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Teen heartthrob turned anti-crypto crusader? It may seem an unlikely path, but Ben McKenzie, the former star of “The O.C.,” didn’t take the easy path to wealth promised by bitcoin that many of his peers did. Instead, he looked beyond the big paychecks and risked his career to call out the scammers and liars behind crypto investing and his contemporaries in Hollywood who took their money to help sell it. Ben tells Andy about his decision to risk everything and expose the truth behind cryptocurrencies and the people who shill them in his new book, “Easy Money”.

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Transcript

SPEAKERS

Andy Slavitt, Ben Mckenzie

Andy Slavitt 

This is in the bubble with Andy Slavitt. Welcome to the show. It is so good to be talking to you. It’s nice, and I hope everyone’s having a nice summer. If you’re looking for something to do, you can email me and the Illuminati media.com. I’d love to hear from you. I’d love to have a conversation. My summers going well. And we’ve had a bunch of good shows recently. Thanks for tuning in. Interesting one today. You didn’t start having a good summer, Hollywood, Hollywood’s having a bad summer. For the first time in decades, we’ve got actors and writers all on strike. Now, when these actors and these Hollywood people who you know, they don’t get a lot of sympathy from us, because there’s, you know, we tend to think of the big stars like Matt Damon. And we don’t tend to think about there’s a lot of working people involved. And I’m not asking that we necessarily make them a source of sympathy. But I’m interested in how some of these Hollywood people make some of their choices and hit Matt Damon is a perfect example. These guys, you may recall last year, the year before the before when crypto currency was hot. These actors, Larry David, Matt Damon, other Hollywood people and sports people like Stefan curry and LeBron James and Tom Brady, famously, they all were out there hacking cryptocurrency. And in some respects, you know, it felt like just another endorsement just another way to make a bunch of money for a small amount of time. And, as you may know, because we did an episode on this last year, I find it deeply unsettling that a bunch of Hollywood people and people who are non financial people were primary spokespeople for cryptocurrency with a core message saying, Be bold, be brave, be daring, and take risk and don’t do your homework. And now this is coming back to bite them. There’s lawsuits. There’s all kinds of things, and a lot of people were duped in the process. My guest today is an actor, who at the time, this was happening back in 2021. Started to raise a little bit of hell about it. His name is Ben McKenzie, if you are of a certain age, you know him from the OSI. You might also know him from the show Gotham. He’s a he’s an actor. He’s also a writer and a producer. And he was one of the first people to say, You know what, this cryptocurrency thing is a scam. It’s a problem. But more than that, I found interesting as he called out his fellow actors publicly, and said, Hey, don’t do this. Don’t do this. And I got interested in talking to begin, because this whole idea of calling out your peers publicly for bad behavior. It’s something that most of us just won’t do. It’s just frowned upon. I mean, imagine calling out the people you work with, for doing something you disagree with publicly not telling them behind the scenes, but publicly saying, Hey, Joe and accounting is a schmuck, because he’s doing X and I don’t believe in x. It’s pretty risky, right? You get the opprobrium of your peers, etc. And in this particular case, you know, when everybody’s living a pretty public life, Ben McKenzie basically said to all of the crypto bros out there to come attack them. But he had a point. And his point was not just that cryptocurrency was something that was poised for a fall, it was that people were making illegal profits. And he believed even though there’s nothing proven at the time, no cases publicly at the time. And he also believed he preyed on people that preyed on low income communities and people of color, etc. So I thought it’d be fun to have been on the show. And thankfully, he’s willing to come on the show. He’s got a book that he’s co authored called Easy money, where he kind of chronicles his fight with his fellow actors. I think it’s pretty interesting. So I thought, a great summer episode. And a little bit of Yeah, I told you so going on here for people who were a little bit skeptical of crypto. And a little bit of acknowledgement for Ben that, you know, a lot of people were skeptical of crypto, plenty of them. But most of them kept their mouth shut. And Ben didn’t library that.

Andy Slavitt 

Hey, Ben, how are you? You doing the virtual book tour? In the middle of it all?

Ben Mckenzie 

Yeah, yeah. I mean, the entertainment industry is almost shut down. Anyway. So I’m, I sort of feel lucky, right? The writers strike and everything.

Andy Slavitt 

That’s true. Something to do. Yeah. All right. You ready to jam? Let’s do it. So you grew up in Austin, right? Yeah. From what I understand if your background, you had really interesting kind of role models and people in your life, that you had a parent or grandparent that was a professor, people who are foundational in the creation of public broadcasting, your any kind econ in Foreign Affairs major in college? How did you get into acting?

Ben Mckenzie 

Wow, you’ve done research. This is great. I got into acting because I think I wanted to run away from from some of the responsibilities that that my parents and my grandparents not that they were pressuring me, but just that they were sort of exhibiting my grandfather, as you, I guess, were implying he. He was a professor at the University of Texas helped start their communications department and public radio and television stations in Texas. And my father is an attorney. And my mother is a poet. And I, I felt I was a little directionless in college. I was getting my degree in economics and foreign affairs, which is their equivalent of, of international relations. And I mean, I guess the truth is, it’s kind of a cliche, but it’s true. University of Virginia, where I went to school was very Greek, heavy, it was read frats and sororities and stuff. Sure, that just was not my vibe. And I needed a way to meet girls. So I started auditioning for plays, and I got apart and, and it was really fun. It just started. It fed something in me, which I think is interesting about actors, a lot of us are actually quite shy, quite introverted. And it was a way of getting outside of myself and finding confidence in myself by pretending to be someone else. So I think that’s how I fall into it.

Andy Slavitt 

Oh, interesting. You know, it’s interesting, because from there, I mean, it couldn’t have been too long after you graduated college, that you ended up in LA landing the lead role in the OSI which, you know, for, for this audience, I think it’s old enough to remember the OSI, probably a lot of kind of core OSI fans, and then like, and this is where, like, our lives converge, and uh, you were named one of the sexiest men in the in the world, which of course, I technically wasn’t.

Ben Mckenzie 

Wait a minute. You weren’t ever technically?

Andy Slavitt 

I don’t think I applied that year. I think I went to my application. Oh, that right. And I didn’t sit for the interview. And so it was said to I’m glad you got it. Because I think one of us one of us should have for sure. But

Ben Mckenzie 

I want to thank you. This is I went on because I wanted to thank you for for not competing with me. I appreciate it.

Andy Slavitt 

Yeah, it’s about time. It’s about time, you know, sad but you know, I wasn’t gonna say anything, but it’s cool. That’s fine. But like that’s gotta be like, here we are, you know, very intellectual family studying finance side. I wanted to go into acting and then a few years later here, you’re like on the cover of pee. Bull in US magazine and, and and you’re a celebrity I, here’s the reason I’m asking the question is like, like you’re clearly a very serious smart person with real like intelligence pedigree and then all of a sudden, you’re like teen idol. Yeah. And how did that how did that fit you? How’d that feel? When when that was kind of like, who you sort of became to a lot of people?

Ben Mckenzie 

Yeah, it not well is how it fit fit me in the sense that man talk about imposter syndrome, I felt ill suited for this job that look deeply grateful, of course, I mean, it’s kinda like, you know, capturing lightning in a bottle when you who’s almost literally mono, my first one of my first jobs on camera, certainly, by far the biggest and it, you know, just happened to hit the Zeitgeist and take off. And yet, I was this, you know, college graduate degree in economics and foreign affairs. I was basically thinking, You know what, I’m going to try this acting thing. If it doesn’t work out, at least I try to when I’m young, and I don’t have any regrets later on. But I genuinely expected, you know, I’ll probably end up I don’t know, go to law school, at some point, become a lawyer, like my father is on I don’t know. But I figured I had to try it then. And I and I, look, I mean, I tried hard, and I worked on my skills, and I’m proud of those skills. But there’s always a lot of luck involved in Hollywood. So I had this feeling through most of my career, actually, although it went down over time. I’m just not a big an imposter. You know, and I think but I think that’s actually fairly common amongst doctors. Yeah. And a lot of public figures. Yeah, I say it like this. I don’t know if that makes sense to you. But like, no one really deserves public attention, right? I think it’s kind of like a fake thing. There’s no like real. And so it’s hard not to feel like you shouldn’t be there.

Andy Slavitt 

Look, you’re right. Why did I get this? Why did I get this? Yeah, it’s part of what is interesting about we’re going to talk about the book you wrote, is this sort of reflections on how actors and famous people are perceived and society as people that either you should listen to? Or are people maybe you shouldn’t take them seriously? Because, and I had this conversation with, with Matthew McConaughey, who I’m sure you know, also came from Texas. And he was sort of, you know, very much like you, you know, to looking tonight. Oh, guy, Rom Com guy. And then, you know, he’s.

Ben Mckenzie 

He’s a little more good looking to me and a little more successful. But yes, I’m the shorter.

Andy Slavitt 

You know, between the three of us. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. But no one’s no one’s gonna be I don’t know, I think I think people have a tough time. With that. When I lead. Let’s leave it to the audience to sort through. Do a poll. Yeah, right, do a poll. But you know, he’s, again, I’m not gonna apply, I’m just gonna take myself out. But he’s, he’s like, we’re having a tough time getting taken seriously as someone who has got actual ideas, and as a smart person, and, you know, cares about issues. And so typically, what we expect is, you know, a bunch of people go do a bunch of endorsements for things like cryptocurrency, Matt Damon, nobody is the least bit surprised. Because these are good looking people. We used to get paid a lot of money. And we were hearing from them. I’m just curious, like, you jumped on the scene, even before you wrote this book. You know, early on, we’ll talk about crypto itself, but I want to just focus on on the part of it for a second. And you’re like, wait a minute, actually know something about economics. And this doesn’t make sense. And was it strange to be like, I’m Hollywood guy who actually has thoughts and ideas of my own. I want to share. Yeah,

Ben Mckenzie 

It was really strange. And I felt this. Again, this feeling of like, Can I do this? Am I allowed to do this? I was reading my daughter The Emperor’s New Clothes as I had gone down the crypto rabbit hole. No, I’ve truly happened. I mean, it probably did it subconsciously on purpose, but like, but she was six at the time. And I was struggling with you know, do I go public with my skepticism. And, and and even you know, God forbid, write a book, which of course, I didn’t know how to do, and arguably still don’t know how to do it. But at least I’ve done. And I forgot, you know, I remember the story. But I forgotten a couple things about the emperor’s new clothes. The first is that the tailors trick all of the adults with an appeal to ego and status worship, you know, only the smartest people and people of highest station can see these imaginary clothes we leave. And the second thing, the thing that had the most impact on me was at the height of the story is the Emperor’s gallivanting through town naked in the commoners. The adults pretend not to notice. It’s a child who calls out the fact that he’s naked. The only one brave enough to speak truth is someone who doesn’t know he’s being brave. He’s just as true. Yeah. Well, it’s hard not to put myself in as a child, right? Like, sure. Who am I, I’m, I’m an actor. I haven’t looked at my economics degree or have done much with it in 20 years, right. And yet at the same time, Ron, what from right? What if I’m right, that this is potentially the biggest Ponzi scheme in history? That’s a good story. And it’ll be an adventure. And I’m a, you know, mildly depressed middle aged guy, desperate need and Pandemic lockdown, you know, by industry on ice, like, why don’t have an adventure? Sure. So I think that was kind of how I fell into it. And then it was interesting. I fell into it without really being able to articulate what fascinated me or why I was why I was well suited for the job. And what I came to eventually, is that easy money. Yeah, it’s about crypto and casino capitalism, fraud, but it’s, it’s money in lying. Yeah. And I know about money. Because I have an econ degree. I know about lying because I’m an actor, and I do it for a living. I know when they’re lying to you, and that there tells were just everywhere, and the celebrities selling it. Look, celebrities, Hawking stuff doesn’t mean that the things are fraudulent, but they had no, no clue what they were talking about. Clearly, like, clearly they didn’t know. I mean, the Matt Damon had not to beat up on him, but like, it was just absurd.

Andy Slavitt 

Let’s play it. Let’s play it. So yeah, I think we got to cued up.

Ben Mckenzie 

You’re not gonna invest in cryptocurrency. What are you stupid, you’re not gonna invest in crypto, what you’re not you’re not brave enough. Look at these CGI rendered historical things that are happening behind me in this empty room that I walk around in Burbank, in you know, if you invest in crypto, you’re like Marco Polo

Andy Slavitt 

It’s also you can’t stand the going down 10%? What kind of wimp Are you? Yes, you can’t stand it when you’re losing money. This is not You’re clearly not cut out to be a leader. That’s right.

Ben Mckenzie 

And in crypto, they call it huddle a hold on for dear life, which is like they say it’s not a loss until you sell which is roof is that a rough thing to hear as a as someone with even a modicum of understanding of economics and finance, like it’s a lawsuit, it’s it’s there it’s sitting, you might get it back.

Andy Slavitt 

And every day you have a new decision to make, everything you don’t sell is another loss to get to take if you’re gonna if it goes down.

Ben Mckenzie 

And that’s the language of gamblers. That’s the language of people that actually have gambling addiction. And that’s what studies have shown is that what gamblers do interested in is they sell out of positions, that they’re profiting from too early, and they hold on to positions that they’re losing too long. And so, you know, as you go down the research, what we really need to talk about here, one of the things we can talk about is toxic masculinity and gambling addiction, which disproportionately affects men and young men.

Andy Slavitt 

Okay, let’s take one quick break here and talk about after the break some of the psychology that’s at play in crypto and how famous people like yourself have a role to play in that psychology.

Andy Slavitt 

I’m trying to think about the first time I heard about crypto. And and I think probably like a lot of people, you know, you get this combination of well, there’s a whole bunch of words, I don’t understand. What am I missing? Oh, I don’t know what Bitcoin is. I don’t know how blockchain works, there must be something going on here. And then, you know, you get the call from I think, my, my son who’s like, Hey, Dad, I made, you know, 80% return in two days by, you know, putting $100 in crypto or something. And, and not to sell out my son, because he’s actually, you know, probably smarter than I am. But. But there was a sort of, like, FOMO of you missing this, this sort of wave. And so a lot of us saw it with a certain amount of skepticism. And wouldwould may be expressed that skepticism, but you did something different than the hat, which is quite a bit quite a bit different than that, which is It’s wild. Well, well, good. So, I mean, I think this thing is screwed up. I don’t think this is right, you actually spoke up. And in a very, I think, if you read what you wrote in a very humble way, you didn’t claim to be an expert. You said you started using words like I think there could be fraud here. I think this could be I mean, you started using those words well before, you know, the whole FTX collapse and so forth. And at a time when you know a lot of your peers. Were out hacking this stuff. That was a kind of a bold move. Did it feel risky? Yeah. And you also shorted crypto, too. That’s from your book?

Ben Mckenzie 

Yeah, I got into it, because I was fraud, historically speaking, runs rampant during easy money times for sort of understandable reasons, right? If you sort of when people have access to money, easy money, either, you know, directly or through credit, they tend to gamble with it in search of higher return. And some of the things they’re gambling on, often, quote, innovative technologies. Some of those technologies are actually innovative, like the internet, think of the.com Boom, and some of the companies that survive there have made a fortune like Amazon, and if you invested it today, it’s AI, right? And today, it’s AI, although it’s interesting, it was crypto, a lot of the crypto bros pivoted to AI, which, which does make me somewhat skeptical of I think AI obviously, is a real thing. Whereas crypto is basically not. But AI also, I think has been overhyped. But anyway, um, yeah, I started I realized, Hey, I think the we’re in a bubble and, and I think it’s better to be on the other side of that, on the short side. And that then my A buddy of mine came to me and said, I should buy bitcoin, he had given me the worst financial advice of my life in my 20s, and encouraged me to invest in what I think was a penny stock pump and dump. He wasn’t trying to scam me, he lost money, too. But I took it as a counter indicator, you know, somebody was telling me to invest in it, that I that I love to death, he’s one of my best friends.

Andy Slavitt 

The other side of these bets, bets. Okay, that helps me, but you decided to speak out, which is like you are at this point of view, you had a platform, and you kind of said, I want to speak out and you could have been wrong. I mean, like there was a probably a 10% chance in your mind that maybe I’ll end up being wrong. And maybe this bubble will just continue for the foreseeable future. So it was kind of a risk. And you also

Ben Mckenzie 

I was more than 10% in my mind. I mean, in my mind, that was maybe the 10 Or maybe that 10% was such a heavy weight, right? If I was wrong, this is gonna be really embarrassing, right? It’s gonna destroy my career,

Andy Slavitt 

Right? Yeah. So you took that rescue? No, but you you put something out there you were very clear. You were very bold. You were saying it before. Most people were, you know, said it. I think there may have been people who agreed with you, but who were like, I’m not sure I’m gonna stand up and say this. And these were people Larry David, Matt Damon, Tom Brady. And of course, there’s a bunch of cowboys online who just tear this stuff up. So you’re walking into a bit of a quagmire? Potentially,

Ben Mckenzie 

yeah. And I was really nervous about at the time and you know, crypto, for all its stupidity, and there’s a lot of stupidity. Behind the scenes. There’s real criminals involved here. I mean, crypto really is only good for gambling and, and criminal activity. And so there are serious people behind them. Now, I have not gotten death threats myself, but other skeptics have. They’ve been docs, things like that, in a way. And what I realize is my public figure actually helps protect me. I don’t think people want to mess with me as much because, you know, I’m pretty I can call them out directly. And I also have ties to at this point, you know, ex law enforcement officials and current law enforcement officials and you know?

Andy Slavitt 

What do you played a tough dude on the OC and you played some cops.

Ben Mckenzie 

And I realized that was an advantage of mine and I put it in the book but like the way I got connected to sandpaper and fried is actually through that, you know, crypto bros are are notoriously braggadocious and talk all kinds of smack on online. And usually under pseudonyms, which is pretty funny, right? Anybody who’s like, you know, not comfortable being themselves but very comfortable talking trash is always like a kind of seems like you’re giving the game away my opinion. But what I put out this tweet, as I was kind of midway through my journey, I’ve been reading articles with Jacob Silverman about it. And I was like, oh, try something out. And I was like, if any of you crypto bros want to come at me, you know, go for it. But just remember a couple words, don’t miss. And I got all kinds of like, for it. It was pure. I was so stupid. But of course it works like a charm. And that’s actually when Sam Venkman fried replied to me. He replied to me with kind of a nonsensical tweet about have you ever thought about the numbers going up? Exclamation point, question mark, exclamation point. Question, Mark. I had thought about that, Sam. Yes, thank you. But he started following me on Twitter. And so I followed him back and then he started DMing, me and Jacob and that’s how I ended up interviewing him. So it’s really fascinating. To me, it has been such an exercise and how, and there are a lot of parallels to Trump in the whole Magga movement. It’s these are bullies. And they survive, because most of us are not incentivized to speak out. Right? The vast majority, the public did not buy crypto 80% or so. But no reason to, like, research it or go into it. The only people who did were people that were profiting from it, right. And they were also the people hiding behind pseudonyms who were going to berate you for not, you know, you just You’re an idiot, you’re just a dumb actor. I was called a reality TV star, which is interesting. I didn’t know that I was ever on reality TV show.

Andy Slavitt 

That’s merely a bigger insult that just being an actor. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Ben Mckenzie 

Well, I didn’t even know how to Google correctly, which made me think like, they weren’t that genius, tech savvy geniuses. But you got to speak up. And you know, play playground logic really applies. What do you do with a bully? You punch him in the face. And then, you know, see what happens. Like these guys were really it was just a house of cards, it was all going to come down. And sooner or later, I could have been wrong in the timing. And I was initially it was a little early, but eventually it had to go away economically, because because it’s a Ponzi scheme.

Andy Slavitt 

Okay, let’s take one more break. And come back. And let’s talk about the celebrities who endorsed crypto, and what kind of situation they’re in now. And maybe if there’s a lesson or two that they might have learned, we’ll be right back. So I did an episode of this show a while back, which was really focusing on the one thing that offended me the most about cryptocurrency. And it’s one of the real reasons I wanted to talk to you. And it was that the ads seem to have one clear message. Don’t do your homework. And, to me, the pinnacle was the commercial from Steph Curry. And I’ll read just read to what he said. I’m not an expert, I didn’t need to be with the FTX app. Everything I need to buy sell and trade crypto safely. And that was curry and and Shaq actually who did who did some of the voiceover. And what really bothered me was I don’t doesn’t offend me if someone wants to speculate with their own money, if they’re fully informed and are prepared to lose that money, but the telling people you don’t need to get educated because I Steph Curry will tell you that there are other experts out there, and you just rely on them. And by the way, in this case, it happened to be FTX, which is unfortunate for him. But it made me it made me wonder, like, you know, Larry David is not a dumb guy, when their agents present them these endorsement opportunities to hey, we’ve got these guys want to pay you a lot of money to go stand on TV and hug person. But how much homework did these guys do? How much homework do they ask their agents managers to do?

Ben Mckenzie 

I mean, I don’t know. And it would rob us the very, you know, amongst the people, but my guests having been in Hollywood for two decades, there’s very little you know, if people gonna be like, why don’t all these celebrities hock crypto and I’m like, it’s pretty simple. They got paid in real money to convince you to take your real money and turn it into something else. Now, some of the celebrities ended up getting scammed themselves, which is kind of ironic, you know, Tom Brady, apparently, according to York Times, also, like lost some money. But I mean, cold comfort for me, because they were, they were effectively providing financial advice. They can say they weren’t. But that was pretty much what they were doing. And they’re not licensed financial advisors. I don’t think any of these guys were thinking about it very, very deeply. In their agents weren’t we’re definitely not doing the right thing. The marketing campaign, look, how did the thing work? The Crypto exchanges got a bunch of money, where did they get their money from, from you from the retail traders. And then they hired the advertising agencies to come up with the marketing campaigns. And then they went to the agencies, and they said, we have $10 million to pay the celebrity. And the agents look at a million dollars, they take 10% for free for nothing. And the actor or entertainer looks at a massive payday for no work. Right? I mean, Matt Damon was probably done by lunch with that commercial, he had to walk through a tunnel for 20 seconds. And it’s easy money, you know, but again, it just goes to like, look, the celebrities are not the root problem. They’re just the megaphone necessary, at the end of the lifecycle of a Ponzi. Right, you need to appeal to the most people possible. So you get the most famous people possible. It was actually indicated that eventually you’d run out eventually every skin ends because you ran out of suckers, right? And so at the end, it goes parabolically up, and it goes parabolic.

Andy Slavitt 

Exactly. So right. It was it was really, I think you said that incredibly well, which is that we’d already gotten the people involved, to put the money in who were going to do it because they loved it, or believed in it, or had some ideology that the Fed was evil. And now it’s time to go, we need that we need more money in this thing. And we haven’t even begun to tap the consumer market yet. And so they went for it. They went to the top of the list. I mean, you know, these are A listers, Damon Brady, curry, Larry David, but I’m, I’m curious, I don’t know if you’ve talked to that or any of these guys since then. I’m curious. Aside from the legal troubles that some of them are in, it’s the lesson for them, or do you think they’re feeling that there is a lesson? Are they feeling a sense of embarrassment? Are they feeling like they’re going to be new processes etc. Manager pretends to be something. I mean, how do you think that the story gets told from that standpoint?

Ben Mckenzie 

I genuinely don’t know. I’m assuming you know, and I’m not impugning the motives of these guys. Like they obviously didn’t intend for people to get swindled. So I do have its, I both feel of course, justified in calling them out at the time and and, you know, satisfaction on some level that I was that I was right but but on another level, I have a little bit of sympathy and empathy. I’ve been asking publicly and privately for a celebrity to talk to me because I think it’s actually a it’s actually an opportunity for sort of not to be too cute about it, but for healing, because celebrities are just like us, they’re just regular people. Yeah, so take it from a quasi celebrity himself like you know, people make mistakes and if you just owned up to it, I was like, Look man, this is what happened. They came to me I didn’t know about it. I was told it was the future money just like everybody else. And we’re gonna do all these great things and so you know, I did it now I think probably the reason they’re not doing it as liabilities my

Andy Slavitt 

Lawyers are telling them they can’t.

Ben Mckenzie 

Which is really […] but you know, probably the truth.

Andy Slavitt 

And it it’s all over there’s probably a chapter in a book that they’ll write about it and and look yeah, you’re absolutely right. It said something people can make mistakes. The the thing that I think pissed, you off. piste me off, was they weren’t making mistakes for themselves. They were convincing people who love the Golden State Warriors.

Ben Mckenzie 

Well, we should probably mention. I mean, a lot of these ads were targeted towards specific communities. The Black community was heavily targeted by LeBron James ads featuring LeBron James and Steph Curry, Jay Z and Jack Dorsey of Twitter set up a Bitcoin Academy in Marcy gardens where Jay Z grew up to try and convince people in public housing to buy bitcoin.

Andy Slavitt 

I didn’t know that.

Ben Mckenzie 

Yeah, it’s in the book if you if you Well, I don’t even know if it ever And it happened that they announced it. Jack owns a bunch of Bitcoin so he’s forever shilling Bitcoin and Jack. I mean, here’s the thing we got to stop assuming the billionaires are smart, they’re not. And they might be, they might be smart about one thing, or they made money, possibly, but they also might have just been lucky. But they definitely aren’t necessarily smart about other things. And so Jack, you know, he doesn’t know jack about economics. He was talking about hyperinflation in the US and how and how Bitcoin was an inflation hedge, you know, at its height. I mean, it turned out not to be it’s the opposite. Yeah. And if us if us ever experiences hyperinflation, good luck with your magical bits of computer code, if the US experiences hyperinflation, it’s game over. So magical bits of computer code are not going to save you. But it was really galling to me that they were targeting the black community and minorities. And if you go I was just doing this reporter if you try to find the Bitcoin ATMs where you can take cash and and buy bitcoin, they’re in minority neighborhoods run prior to predominantly and and minorities suffered the most in the sense that they were disproportionately late to the game and got in at the tail end of the crypto hype and to have lost more on average than others.

Andy Slavitt 

think it’s the same place lottery tickets were sold.

Ben Mckenzie 

Yeah, because that’s casino capitalism, right? It resonates with folks because they, they don’t feel any other way to make money. Right? Yeah, on some level, right? It’s like desperation. And like, Hey, man, you just put your money and you might make a fortune, right. And that as a lottery ticket, we can talk about the lottery, it’s not necessarily a great system, but at least they’re only $1 A piece, right? With crypto, it’s like invest your life savings in this thing that might go to zero. It was pretty, it pissed me off.

Andy Slavitt 

My dad played the lottery when I was a kid because he he just loved to dream about winning. He just it was so worth it for him to.

Ben Mckenzie 

And that actually has economic economists have like tried to quantify that or, like, try to like that, that has a I’m not totally against that if you do it in proportion, right? You know, I mean, you buy your one ticket a week, or whatever, and you can dream about it. But like, if you’re putting your life savings into it, that’s not a good use of your life savings.

Andy Slavitt 

People were putting allocating real money. I know, we’ve got we’re short on time, you know, I live, you may as well I live, you know, 15 minutes or 20 minutes from crypto.com arena that used to be called Staples Center. And so the thing that that I wonder, is like, how are we going to remember this era? Like, are we gonna look back and go, gotta remember that frickin moment in time when it was called crypto.com. Arena. And like, that really marks the year 2021 2223 Or whatever. I’m curious, when when we look back on this, will it be like, this sort of really bizarre moment in time? Or where do you think we go from here?

Ben Mckenzie 

Yeah, that’s a great question. And I’m always humble about that, in the sense that I can’t predict the future any more than anyone else. And I think because I think the future obviously is unwritten what what is happening now is that Wall Street sees that there’s money to be made in just facilitating the trades. So there are these ETFs that are applying for exchange traded funds, like BlackRock, Scott one, and are just trying to get one. And so if those get approved, and I really, really hope they don’t, that would allow the big players to invest in crypto. And you could have institutional players. For all the hype, big money, by and large, did not touch crypto. Crypto tried to make you feel like it did. But for the most part, it was not. And that’s why you saw that all these crypto companies just, you know, imploded, it actually didn’t affect the regulated financial sector that much, although some of the banks that went down, actually, all three of the banks have ties to crypto, that’s a subject for another another question. But if these ETFs get get approved, you know, grandma’s pension could be tied up in this thing, which economically speaking has zero value, that would be a disaster. So that’s why I’m speaking out. I feel like, you know, to us, like, if I’m like Michael Burry, you know, in 2005, saying, if you guys let this go keep going, it’s gonna be bad. I’m at least a public person and I’ve got this book and you know, in a doc to like, put the word out. But my hope is to is to is to kill it not in the sense of that. I don’t care about the technology, Blockchain system ledger, if blockchain ever does anything productive, which I’m highly skeptical of given its myriad inefficiencies then fine, but I am really pissed off about the fraud. And so my hope is, yeah, my hope is we look back on it and crypto was was Beanie Babies. It was Beanie Babies for 2021.

Andy Slavitt 

Well, let’s hope that the SEC and the Congress who have the power to put down the regulations here so that this works, like everything else does disclosure and everything else, listen to you, and get on it. Well, I will not let Go and get on with your day really appreciate you coming into the bubble. It was really great talking to you and and a lot of fun. And that was a lot of luck here. The book for everyone is called Easy money. It is out. It is a great read. It’s a lot of fun.

Ben Mckenzie 

Thank you so much, Andy. It’s great to be on here, man. Appreciate it.

Andy Slavitt 

Thank you, Ben, for coming on the show. Thank you all for listening. If you want a little sneak peek at what’s coming up, the eminent Zeke Emanuel will be on next week, Zeke and I will be talking about what he sees as some of the things that are going to shape the future of healthcare, what’s gonna change the healthcare system that we still rely on? He is a provocative person. It’s fun. But it’s also challenging, and I thought it might be interesting for this episode, to get a panel of experts on to listen and interrogate him as part of this episode. So you’ll hear that next week. We also will have an episode with the Surgeon General of the State of California to talk about maternal health and maternal mortality and what’s going on with this crisis in the country. Mandy Cohen, the new head of the CDC will be on as we move into August, and plenty more great shows. We’ve got a lot of good stuff planned for listeners of the show. So tell your friends, and please, please, please, please, please have a great summer. Enjoy the time with your family and friends. Relax, and be good to yourself. Talk to you next week.

Andy Slavitt 

Thank you for listening IN THE BUBBLE. If you like what you heard, rate and review and most importantly, tell a friend about the show. tell anyone about the show. We’re a production of Lemonada Media. Kyle Shiely is the Senior Producer of our show. He’s the main guy, and he rocks it with me every week. The mix is by Noah Smith. He’s a wizard. He does all the technical stuff and he’s a cool guy. Steve Nelson is the vice president of weekly content. He’s well above average. And of course, the ultimate big bosses are Jessica Cordova Kramer and Stephanie Wittels Wachs. They are wonderful, inspiring, and they put the sugar in the lemonade. They executive produced the show along with me. Our theme was composed by Dan Molad and Oliver Hill, and additional music is by Ivan Kuraev. You can find out more about our show on social media at @LemonadMedia where you can also get a transcript of the show and buy some in the bubble gear. Email me directly at andy@lemonadamedia.com. You can find my Twitter feed at @Slavitt and you can download in the bubble wherever you get your podcasts or listen ad free on Amazon music. It’s a prime membership. Thank you for listening.