Ben McKenzie is an actor known for playing roles on “The O.C.” and “Gotham.” Recently, he published his new anti-crypto book “Easy Money.”
Ben McKenzie Doesn’t Think Much of Crypto
McKenzie is not a crypto fan; he makes that very clear in the book. Its pages contain long stories and examples of how the digital currency world has affected the world (and the people in it) negatively. When discussing how popular crypto has become amongst his peers in the world of film and television, McKenzie commented with:
Well, the showbiz thing is straightforward. They paid some of the most famous people on the planet in real money to take your real money and turn it into something else. I don’t accuse any celebrity of any crime, but, at a minimum, they didn’t do their due diligence, because what you’re effectively doing is providing financial advice, and you’re not a licensed financial advisor. Celebrities have been endorsing things since there’ve been celebrities, but usually those are retail products. These are, at best, speculative assets, and, at worst, Ponzi schemes.
He also mentioned that despite all the trouble it’s allegedly caused, everyday people still seem to believe in it. He stated:
As for why cryptocurrency has been so popular, I really go back to the work of Robert Shiller, the Nobel Prize winning economist, who talks about economic narratives. Crypto’s just a story, or rather a constellation of sometimes overlapping stories, and most of those stories start with something real, which is usually a flaw in our current economic system, financial system, which of course is deeply flawed.
He also stated that much of the reason crypto has come so far in such a short period is because people are greedy, and crypto presents them with an allegedly quick way to get rich fast. He said:
Get-rich quick schemes are eternal. People have been running them ever since there’s been money because people have always wanted to make more money as quickly as possible, and that’s why regulation is important, historically speaking. I mean, these cryptocurrencies are not currencies economically. They’re securities, and we didn’t have federal securities laws until the 1930s, because in the 1920s we did not have them, and the Roaring Twenties, it was all fun and games until it crashed in 1929 and led to the Great Depression.
It’s Like Betting
He also likened crypto investing to gambling and said:
It gets close to gambling addiction. It is [a] gambling addiction for a lot of the hardcore people. They really want to believe in it, and I get that. I understand that. Who doesn’t want to be rich? Who doesn’t want to believe in the thing crypto purports to do? But just because you believe in it doesn’t mean it’s true.