{"id":557766,"date":"2026-08-03T15:03:08","date_gmt":"2026-08-03T15:03:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/557766\/"},"modified":"2026-08-03T15:03:08","modified_gmt":"2026-08-03T15:03:08","slug":"ben-mckenzie-thinks-streamers-are-scared-of-his-crypto-documentary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/557766\/","title":{"rendered":"Ben McKenzie Thinks Streamers Are Scared of His Crypto Documentary"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tBen McKenzie<\/a> believes he knows why the major streaming services weren\u2019t interested in licensing \u201cEveryone Is Lying to You for Money.\u201d His new documentary takes on the cryptocurrency<\/a> industry, portraying the controversial digital currency as corrupt and in dire need of more regulations. But the film is being released as President Donald Trump has profited handsomely from the sector, raking in $1.4 billion in combined crypto-related income during his first year back in office.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIf you\u2019re a corporation and you\u2019re trying to decide on the marginal value of buying an independent movie that you don\u2019t have to buy, and potentially incurring the wrath of the Trump administration, it\u2019s a pretty easy decision,\u201d says McKenzie. \u201cThe risk calculus is not in our favor, and they\u2019d rather just not buy it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIt doesn\u2019t matter that \u201cEveryone Is Lying to You for Money\u201d has received nearly universal praise (it boasts a 100% \u201cfresh\u201d rating on Rotten Tomatoes) since opening in April. It has also earned roughly $150,000 during its limited theatrical run, which is more than some of the films that competed for best documentary prize at last year\u2019s Oscars. The Forge, a boutique indie studio, distributed the doc in theaters. But with its home entertainment release, McKenzie feels like major corporations are behaving as if his movie is too hot to touch.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI have no right to receive the money back that I\u2019ve spent financing this movie, but it does seem wrong that certain avenues seem to be either closed or more difficult to access because of the outspokenness of my film,\u201d McKenzie says.<\/p>\n

\n\tMcKenzie could, of course, make \u201cEveryone Is Lying to You for Money\u201d available to rent or buy on platforms like Amazon or Apple, but that would mean forking over a percentage of the sales, as well as paying them to advertise the film on their platform. Instead, he\u2019s cutting the major streamers out entirely and releasing the movie on Eventive, a digital platform that specializes in helping indie films reach an audience. The service doesn\u2019t require a subscription, which McKenzie thinks could help \u201cEveryone Is Lying to You for Money\u201d reach an even wider audience.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIf we can get 100,000 people in the world to watch this movie over the course of two weeks, that\u2019ll be a phenomenal success for us,\u201d McKenzie says. \u201cIf we can do it, then it potentially provides a way forward for other filmmakers to eventize their movies and go straight to consumers. It means you can bypass the traditional gatekeepers that are the big VOD [video-on-demand] platforms.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe film will be available to rent or buy on August 22. The plan is also to offer access to a live Q&A, where viewers can submit questions for McKenzie, his wife, actor Morena Baccarin, and other cryptocurrency critics and experts.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cHopefully they feel like they\u2019re not just turning on Netflix or whatever and flipping through a movie, but are actually interacting with it to some degree,\u201d McKenzie.<\/p>\n

\n\tMcKenzie, the former star of \u201cThe O.C.\u201d and \u201cGotham,\u201d financed the production with a combination of savings and \u201cabout a million dollars\u201d he made \u201cbetting against different frauds, crypto being sort of the primary one.\u201d Because it was self-funded, McKenzie felt he had more freedom to speak openly about his concerns that crypto is a sham, one that fails to tell investors about the risks associated with such a volatile business.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI felt very strongly that the only way to make this movie correctly was to do it completely independently and to finance it myself, which I frankly have the privilege of doing because of money I\u2019ve made in television,\u201d McKenzie says. \u201cI did not realize it was going to be quite this expensive or take quite this long. The old saying about independent movies is that they are never finished. You just run out of money. And that is definitely true here.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tMcKenzie first got interested in cryptocurrency during COVID lockdown when one of his friends walked him through the bitcoin economy in an effort to get him to invest. Though he had made his living as a performer, McKenzie was an economics major in college and something about the pitch didn\u2019t sit right. So McKenzie started researching the business, growing more and more alarmed. Because crypto wasn\u2019t heavily regulated, people could use it to launder money or pay for illegal activity, and retail investors were frequently getting fleeced, he found. Ultimately, his investigation led to the 2023 book, \u201cEasy Money: Cryptocurrency, Casino Capitalism, and the Golden Age of Fraud,\u201d which was written with journalist Jacob Silverman.\u00a0That, in turn, led to the documentary.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cYou\u2019re not afforded the protections you ought to be when you\u2019re investing in cryptocurrency,\u201d McKenzie says. \u201cIt\u2019s very difficult to actually spend cryptocurrency in the real world. I can\u2019t go to my neighborhood deli in Brooklyn and buy a bagel with Bitcoin. So it is really an investment for the retail public. You plug money into it. You hope to make money off it through no work of your own. That\u2019s literally the definition of an investment under federal securities law. And the reason that we regulate securities differently than currencies is so people aren\u2019t defrauded and swindled out of their money. And yet crypto has really thrived in this gray area where it\u2019s called itself a currency and therefore has avoided a lot of the laws that would otherwise apply to it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBecause of his fame, McKenzie has been able to generate more attention for his crusade, appearing on cable news and writing op-eds about the dangers of cryptocurrency. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI\u2019ve gotten so many people who I think have perked up their ears a little bit and paid attention to what I\u2019ve been doing just because it\u2019s so unusual. \u2018Oh, I didn\u2019t know Ryan Atwood from \u2018The O.C.\u2019 had a brain,’\u201d McKenzie says.<\/p>\n

\n\tMcKenzie hasn\u2019t shied away from criticizing celebrities like Kim Kardashian and Matt Damon who have made money hawking cryptocurrency companies in ads.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cCelebrities have always shilled for products,\u201d he says. \u201cThere\u2019s nothing wrong with that. But these were not consumer goods. These were not soap or fast food. This was an investment vehicle. Not to presume too much, but I don\u2019t think they know much of anything about crypto. You\u2019re not supposed to offer people financial advice if you\u2019re not a licensed financial adviser, and you\u2019re specifically not supposed to sell them on what I believe cryptocurrencies to be, which are unregulated, unlicensed securities.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHave there been career repercussions for McKenize\u2019s outspokenness?<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThere\u2019s no way to quantify that,\u201d McKenzie says. \u201cI may not get cast in a Matt Damon movie anytime soon. That\u2019s OK. For the record, he\u2019s a terrific actor. He just shouldn\u2019t have sold crypto.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd yes, McKenzie still plans to see \u201cThe Odyssey.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ben McKenzie believes he knows why the major streaming services weren\u2019t interested in licensing \u201cEveryone Is Lying to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":557767,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[22303,864,156,409,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-557766","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-ben-mckenzie","tag-cryptocurrency","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/557766","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=557766"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/557766\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/557767"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=557766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=557766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=557766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}