is a set up to like supposedly to be in
opposition to the banking system. One question I have is
(32:40):
why do we have banks? You know, banks are franchised
by the government and allowed to issue loans. Most of
the money that's created in this country is in the
form of loans. The government backstops that and the banks
profit and credit is extended, so it sort of works,
but we also end up bailing these guys out a
(33:02):
lot we do, And I just wonder if we should
cut out the middleman. I mean, everybody hates banks anyway,
So should we have banks or should we just have
accounts at the government and the government can control that. Now,
the crypto people are going to hate that, right, they're
not going to I'm so mad, But it makes a
certain amount of sense. So anyway, I guess that would
be my ALT. Whether it's destroying the banks or it's
just making the system more equitable and more more more
(33:23):
fair too.
Speaker 1 (33:24):
I'm so curious, what are you going to delete.
Speaker 3 (33:28):
Yeah, I think we know the answer to that crypto,
get rid of it. I'm pressing that button. Delete, Delete, Delete.
Speaker 1 (33:35):
Ben mackenzie is busy deleting cryptocurrency, and in the meantime
you should go see his documentary. Everyone is lying to
you for money, which they are. Ben, Thank you so
much for being here. This was great.
Speaker 3 (33:46):
Thanks for having this one.
Speaker 1 (33:51):
The Big Interview is a production of Wired and Kaleidoscope Content.
This episode was produced by our showrunner and Marie for Totally.
Kate Osborne is our executive producer. Music and mixing by
Pran Bandy. This episode was fact checked by Matt Giles
and I am, of course, your host Katie Drummond, Wired's
global editorial director. Check back here on Thursday for the
latest episode of Uncanny Valley, where wireds writers and editors
(34:13):
add you to their Slack channel.
kill switch News
Hosts And Creators
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Karah Preiss
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