Original subtitles

a tributary of the Tigris-Euphrates River system in modern-day Iraq.

Known in ancient times as Mesopotamia, this is where one of the first human

civilizations emerged thousands of years ago.

It's also where one of the earliest versions of money was invented.

The story of money is one of the oldest and most powerful stories ever told.

One that's still being written as we speak.

But what is money?

In short, money is trust, a shared belief of common value.

But trust is a fragile thing.

It can be shattered in an instant.

For example, this is not Mesopotamia. It's West Texas.

Just a few hours from where I grew up.

This is a film about a thing called cryptocurrency.

It's pretty stupid.

Did we get it?

Put me on Lexapro a couple of days ago. Said I'll experience nausea. It'll

help with the mania. Think they're already terrible.

I'm pathetic, I'm terrible.

I'm becoming paranoid.

I'm falling into the void.

To understand my journey into the wilds of cryptocurrency, we have to go way

back to my humble beginnings when I was a budding young actor.

guest stars on the hit Fox series, The O.C. Please welcome Ben McKenzie.

At the age of 24, my career started off with a bang when I was passed as Ryan

Atwood, the brooding bad boy on The O.C.

Who are you?

Whoever you want me to be.

I was tough as nails and soft as butter. A real teenage heartthrob.

You are the it guy. You're like all over the place on the cover of TV Guide and

YM. Or is it pronounced yum?

When it finished, I moved on to the gritty cop drama Southland.

Southland is a terrific show, but I'm curious, do you still get fans of the OC

that come up to you? You were a teen heartthrob on the OC.

We've got to talk about the OC a little bit. All right, so I was still sort of

that guy from the OC.

But then everything changed when I joined the Batman universe.

Many of us remember Ben McKenzie from The O.C. Good morning, guys. How are

you? I just have to wait one second and say I loved you in The O.C.

Looking back at The O.C.

and then... While the rest of the world was stuck in 2003, I was moving on.

Well, sort of.

Smashing bad guys is fucking awesome.

And I even met the love of my life on the show.

But still, I was itching for something new.

And then...

Right on cue.

COVID head. You've got to be putting that disinfectant on these groceries,

making sure that you're scrubbing them.

Hold up without work or direction.

I went a little stir crazy.

So when my buddy Dave asked to catch up via Zoom, it was a welcome reprieve.

As fate would have it, it turned out to be just the thing I needed.

Why are you in your kid's bedroom?

It's the only place, Ben. It's the only place I can go.

Dave is a good friend from college.

He has also given me the worst financial advice of my life.

When I was in my 20s and flush with cash from TV, Dave encouraged me to buy stock

in an obscure medical technology company.

They were going to make a fortune, Dave told me.

He had been at a wedding, and some random guy assured himself.

I was young and dumb and excited by his excitement.

So I put $10,000 into it.

In less than a year, the stock tanked, and I lost almost all my money.

So when Dave brought up Bitcoin, my skepticism was high.

You know what's taking off is Bitcoin.

Have you looked at that?

I don't even know what the fuck it is. I guess a digital currency.

A cryptocurrency.

With money.

With money. It's a cryptocurrency.

That's a fucking cryptocurrency. I don't know what the fuck that means. Wait,

what is this, like, what is this, like, look? What are you, like... I don't know

if you know this about me.

Oh, enlighten me.

I have a degree in economics.

We vetted that, by the way. Do you actually have a degree?

Yes.

All right. Well, I mean, I don't know.

You're a pretty good actor. How do I know?

Whoa. Go back to that.

If Dave's prior advice had taught me anything, it was that you should never

invest in something you don't understand.

Plus, I have a degree in economics.

Surely I can figure out this crypto stuff.

No problem.

Bitcoin, it's a new form of electronic money.

You know how email changed old-fashioned mail forever?

Yes. Well, Bitcoin is changing money forever.

That's essentially what a hard fork is.

But there is also something called a soft fork. No banks, no fees, no

inflation. These are the potential perks of this thing called Bitcoin.

Bitcoin is brilliant.

The Bitcoin gospel is that it will revolutionize the world. Electronic

gold. Because it is the answer to our broken financial system. Intricately

thought out, cunning and multifaceted.

Are you there?

The Bitcoin story is really powerful because we all agree on its premise.

Our current system sucks.

Remember back in 2008 when the banks and mortgage lenders got greedy and crashed

the housing market?

After all was said and done, the banks got a slap on the wrist.

Some even got bailouts. Wall Street applauded the biggest government bailout

ever. Up to $700 billion taxpayer dollars on the line to purchase troubled

assets that are clogging the financial system. Meanwhile, everyday Americans

received no bailout.

And far too many lost their homes.

People felt betrayed, and for good reason.

their trust in the mainstream financial system had been shattered.

Greed is everywhere.

Wall Street got bailed out and we all got sold out. Let's tell the truth.

And it was out of this breakdown that Bitcoin was born.

Someone, or some people, calling themselves Satoshi Nakamoto, created the

code for Bitcoin.

There could only be 21 million Bitcoin ever made, and no one.

had control over.

The Bitcoin phenomenon is trying to take control of money away from the state and

return it to individuals.

You have an option to trust code, so we don't have to trust centralized

intermediaries. And so when I specifically buy Bitcoin, I'm using my

own personal capital to prop up and support the emergence of something that

would rip apart the existing financial system.

And if it does, God bless it.

In theory, Bitcoin sounded like a promising solution to the status quo.

But I had a few questions.

How could Bitcoin work as a currency if its price was ping-ponging wildly up and

down day to day?

It's pretty incredible. I mean, Friday, Bitcoin was trading at, what, almost $42

,000?

And now we're down to about $31,000 and change right now.

Why the tumult over the weekend?

And why did I feel like I was being herded into a quasi-cult?

You have the saying that there is no free money, there is no free lunch.

Well, in crypto, there is a lot of free lunch. The question you have to ask

yourself is which side of history do you want to be on? I mean, I'm eating free

lunch here every day. Just because there's a finite amount of something

doesn't mean it's inherently valuable.

That's my econ degree talking.

But when I really boiled it down, I just didn't trust it.

It had the feeling of a generational hallucination.

Take all your money, buy Bitcoin.

Go mortgage your house and buy Bitcoin.

Nothing else matters.

And that's when I saw it.

The crypto commercial that would haunt my dreams.

History is filled with almosts.

With those who almost adventured, who almost achieved, but ultimately, for

them it proved to be too much.

And in these moments of truth, These mere mortals, they calm

their minds and steel their nerves with four simple words. Fortune

favors the brave.

I mean, what the fuck?

What the fuck does Matt Damon know about cryptocurrency?

Nothing! Are you mad at him for this, or because he's more famous than you are?

He might be taller, too.

He's not taller than me.

All right, so it says he's 5'10", but... Not sure.

I also say I'm 5'10". It wasn't just Damon. A bunch of other yahoos got in on

the act.

I'm all in. Are you?

You know what?

I'm in.

Oh, I'm in, bro.

Now here's the thing.

Celebrities have always shilled products.

Ever since there have been celebrities.

Even my wife has done it. There's nothing wrong with that.

But this isn't a sandwich or skin cream.

This was a financial product.

Crypto will really be the future. If you aren't a licensed financial advisor,

you're not supposed to offer people financial advice.

It's literally illegal.

It's the new wave. It's what everybody's doing. As an actor, I'm a professional

bullshitter. Yeah, I don't think so. And my gut told me the guys selling people

on crypto were fraud.

The cryptocurrency you can trade for conventional money.

So it's a hustle.

Yeah, it's a hustle.

Why did you say that, man?

It's a hustle.

Up against a multi-trillion dollar industry shielded by every celebrity on

the planet, I did what any other actor would do in my career.

I hired a film crew.

This is Giorgio. He's going to be filming me.

He's going to film, yeah. He's going to make a movie.

You want to be in a movie?

Yeah. Okay.

What's this thing?

It's a lens.

And I'm in my ball.

Ooh, that's a nice ball.

It smells like strawberries.

Oh, it's a checker. Whoa!

I think they're coming downstairs. Let's go say hi to Mama and Juju.

Yeah, we're going to go tell them that we're making a movie.

We're excited to watch a movie here.

Is this Georgie up?

Hello. Hi.

Hi. Good to meet you.

We're just going to film it.

He'll be quiet, we promise.

Georgie is very nice.

Did you talk to my agent yet?

No, ma'am.

All right, Arthur, I'm putting cheese on your pasta, okay?

Do you want cheese on your pasta? Do you want to put it on?

Guy Giorgio is going to be with us for, like, the next undetermined one to 12

months. Is everyone clear on what I'm doing?

Do you guys know what I'm doing?

Oh, yeah.

What? What am I doing?

You're trying to make fun of everybody.

Yeah,

that's pretty much it.

So I was making Cheetos in class.

But then I got Cheeto fingers and I rubbed my eyes and my eyes were burning

hot all throughout class.

To me.

To develop a deeper understanding of Crypto's true believers, I needed

to observe them in the wild.

Bittingly enough, They were gathered in Miami.

Tens of thousands of people are heading to Miami this weekend for what's being

called the largest cryptocurrency conference in history.

Getting a nice shot of no balls, right?

The Bitcoin conference in Miami claimed to be the largest in the world. 50,000

people were expected to attend.

I wanted to see Bitcoin in action.

And this seemed like the perfect place to do it.

Matt Damon?

Matt Damon?

Sorry, have you seen Matt Damon?

But first, this Austin boy wanted to have some fun.

Don't worry, folks. I'm from Texas.

I know what I'm doing.

Oh!

Oh!

Oh!

Oh!

Oh!

Hey, we can edit that, right?

That's fine. It's fine.

Oh, starry night.

There we go. American beer. And I can pay in Bitcoin?

Right now, sir, we're using only the credit card. We used to have the

Bitcoin, but it's not working at this time.

Not working?

Oh, is this your art?

Oh, hey, man, how are you?

Bitcoin fucking money.

Bitcoin shitting money.

Bitcoin fucking money.

Bitcoin shitting money.

Got it. Yeah, I'm really sorry for that. That's all right. That's all right. I

think I can use regular real money.

I'm starting my own coin called Bencoin. I buy a favor in Bencoin.

If I can catch you up.

There you go, right?

Yeah, I mean, you got to get in early with the future. Otherwise, it'll pass

you by.

Does it ever feel like a little bit like a cult to you?

It's like flaming eyeballs, yeah?

It's like Game of Thrones shit. Yeah, it's like Game of Thrones shit.

I tried to buy my beer in Bitcoin and it didn't really work. Well, no, it didn't

over there. They were having some problems.

Does it take time?

It's like 20 minutes to process the transaction.

I was having a hard time seeing the advantages of Bitcoin.

But then I met an unlikely fan.

His name was Alex, and he worked for the Human Rights Foundation.

There's like tens of millions of people in emerging market countries that use

this thing because it's the best option they have. Money, finance, economics was

hardly ever a part of the human rights discourse.

But when you actually ask human rights activists from different countries about

money, they always have crazy stories.

Alex made a compelling point.

Maybe Bitcoin could be a tool for good. But then I thought about its wildly

fluctuating price.

What if all these people in developing countries bought in and Bitcoin's price

crashed?

The coin's what? $44,000.

Wasn't it $48,000 like yesterday?

Was that the day before?

How much was it?

Well, five years ago, it was... But like yesterday, it was $47,000, and now it's

$48,000. What is it today? $43,000? I don't know. I think it's $44,000.

The important thing is... Two years ago, it was $4

,000. So the important thing to remember is that over time, the thing gets... $43

,000 today. Right.

So in 2020, in April, it was $4,000.

So the important thing is that over time, it gets more valuable.

It just didn't make sense to me.

But Alex assured me the argument was bigger than price.

This is about separation of money and state. It's making a huge difference

around the world. I think every country should have Bitcoin as legal tender to

transact, earn income, pay taxes, whatever.

Could the crypto utopia that Alex described exist in real life?

After some intense research?

I found an answer.

El Salvador.

This book represents El Salvador's history of currency.

For a long time, cocoa was used, and then the cologne, until it was replaced

by the U.S. dollar.

In 2021, El Salvador became the first country in the world to use Bitcoin as

legal tender.

You don't need a dash.

to walk around dressed in cash like El Salvador.

If I bought that for you, would you wear it?

So, why do you need to go there?

Because they're trying to use Bitcoin as money.

Well, is it safe?

It's totally safe.

One second.

It says it has one of the highest murder rates in the world.

No, it used to have the highest murder rate in the world.

Now... Now it has the highest incarceration rate.

So, it's totally safe.

Plus, you know, I speak excellent Spanish.

Oh, my God.

Glad you think it's funny.

Gang turned El Salvador's murder into one of the highest in the world. Some 75

,000 people have been arrested.

People can also face 15 years in prison, and this applies to journalists, too.

They

seem

to be giving Ben a hard time.

You just called for a supervisor.

Oh.

They just want his picture.

God bless the O.C.

What's up, dude?

Ah, shit. I'm good, I'm good, I'm good.

Uh, guess where I am.

I'm not in Wisconsin.

I'm in El Salvador.

Can you guess why?

Bitcoin,

baby. Bitcoin.

Dude, you can't make this shit up.

I don't know.

That's the God answer.

In 2019, a former advertising executive named Nayib Bukele docked the political

establishment when he was elected president of El Salvador.

The crypto bro Prez changed his Twitter handle to the coolest dictator in the

world and bragged about casually buying Bitcoin using the state treasury while

sitting in the toilet.

Bukele sold a bold vision of the country as a revolutionary Bitcoin Switzerland.

That would attract worldwide attention.

Mr. President, thanks for joining us.

Thank you, Tucker, for inviting me. We're not condoning every single thing

the El Salvador government has ever done. I just think that them adopting

Bitcoin is one of the best things that you could possibly do for the nation.

I wanted to see how much Bitcoin had changed life in El Salvador.

It was time to go shopping.

Bitcoin? Bitcoin?

Except on? No, no.

Except on Bitcoin?

No. Bitcoin?

No.

Except on Bitcoin?

Bitcoin? No.

Okay, I'll stop for a second. Okay. Except on Bitcoin?

No. No Bitcoin.

Except on Bitcoin?

No.

Except on Bitcoin?

The marketplace was a bust.

But there was another prong in Bukele's Bitcoin revolution.

He claimed Bitcoin would save his citizens millions in remittance fees

when sending or receiving money from overseas.

It was a common argument for pro-Bitcoiners.

I think what a lot of people don't understand in the United States is that

a lot of people live in countries and work in countries and they have to send

money home. A lot of it's cross-border. And that transaction fee in and of

itself, transferring money, can run you...

10%. Nice idea, but reality painted a different picture. According to the

government's own figures, just 1.6% of remittances were paid using Bitcoin.

But Bukele, ever the salesman, refused to concede defeat.

Instead, he went bigger.

In November 2021, Bukele announced what he

called Bitcoin City, a tax-free paradise for coiners in eastern El Salvador.

The showpiece city would be built in the shadows of Conchagua volcano.

Bukele. Love, the volcano.

Since I was already in the country, I figured, what the hell, might as well

check it out.

We drove more than a hundred miles to La Union, on the eastern edge of the

country.

What we found was a sleepy fishing village.

and almost no evidence of any actual development of this supposed city of

gold.

We did, however, meet a guy named Corbin.

This is the perfect location for that dream and vision, and this is where I

want to be for that reason of being the first resident citizen of Bitcoin City.

I'm an industrial designer.

I've had hundreds of jobs and a few careers in there.

um in in all that time i'm asking the question of what is money where is it

coming from who's who's in control of it bitcoin isn't just a vehicle for me to

make money it's freedom one man casasita

or uh or chiquita citadel

Built it out of cinder blocks, poured a concrete slab myself, and built it on it

on myself.

But this is just the earliest first stage.

I build up from here. As Bitcoin goes up, my casa goes up.

Outside over here is my bathroom.

At first, I was met with disbelief. Like, wait, why would you, an American

gringo, want to come and live here?

I don't know how to explain, you know, well, things are going to change here,

there's going to be a Bitcoin city over there, a new airport, mucho turismo.

I want to be here because I like it as is and I like the potential of what's

coming.

There was only one problem with this grand vision of Bitcoin City.

The people who were living there were in the way.

Wilfredo Claros is a fisherman by trade.

He and his family have lived in La Union for generations.

But now the community is being threatened with displacement so that the

airport to service Bitcoin City can be built on their land.

In exchange for leaving, the government has offered Wilfredo a fraction of what

his property is worth.

He has been told the offer is take it or leave it.

Because it's part of our generation, of our life, of our being.

And that's what's going to hurt us one day, to see that this is destroyed.

It doesn't make any sense.

So you don't use Bitcoin?

I've seen many people who have tried Bitcoin and it hasn't worked.

Your sister is muy inteligente.

It was clear to me that Bukele's sales pitch of a Bitcoin-embracing nation

was full of holes.

It felt like a pumped-up marketing scheme with little substance behind it.

Was it designed to put El Salvador on the map?

or just Bukele.

Never before I could have done something that would impact 10 million lives.

Why would I do this if it wasn't for the legacy to change this country?

Got a visitor.

Hi. Good morning.

After leaving El Salvador, I made my way to London, where Moreno was shooting a

new film.

The whole family had come along for the ride, and my crypto journey was put on

hold.

To be honest, I was fine with it.

I needed a break from Bitcoin sleuthing.

It was time to get back to something real.

Showbiz.

Is it right if I come in?

How does it work?

All right. I'm going to hit you. Hollywood thing.

Isn't it nice? Is this yours?

Like, is this the one that you go to? Yes, this is mine.

Jerry is next door.

Jerry Bowers.

The Jerry Bowers. Yes.

This is Sparta!

I don't want to annoy him.

Don't talk to him about it. What do you think Jerry Butler thinks about Cripple

Currency? I haven't asked.

I made a ton of money on it.

Yeah, yeah. Like, really. I've done really well.

Really, really, really well.

Out of it. Yeah.

Wow. So far.

Yeah. But I don't know anything about it.

Well, it doesn't matter, right? It doesn't matter.

Absolutely. How are you doing?

Yeah, I'm all right. I'll tell you what I'm doing. You see it?

Yeah, yeah.

I guess a documentary.

You know, trying to get the word out. I mean, it's hard because it's so

successful and so many people made so much money on it. So it's kind of hard

to get that story out.

Are you still acting?

Yeah. Yeah? No, I did a pilot.

Oh, nice.

It didn't go.

No.

Maybe Gerard Butler was right.

As long as everyone was getting rich on this Bitcoin stuff, why bother to

understand how it actually works?

Yeah What's that?

Yeah, that's it. I do remember.

Do you remember that? Yeah, maybe 10, 12 years ago. 20.

20? Yeah. That makes me feel old.

That makes me feel old.

What's your name?

Scott.

Scott Ben. Scott Ben.

What are you doing now?

This. I'm filming a documentary.

Yeah.

What's your documentary about?

It's about cryptocurrency.

Yeah. Do you know anything about it?

Yeah, a little bit.

I've seen her put money on it once. Yeah.

I fell for a hundred pounds.

Yeah. And probably six months made lots of money. Why?

Because she asked me for more money.

Really?

Really. I didn't get any money back.

I don't know anything about it. I'm a scaffold. I've got no clue about

anything like that. Was it from an advert?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. From an Instagram advert, yeah. I saw somebody advertising

it, telling you how to make money and blah, blah. So I went on. I started

trading things.

Give us the real money and we'll give you the other stuff.

Yeah, exactly.

It's the future of money. We just need the real stuff right now.

Gerard Butler was honest.

He had just gotten lucky with Bitcoin.

But I had to believe there were more Scott the scaffolders out there regular

people trying to make an extra buck and getting scammed I Had to keep going

Where to begin

it felt like crypto was everywhere the virus spreading in infinite directions

We can just make as many tokens as your heart desires.

There were so many promising crypto coins out there, with names like

Internet Computer, Bonk, and Cum Rockets.

In the crypto community, they were known as shit coins.

And with the frenzy in full effect, trying to figure out where to go next

was daunting.

We do know that Elon Musk is a huge proponent of Dogecoin and says that it

could really become the world's currency.

We need someone to help us with our financial life.

And normally we trust people that we think are acting in our best interest.

But what if these people are not acting in our best interest? What if their

interest is exactly the opposite of ours? Should we continue giving them our

money? Or should we take the money and put it somewhere else?

Celsius Network, we decided to create a replacement for the banking system.

We have 1.2 million customers.

and we're adding about $100,000 a month, we've paid a billion dollars back to the

community in interest. That's probably more than some of the largest banks in

the world. It just shows you how banks are not your friends.

But Alex is your friend?

Yes.

Celsius sought to upend the banking system, led by its founder, Alex

Mashinsky.

Rather than keep the profits for themselves, like most banks, Alex wanted

to give that money back to the users.

But this new model for a bank had a fatal flaw.

Celsius was not a bank.

It even said so on its website.

You know, in the very small print at the bottom of the page.

Not shady at all.

If something happened to Celsius, your money might be gone forever.

A real, licensed U.S. bank is just the opposite.

If the bank goes under, our government steps in to cover the loss.

The system works because people trust it. and they trust it because it works.

Mashinsky claimed to have built a better bank, but I suspected he had created

something far more dangerous.

It was time to take my film crew to meet Alex Mashinsky.

As luck would have it, he happened to be in my hometown.

The clothing brand Poopy and Pooper?

That guy's definitely in the grips of that.

South By featured the bleeding edge of technology.

Things like virtual reality, pickleball, and

the CIA.

What you're going to do is press and hold that A button.

Or B button, sorry.

Hold this button?

Yeah.

Whoa.

I don't know if you guys are aware of the CIS podcast.

The CIS podcast?

Yeah, we do. Check it out.

As I made my way to the Celsius booth, I decided I would play the role of a

gullible actor stumbling onto crypto.

Should be easy enough.

Yeah, I was on the UC and then I did a show called Southland, which was a LA

cop show.

What are you guys doing here?

We're Crypto. We're Celsius.

Oh, right, right, right.

That's us.

That's you guys? Yeah.

That's our logo.

Oh. I'm the CEO.

Oh, my God.

You're in the right place.

Yeah, so what does it do?

What does Celsius do?

Basically do the opposite of what banks do. Anything a bank does, we do the

opposite. Okay.

Okay, they charge you a fee, we don't charge you a fee.

How do you make money then? We pay you interest.

Okay, how do you make money then?

Banks make a lot of money. They don't want to give it to you, they give it to

their shareholders.

Uh-huh, uh-huh. We give it to our community.

We take all the profits and give it to our community. It's like a community

bank. Except it's not a bank.

So has Celsius experienced any legal trouble?

I don't know what you mean by legal trouble.

Well, legal proceedings. Has anybody sued you guys? Have you had any fines or

anything? There's no financial institution that is not getting

inspected by all these agents.

Every day. I'm not hearing a no. I'm just asking you an honest question. The

answer is no.

The answer was, in fact, yes.

Celsius was facing legal action in multiple states. New Jersey, Alabama,

and even Texas.

So what do you say to the people who have been scammed in crypto? Obviously,

they're happy people.

We can all acknowledge that. So what do you say to those?

What's the solution to that? How do we fix that?

On Twitter asked me, Alex, how come all these cameras are coming to crypto? I'm

like, you left the door open, you left the window open. Of course they're going

to come and steal from you. So it's maybe sort of their fault.

It's not just that.

If you left money on the street, do you expect it to be there in the morning?

It's not just that. I think a lot of this has to do with easy money and

fraud. They go hand in hand. Because as soon as you say, I want to park my

currency with you.

Toward the end of our conversation.

with the video off but the audio still rolling.

I asked him how much real money he thought was in the crypto system.

It was

a jaw-droppingly low number,

and mildly concerning as the crypto market had been booming for years.

Cryptocurrency is going mainstream with a total market cap of nearly $3

trillion.

MasterCard says now any banker merchant on its network will soon be able to

offer crypto services.

Bitcoin investors feeling good as hell today. The crypto coin reaching an all

-time high of $68,000.

We do see Bitcoin going up and up and up. It's amazing. It's amazing. Where is

it going? It's probably going to $100,000 and $150,000 and $200,000.

It made zero sense.

Maybe it was time to meet my mysterious friend.

Hey, this is Dave. I can't come to the phone right now, but leave your name and

number and I'll get back to you as soon as I can. Thanks.

Dave, it's your boy.

I'm down in Florida meeting with some random guy.

I met from the internet who says all of cryptocurrency is a scam.

So don't come back alive.

I love you.

It's really nice to meet you. You too.

Yeah, thank you for doing this. Yeah, no problem.

Okay,

so let's start with how you got started.

How did you fall into this crypto rabbit hole? My background is I used to do

video game hacking and reverse engineering. I was basically printing my

own money for video games.

So you started off as someone, a professional cheater.

Yeah, I was basically, yeah, I was cheating in video games, yes.

Inevitably, I got caught, and I got banned for 30 years. But what I learned

is that it's the same bullshit, you know, as crypto.

Right.

You've been exposing crypto fraud since 2016?

I would say when I first started, it was going to be March of 2017.

I had some suspicions early, and once I started digging a little bit deeper, I'm

like, okay, this is bad, this is fraud.

Why do you think that is? I personally believe the entire market is really

controlled by fewer than 20 people.

And they can make the price go to whatever they want.

How? Let's say you have two accounts and you want the price to go up.

So all you do is trade between your two accounts and you can basically just walk

the price up.

So they control both sides of the trade. Right. And then someone else that's on

the outside doesn't realize, and they see the price is going up, it's gone up

15% in the past 15 minutes, and they go ahead and they buy in.

Those are the suckers, basically, coming in, not realizing that it was just one

guy with two accounts making the price go up.

Between 90% and 95% of all the crypto trading, that's all it is.

Now, the other 5% is only in there because they think that the other 90% to

95% is in real.

Which it's not.

So now the people pumping up the price can sell their tokens.

And everybody else gets screwed.

Yes, that's it.

So if 90 to 95% of the trading is fake, is that the social media activity?

Is that also fake?

It's paid for.

A lot of it is paid for. A lot of it are actually bots. It stands for 24-7.

But the thing is, a lot of these crypto influencers are actually paid by the

scammers themselves.

What are they paid in?

Dollars. Not crypto.

Well, basically everybody inside of crypto is winning except for the regular

people that put their money on it. Yeah, the regular people that they don't

realize that it's all a facade.

Right. They're the ones holding it back. Yeah.

Celsius had a coin called Cell.

Its price had exploded, growing by a factor of 10 in less than a year.

If Bitfinex was right... Then once the insiders took their money off the table,

a crash was inevitable.

Crypto obviously right now getting crushed.

Tonight, a massive sell-off of cryptocurrency.

The price of Bitcoin plunging to its lowest level in 16 months.

The numbers are sending some investors spiraling, tearing, they can lose it

all.

The market's collapse was shockingly swift.

And rumors were circulating about Celsius going under. You don't need...

find something better because there isn't anything better. We allow people

to withdraw hundreds of millions of dollars every week. Anyone who wants to

withdraw has no problem.

So breaking news, the cryptocurrency platform Celsius, they are stopping

withdrawals. CEO Alex Machinsky now saying in a statement, this is the right

decision for our community and company.

This whole idea of banks are evil and then becoming a worse bank is kind of

the...

headline story with Celsius.

And the price pumping tricks that Bitfinex laid out were spot on.

They're saying that management was manipulating the price of the Celsius

token. They were absolutely trading the token to manipulate the price.

As more details emerged, it was clear that Celsius was never profitable.

It merely took money from the new customers to pay the old ones.

Mashinsky and his crew reportedly withdrew millions before filing for

bankruptcy. To make matters worse, Mashinsky's wife started selling a new

take on the classic Celsius T-shirt.

It read, Unbankrupt Yourself.

The people who were scammed were pissed.

I set up a few Zoom calls.

Um, how are you? Can you hear me? You've caught up, or you've grown up.

I can hear you.

We're out in the desert.

Would you mind tilting your camera up just a little bit? I'm having trouble

seeing your face.

Ah, I can hear you.

There we go. I think it was connected to my Xbox for some reason.

Did you say you're in Texas?

Yeah, yeah, I'm in Fort Worth.

Oh, cool. I grew up in Austin.

Yeah. I grew up in Austin, man.

Oh, I like your shirt. What does it say? In crypto.

Oh, in crypto we trust.

Nice.

In crypto we trust.

Yeah, just not so much Alex Leshavinsky.

What initially attracted you to it? You said you're friends.

We're investing in Celsius. We're encouraging you to invest. Do you

remember why you first invested?

My idea wasn't just to get rich and get big. I just wanted to have good

investments for my future and be able to build.

I was trying to get myself set up for retirement.

I saw Celsius as an opportunity to make a lot of interest.

Maybe even find a way to where I'm not having to work as many hours a week or

something just so I could spend more time with my daughter.

I thought that I was going to get to a point where I would be

able to live off the interest, you know?

And none of it was ever even there.

Do you remember when you heard Celsius collapsed?

I was crying. My wife was upset. My kid was too young to know what's going on.

But we lost a lot of money that day.

The amount that he hosed everybody is just...

Yeah. Sheesh.

Yeah, but whenever all of that had happened, nobody knew what was going on.

And the way that Celsius was being painted to us was that, you know, it was

safer than a bank.

How could this possibly be an obvious scam given that, you know, there's all

these people behind it?

I thought there was no risk with Celsius because they said that they were keeping

our funds safe.

You know, we're U.S. approved.

We're SEC, whatever, approved. Trust us. We, you know.

We have risk mitigation in place. Everything is fine.

It gave the impression of security.

I just never crossed paths with such a criminal, you know. It's just a

criminal, true and true. I will take the hit.

If I could ever meet that dude, I will pull my pants down and piss on that guy.

With Alex, the difference between what he was saying and what he was actually

doing is just vast.

It was Bernie Madoff-level, you know, fraud.

When you meet him in person, he just gave off Carnival Barker vibes to me.

I wonder if you were able to see a side of him in person that I wasn't seeing on

the videos.

Given that Machensky was running this fraud, do you think that the Celsius

community was a real thing?

No. No.

For me, personally, Celsius doesn't really have a community. It's just got a

very long list of victims.

I have a question for you. Have you seen the creditor list?

Not in any great detail. Why?

Let me see if I can share my screen for this.

So this is the list of people that are owed money by selfies.

And if you just, I don't know, go into A, for example, it just goes on and on

and on. Oh, my God. I'm on page 588.

So I think the 1,388 pages are just the people with names starting with A.

Put money into selfies is astronomical.

It's huge.

One question we're asking everyone is how did losing the money affect you, if

at all?

I mean, it seems silly, but I was more focused on just like the embarrassment

than the actual financial implication.

Yeah, I just kind of remember thinking, well, this is going to push my

retirement back a few years.

It was mostly just a shot at freedom, you know?

I shot it a little bit more claiming of my time back and that time I can't get

with my daughter back.

I just had so many plans, you know.

I'm sorry. I feel like I let it down big time.

Yeah.

I'm sorry, man.

It's okay.

I'm totally at peace with it, you know.

It just sucks that that one thing had to kick my plan in the shin.

Yeah. Yeah.

Life has a way of doing that, doesn't it, sometimes?

Yeah.

The false story of Celsius was predicated on a fundamental truth that

our system is flawed.

But Celsius didn't offer a better solution, merely a way to tap into

people's anger and funnel their money into a Ponzi scheme.

Our current financial system is far from perfect.

But at the very least, it's built on centuries of trust.

Because the economy is something we all contribute to.

So in the end, for our economy to work, we are essentially trusting ourselves

and each other.

After Celsius blew up, dozens of other companies also went down.

It was dubbed the crypto winter.

The industry appeared on the verge of collapse.

Only one man could save it.

The crypto world is now going to get a bailout, and it's coming from one of

their own.

Sam Bankman Freed is really becoming the industry's lifeline during a crisis

lately. The CEO of FTX is behind hundreds of millions of dollars in

emergency loans.

He was everywhere.

Joining me now is Sam Bankman-Fried. He's the 29-year-old gazillionaire, FTX

founder and CEO of Sam Bankman-Fried, amassing an astonishing $22.5 billion

fortune. I mean, it is, to me, amazing that, like, three years ago, nobody knew

who you were.

And now your business is, like, one of the fastest-growing businesses in the

history of the planet.

Sam was the unlikeliest of billionaires.

Tussled hair, T-shirt, and cargo shorts.

He made his billions trading crypto.

But Sam's motivation was a complete 180 from someone like Mashinsky.

Sam was a proponent of a philosophical craze sweeping through Silicon Valley

called effective altruism.

Conceptually, EA is straightforward.

If you want to do the most good for the most people, you should strive to make

the most money possible in order to give it all away.

I wanted to get rich not because I like money, but...

because I wanted to give that money to charity.

And Sam saw crypto as the vehicle to make that happen.

So keeping the industry afloat was key.

A high-profile crypto failure would be devastating.

Could also spark retail investors to leave the industry altogether, which FTX

really relies on.

FTX was Sam's crypto exchange, where you could buy all sorts of cryptocurrencies.

When we think about, you know, where crypto is today, it still is touching a

pretty small fraction of the world. And so I think a lot of what we've been

thinking is like, what are ways that we can take what we see as an exciting,

growing set of products and industries and sort of introduce them to tens of

millions of people?

He did this by using his ballooning wealth to pay for sponsorships.

and celebrity endorsements.

FTX is the safest and easiest way to buy and sell crypto. The best way to get in

the game. With FTX, I have everything I need to buy, sell, and trade crypto

safely. He even signed deals with paid spokespeople in the financial industry,

like Kevin O'Leary, who had been a fellow crypto critic.

I'm not going to take real money and put it into this thing. It's never going to

happen. It's such a scam.

This was before he signed a $10 million deal with FTX.

I am a paid spokesperson for FTX. I did a lot of due diligence before I accepted

that position.

Sam wanted to make crypto easier, friendlier, and safer.

And he knew that in order to do that, you need to build trust.

Mr. Bankman-Fried, you are now recognized for five minutes to present

your oral testimony.

Thank you, Chair Waters, Ranking Member McHenry.

It's an honor to be here.

the potential to improve a lot of people's lives.

And I think it is important and I think it is healthy that the industry will be

regulated. Crypto executives poured more than $30 million into political

campaigns since the 2020 election cycle.

There is a new and exciting industry in the United States of cryptocurrency,

whether Bitcoin or otherwise.

I buy Bitcoin and I hold Bitcoin.

You buy Bitcoin?

Oh, yeah. You have Bitcoin? I do.

Sam was playing the Washington game to perfection and buying the trust he

needed to take crypto even further into the mainstream.

What does this technology FTX uses to protect fraud and manipulation look

like? We have surveillance for unusual trading activity. We have manual

inspections of anything that gets flagged either by the automated

surveillance or...

by manual inspection.

Sounds like you're doing a lot to make sure there is no fraud or other

manipulation. I thank you, Mr. Bankman-Fried.

I had to talk to him.

So I did the only thing I knew how to do.

I DM'd him on Twitter.

It was a long shot.

Look at this.

Finally freeing up a bit. Had a crazy week. Just got back from testifying in D

.C.

I'm at FTX.com if you want to reach out there.

Fucking agreed.

It's limoncello.

What is limoncello, actually? It's like the, you know, the Italian liqueur.

There's alcohol in it.

But they flavored it that way. I don't know. It's actually kind of interesting.

Don't mind it. Okay.

It was the only one I had at the house. I was like, hmm, we'll try. Not worth.

All right. You guys ready?

You're good. All right.

Sam Bankman-Fried, thank you for taking the time to speak with us. Sure.

So I had a conversation with Alex Mashensky.

I asked him how much real money is in crypto, and he said

10% to 15%. He said the rest is speculation.

Thanks. So as of today, I think the number of dollars in crypto have not

changed massively between then and now.

One when perhaps they've lessened. They certainly have not increased.

I don't think they've decreased massively, though.

I think lines up with some of your thoughts that like a lot of this was

leverage leaving. Well, part of the problem of the haven't left is that

people can't get their money out. Imagine this is a regulated bank. Oh,

yeah. This would be a big problem. That would be a big problem. This does not

seem like the decentralized, democratized future of money that we

were promised.

I think we've seen all the major carnage in the crypto industry already.

I think that things are on a bit of a recovery path from here.

But to be honest, Sam, like it doesn't feel like it's... creating a lot of good

for people. It feels like it's a net negative.

Yeah, I think I disagree.

Why?

I understand where you're coming from.

I think the bigger piece of this, and probably the thing that is ultimately

driving your belief, is around ultimate use case.

Give me one use case. Give me one company that's running a good or a

service utility.

First of all, it's just payment.

I know this is a thing that gets talked about a lot, but I do think that there

is real...

potential there to make payments a lot cleaner.

Remittances are really, really expensive.

Well, I just want to be really quick because we went to El Salvador.

It's not being used. It's less than 2%. So how does that work as payments or as

remittances? It's not working.

I agree it's not working today. I think it could get there in the next five

years.

But I think it's not there today. I think there are real reasons it's not

there today.

But people are buying it as an investment. They think it's going to

make them money.

Isn't that what you're seeing? I mean, you run a big exchange. You have a big

trading firm.

Isn't that what people are doing? Are they doing it to pay for things? Are

they using it to gamble?

The majority of people today are not using it as a payment field. The

majority of people today are using it just as a financial asset. But my belief

is that over the next five to ten years, we are going to see blockchain.

grow in a few different use cases and start to provide more and more actual

utility to people. If I didn't think that was true, that would significantly

change my belief about the cryptocurrency ecosystem overall.

Your belief system seems to be driven somewhat by the fact that you've made so

much money. You do the most good for the most people.

But when I look at the crypto industry, it feels like it's driven.

by getting retail customers regular people into the crypto casinos to gamble

some of them make money most of them don't what do you say to the people that

have lost money millions of people have lost money now um some of them can't

access their money like what do you say to those people so i mean that was

really bad i'm you know like it sucks maybe one question you can ask is Is the

system set up today such that the regular person can get enough

information and transparency and comfort?

And I think that the answer is basically no. There needs to be more oversight.

There needs to be more transparency.

Speaking of regulation, I think something like $30 million has been

spent over the last six months or a year towards influencing regulators and

politicians. I think that this is a very dangerous thing that we're playing with

here.

Most of what I'm doing for crypto regulation is not contributions.

It's going and talking to people in D.C. and having meetings, trying to explain

as much as I can, trying to point out the parts that I think most need

oversight. When you look at the contributions that I've made, most of

those have to do with pandemic preparedness.

Totally unrelated to my day job.

How much money have you donated to things like that?

I want to say...

Ballpark, 50 to 100 million.

Wow. 50 to 100 million to pandemic.

Yeah, that's right.

How much have you donated to politicians?

So I

don't remember the latest.

I can get back to you on that. I don't remember the latest figure. I'll put it

on my record.

Ballpark. I think that,

you know.

In the tens of millions is where total political contributions have been so

far?

Some you really need to... Okay, got it, yeah.

Thanks for taking the time. Thank you. Appreciate it. Can we do a picture?

Is that possible? Yeah, let me just check where... Oh, sure, sure, sure.

Yes, but I have to do it quickly. No, no, that's fine. We don't need to do

anything. Let's see.

Yep.

Oh, there you go.

All right.

Awesome. Thank you. Sorry.

You wrote a book on fraud.

Yeah. I'm not crazy, am I?

Let me put it this way. If you were going to set up something entirely fake

as a scam, what would you do different?

Right. There's only a few ways to do a fraud.

You can borrow money or take cash on the promise of delivering something in the

future and not deliver it.

Ponzi scheme. Exactly. And you can bring people into something that looks like...

a normal web of trust, but in fact is completely controlled by you.

One of the things that is so fascinating to me about crypto is that the real con

is just getting them to give you the real money in the first place. Once they

give you the real money, then the computer screen can say whatever the

computer screen wants to say.

Absolutely. You know, when you've got like $100 in your bank accounts at JP

Morgan or wherever.

That's just a number, but those are magic numbers that have a particular

system that we've all grown up with since the 18th century.

But these crypto guys have come up with their own magic numbers, and you still

need to have that trust that at some point someone's going to exchange your

imaginary money for dollar bills.

And they say trust the code, but code doesn't fall from the sky. People write

code. Exactly.

Fraud is a weird crime in that it has a time dimension.

There is a period of time during which the thief knows that he's stolen the

money, but the victim doesn't know that he's lost it.

Is there something about fraudsters that makes them different from other

criminals? Yeah.

They've got something psychologically in them which the criminologists call a

rationalisation. They don't see themselves as deviant members of

society.

And so that means that they have to come up with a story that they

can tell themselves which reconciles what they're doing with their self-image

as a normal member of society.

I do love my country and my people.

And I want them to thrive and to succeed.

We put the community first, right? So we do everything for our community, and

they know it.

In the end, my goal is to do as much good as I can for the world.

The biggest lie is the lie you tell yourself.

Absolutely.

Well, as an actor, I can relate to that.

But I mean, all of crypto can't be a scam, right?

I don't like what counts.

I'd listened to the false stories of crypto for long enough.

It was time for me to speak up.

So I embarked upon a campaign of my own.

All right, Ben, good morning. Thanks so much for joining us. We've got about two

minutes till we're live, but I've just heard you loud and clear, so we should

be all set. Great.

Thank you.

Hey, guys. Guys, can you keep it down, please?

Thank you.

Sure. That's my favorite question.

It's very simple.

They were paid in real money.

to convince you to take your real money and turn it into something else.

I hit every outlet that would have me.

What troubled me about crypto and the reason I felt like I had to speak out

was it's exploited an understandable mistrust, a lack of trust with our

regulated system.

The winners are far fewer than the losers.

It's being sold to the average American as the way to make money. But, you know,

what's really going on here? How much of this is real and how much of this has

been artificially inflated?

The crypto trolls were big mad.

He's becoming this new advocate against crypto. And I'm like, what is going on

with this guy?

First red flag was actually the word currency.

Ben McKenzie. If you guys don't know who Ben McKenzie is, he's now a financial

guru. Just kidding. One of the most important things for people to

understand about cryptocurrency is that most of the volume that you see on the

exchanges is fake.

It doesn't exist.

Just say you don't understand crypto and move on.

Is it possible that your hostility to crypto could just be a lack of

understanding of the tech?

If you say I haven't done enough research, my response to you is f***

you. I've interviewed the head of your entire industry.

Did you see how upset he got?

Who am I supposed to believe? The CEO of the largest asset manager on planet

Earth? Or this actor that plays a cop on TV?

But it really is only useful for gambling.

And for criminal activity.

Well, this is what I've got to say about Ben McKenzie. Ben McKenzie, put your

money where your mouth is.

Ben gets no raisin. None.

Not raisin worthy.

And a lot of shady dudes end up making most of the money.

It seems like someone is just hurt. And I feel bad for Ben McKenzie because he's

saying all of these things. And then people are going to look back and say,

why did Ben McKenzie lead me in the wrong direction?

What are you doing? I thought you were coming to bed.

Yeah, I am.

Can you make yourself up?

Yeah, sure.

Dude. Dude.

Come here.

Come here.

Wait.

What are we... I need to mic you up, man.

Oh.

Holy shit.

The exchange, FTX, filed for bankruptcy protection today.

Has fallen. Crypto King, Sam... Bank been freed. Step down. It was not a good

investment. My account has a zero in it, and there are no accounting records.

Where did the money go?

At 4.30 a.m. on November 11th, under pressure from lawyers, creditors, and

colleagues, Sam signed over control of FTX.

Millions of investors were left searching for answers.

Despite the collapse, the crypto community was quick to turn the blame

back on the victims.

If you are still keeping your crypto on an exchange and you're not trading it,

you're doing something wrong.

It's a dumb idea.

You don't do that.

It's stupid. You bring it home where it's safe.

And no matter what happened to the market, the boosters' belief in crypto

would remain unscathed. Just like the collapse of Lehman Brothers or Enron

didn't stop the stock market, FTX will not stop crypto.

Cryptocurrency, the blockchain, it's all still...

But no matter how hard boosters push the story of crypto, they can't make that

story true.

Because it isn't.

The collapse of FTX was a clear warning sign that mixing crypto with our

regulated financial system could only end terribly.

It only takes one big bank to fall for the others to follow suit.

It nearly happened with the subprime crisis, and it could easily happen

again.

When trust breaks, everything can fall apart shockingly fast.

And crypto, which has never proven itself trustworthy, has the ability to

wreak havoc on us all.

Whoa. I'm upstairs.

Yeah.

Hey.

Okay.

Wait, what is this?

Oh, my God.

Wow. Wait, how did this happen?

You know.

Wow.

Frankie, come check us out.

Let's see what that says.

Dear Mr.

Shanken, I invite you to appear before the committee.

Committee? Committee on Basin Housing and Urban Affairs to testify

at a hearing.

I get to go to the United States Senate. Do you know what the United States

Senate is?

It's like the government, where the government is.

And I get to talk to the people in charge and tell them to fix this mess.

What's going to happen here? What are you going to do about this?

Daddy, look up.

How do I look?

Better?

No.

Ouch! What? That was not nice.

That was not nice.

fucking kidding me.

Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs will come to order. Thank you

for the witnesses joining us today.

This story, Bankman Freed was the shiny object. Now he's the villain, possibly

worse. But this story is bigger than one person or one firm and that's the point

of this hearing.

In our discussion of FTX today, I hope we're able to separate the likely

illegal actions from perfectly lawful and innovative cryptocurrencies.

There is the risk of investing in crypto, and then there's also the risk

of not investing in it and letting others accrue its benefits first.

We need to get to the bottom of what happened with FTX, but we can't let its

collapse cause us to abandon the great promise and potential of crypto.

I was up against the usual talking points.

But this wasn't YouTube.

It was Congress.

And that pissed me off.

Chairman Brown, ranking member Toomey, members of the committee. The demise of

FTX in Alameda represents the most spectacular corporate downfall since

Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme imploded in the wake of the great financial crisis.

It has captured the nation's attention.

FTX owe enormous sums to supposedly sophisticated investors.

they also owe a lot of money to regular people.

I believe they and the estimated 40 million other Americans who have

invested in cryptocurrency have been lied to by a once seemingly mighty

crypto industry whose entire existence in fact depends on misinformation, hype,

and yes, fraud.

In my opinion, the cryptocurrency industry

represents the largest Ponzi scheme in history.

The fact that it has roped in tens of millions of Americans from all walks of

life, as well as hundreds of millions of people worldwide, should be of concern

to us all.

Thank you for your time. I look forward to your question.

Thank you.

And is it Mr. Schenken, Mackenzie Schenken?

Yes, sir. You can also call me Ryan Atwood. All right. All right. Well, in

that case, listen, what is this backed by, if I could ask you?

What is this backed by at the end of the day? Nothing. It's a story.

The story has understandable appeal.

I think if crypto serves any function, it's to highlight the myriad failures of

our regulated system and our American economic system to provide people with a

fair shot at the American dream.

That does not make the story true, however, the story of cryptocurrency.

What it does is winded enormous power, and these stories spread like viruses.

People get very excited.

These bubbles build up very big, but then they collapse very swiftly, and I

think that's what we're seeing now today.

I'd said my piece, but it was too late to convince some.

They were in too deep.

Digital assets are not on trial.

Fraud and organizations.

are on trial.

I want to ask the rest of you, if we don't ban it, how do we regulate it,

isolate it from the banking system and then define it as a security?

Does anybody disagree with that or have any other ideas about how it would be

regulated? Mr. O'Leary.

The concept of passing legislation that would ban banks from integrating

cryptocurrencies and crypto technology.

would make it the most uncompetitive financial services sector in the world.

So let me just stop you there. I only have so much time. So you do not agree

with isolating it from the banking system?

That's insanity.

If we allow cryptocurrency to infect our banking system, we will be back here.

Thank you. We will be back here, not in a good way.

On the morning of March 12th, as depositors raced to withdraw their

money, Signature Bank was shut down by the government before it could implode.

It was the third bank to go bust in just five days.

Want to guess what all three had in common?

In the course of five days, three banks have failed in the United States, and

those lenders were critical counterparties for a huge part of the

crypto industry in the country.

Panic set in, as no one knew just how many more banks might fall.

In the end, the government.

That super untrustworthy establishment that crypto was supposedly rebelling

against saved the day.

We, the American taxpayers, bailed them out, and customers were guaranteed all

of their money back.

You're welcome, by the way.

As for Sam, he was charged with wire

fraud, securities fraud, commodities fraud, and good old-fashioned money

laundering.

Oh, and the reason he was hazy on his political donation.

I, I, um... They were illegal.

Regulators are now asking political campaigns to return the money. They say

that Bankman-Fried tried to buy bipartisan influence and impact the

direction of public policy in Washington.

After a month-long trial... It took a jury of his peers only four hours to

find him guilty on all charges.

Do you have anything to say to your investors? Do you have anything to say?

Sam was sentenced to 25 years in prison.

How was he able to pull off his swindle?

Within the source code of FTX, there were two lines that prevented users from

overdrawing their accounts.

But Sam instructed one of his employees to add a single line allowing him to

borrow, a.k.a. steal.

as much money as he wanted from his customers.

It turns out you can't trust code, only the people who write it.

A lot of people look at you and see Bernie Madoff. Yeah.

I mean, I don't think that's who I am at all, but I understand why they're saying

that. People lost money.

In the end, Sam believed in the power of his own story so much, he was willing to

risk it all.

In the midst of the journey, and with the help of my friend Jacob Silverman, I

wrote a book about everything I had learned.

And now with the tides turned, people wanted to hear what a crypto skeptic had

to say.

You might recognize Ben McKenzie as Ryan Atwood from the OC, but lately

he's taken on a new role.

He's been a vocal critic of the cryptocurrency industry and his

scrutiny. led him to challenge its laws and shortcomings he's now co-author of

the new book entitled easy money cryptocurrency casino capitalism and the

golden age of fraud how did that guy from the oc end up writing a book about

crypto Well, like most Americans, I stumbled onto crypto through a friend of

mine. The problem was this buddy who's been an old, old friend.

He gave me the worst financial advice of my life when I was in my 20s. And you

remember it. Yeah, I remembered it. And I love him. Dave, if you're out there,

sorry to out you on CBS News.

But he said, you know, you should buy Bitcoin. The story is so effective

because we all agree on the premise that our current financial system is deeply

flawed. And so that lends the story of cryptocurrency a lot of power. But it

doesn't make the story of cryptocurrency true.

Some people got the message. How many of you have seen this commercial starring

Matt Damon?

Matt is not the only celebrity promoting cryptocurrency.

Some just didn't. You say you did a deep dive. It only took me about 20 pages of

the Bitcoin standard to understand how the young bank could benefit from this.

You think all these firms are going to have egg on their face?

It's a democratized, decentralized future if money is brought to you by

BlackRock. I don't know.

Maybe. I mean, if they think it's...

gold, they think it's, you think it's going to zero?

I can't predict the future anymore than anyone else. So if you're an American

sitting at home and you own cryptocurrency and there are millions of

those Americans, many of those right now, what's your advice to them? I am

not here to offer financial advice. I am not a licensed financial advisor. Many

of my celebrity colleagues have effectively offered financial advice.

And they said bye.

You're saying bye. They said bye. I'm the celebrity who said be careful. Be

careful. Ben McKenzie, thank you so much.

I stumbled down this crypto rabbit hole, not sure of who I was or what I was

doing.

But in playing the role of myself, an undercover econ dork, I not only found

my footing, but uncovered what I believe to be the central truth of

cryptocurrency.

It's just a story.

Or rather, millions of different stories spun by those invested in it.

In the end, crypto is only a projection of the hopes and dreams of those

investors.

You still believe in crypto overall?

Yeah. Oh, yeah. I'm fully invested in crypto now.

Yeah, I do believe in it still.

I still hold a lot of Bitcoin.

Obviously, I'm not a fan of Celsius.

I think that was a ripoff. But I still love Bitcoin.

Immediately, whenever it happened, I mean, I wasn't trying to look at crypto

or anything like that, but I'm still in the game.

That's fascinating to me, you know? Like, I get it. I can understand it,

even if I don't agree with it.

And as long as people are buying the story, the crypto industry will keep

selling it, changing the narrative to fit the needs of the faithful.

The government bought Wilfredo's land for a fraction of what it was worth.

He was forced to uproot his family and build a new house nearby.

The only way he could afford to do that

was with the financial support of his friends and family.

In the end, Wilfredo's community saved him.

And despite Wilfredo and his neighbors being kicked off their land, there are

still no signs of Bitcoin City.

Well, other than Corbyn, that is.

However,

the idea of Bitcoin continued to spread, albeit in an unexpected way.

My first Bitcoin is a nationwide effort to educate the impressionable youth of

El Salvador on the magical ways of Bitcoin.

With over 35,000 graduates and counting, an entire generation is being turned on

to crypto.

Forcibly.

And Bitcoin tourists from all over the world could come to watch kids who

aren't theirs graduate.

Not weird at all.

Was it worth it?

I feel like I was as right as I hoped I would be or more, and yet I had less of

an effect.

What do you mean?

I sort of felt it would be like a movie and it would just disappear, but it's

not a movie, you know? It's not beautiful and perfect.

Like, people are still going to believe in crypto no matter what, right? Like,

it doesn't matter what I say.

It doesn't matter what anyone says, really.

I'm kind of tired of being me. I'm ready to go back to pretending to be somebody

else.

Let's be honest.

I am not as interesting as the people that I play.

I mean, I wasn't going to say that.

Who should I pretend to be next?

Doctor, cop, lawyer, right?

Yeah.

I'm going to just become a fake cop again.

Get back to some honest work.

But I'm married.

Very few people would have put up with what you put up with.

So go ahead. Now that you've been listening for two years, what is

cryptocurrency, right?

I just impaled myself on this tiny, tiny knob.

Well, we've got two night scenes. Do you want to do them tonight or tomorrow?

What are the night scenes?

One is my low point. I'm down in a rabbit hole. I'm in the kitchen looking

at videos.

Thanks for your letter.

Please send a clone over.

I'll use him for garden work and harmonies.

Speaking of pretty new documentaries, have you

seen the one about the Roshnish Baram Society?

Everyone seemed to think they were lunatics, but I thought a thought.

Hey, I get this inside this rational brain of mine. I long to be

contradicted. I wait for a sign.

Doesn't matter what cult, what sign. Just give me any culty sign.

Have a good time with your Bitcoin and your crypto and everything else that

you're playing with.

Though I'm guessing maybe you are an atheist.

You'd get a reason, you'd get a goal. You'd know how to dress and how to

cleanse your soul. I'd be up for that.

I'd be totally up for cleansing my soul.

Would I have to split from my family?

They wouldn't know what got into me.

I'd change my name into something cool.

Warlords bring grass and the leader would use me as a songwriter too. I'd

spread her message to the world.

Send in the choir.

Send in the choir.

Send in the choir.