\n\tI\u2019ll read a news story about more or less anything, but I glaze over at the prospect of consuming any article about cryptocurrency. That\u2019s because even when I do read one, I never totally get it \u2014 what cryptocurrency is, how it works, why it\u2019s treated as the second coming by some while others roll their eyes. The future of many things, including money, will surely be digital. So is cryptocurrency just an early-adapter version of the digital monetary future? Yet if that\u2019s so, why does it always feel like crypto is the sort of thing that used to be advertised on late-night TV along with K-Tel pop-hit collections? And why does the very concept of crypto leave me so confused?<\/p>\n
\n\tIf, like me, you suffer from perpetual half-submerged crypto angst, the movie to see is \u201cEveryone Is Lying to You for Money<\/a>,\u201d a lively, knife-sharp, impeccably researched and reported documentary that answers every conceivable question you\u2019ve ever had about crypto, and does so in a way that\u2019s brisk and funny and illuminating rather than intimidating. Above all, it explains the hidden reason why crypto, after all the media bloviating we\u2019ve been subjected to about it, remains such a weirdly obtuse and amorphous topic.<\/p>\n \n\tThe reason? Because it\u2019s all designed to sell an illusion. The nature of cryptocurrency is that it\u2019s meant to seem like a shiny new object, one that\u2019s heady and elusive enough to feel just out of reach. That\u2019s the secret appeal of crypto, and what makes its true believers into something of a cult. (Cults are built around magical thinking.) And it\u2019s what lends crypto a mystique that has allowed its marketers to inflate a viral junk-cash phenomenon into irresistible digital snake oil.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cEveryone Is Lying to You for Money\u201d is the unlikely brainchild of a Hollywood actor: Ben McKenzie<\/a>, who wrote, produced, and directed it. (It was made in conjunction with his 2023 book \u201cEasy Money: Cryptocurrency, Casino Capitalism, and the Golden Age of Fraud,\u201d written with Jacob Silverman.) McKenzie is someone who many remember as the heartthrob costar of \u201cThe O.C.<\/a>,\u201d where he played the glam rebel outcast Ryan Atwood. He had a few TV roles after that, costarring on \u201cSouthland\u201d and \u201cGotham,\u201d but in \u201cEveryone Is Lying to You for Money\u201d McKenzie, now 47, makes winning sport of the fact that he\u2019ll never outrun his slightly schlocky youth-TV past \u2014 and that\u2019s okay with him. He still works as an actor (occasionally), he\u2019s married to the Brazilian-American actor Morena Baccarin (as we see in the movie, they have two sons and live in a beautifully renovated SoHo townhouse), and he\u2019s a very serious dude with a degree in economics.<\/p>\n \n\tIn \u201cEveryone Is Lying to You for Money,\u201d McKenzie cuts through reams of misinformation and conducts unshowy but confrontational interviews with finance players who are famous and powerful (he also talks to a lot of people who aren\u2019t). He chases the story of cryptocurrency and gets to the bottom of it with such muckraking zeal that by the end of the film, I was convinced he should become a politician. (I\u2019m not kidding: He\u2019s as photogenic but combative as Gavin Newsom, though closer in spirit to Pete Buttegieg.)<\/p>\n \n\tMcKenzie starts off by plumbing the mysteries of bitcoin, which was the first decentralized cryptocurrency. Bitcoin marketed itself with a savvy hook: the declaration that there would only ever be 21 million bitcoins issued. The implication: Since the number of bitcoins wasn\u2019t going to multiply, it was the value of an individual bitcoin that would go up. But here\u2019s how bitcoin really become the prototype for all the crypto delusion that followed. The new currency would operate kind of like a stock (people would trade it; the value would fluctuate)\u2026except it wasn\u2019t tethered to a company that made actual goods. It presented itself as a kind of bank\u2026except it wasn\u2019t a bank.<\/p>\n \n\tAnd here was the insidious part, the very 21st-century part: It made you feel like you were joining a rebel movement. The 2008 financial meltdown and its corrupt aftermath (i.e., the Obama administration\u2019s spineless bailing out of the banks and no one else, with no heads rolling) had set the stage for a world in which ordinary citizens no longer trusted our financial institutions. At the same time, the launch of Napster had heralded an era where we were all going to be righteous disrupters. So while bitcoin offered none of the protections of a traditional bank, that very fact made it seem an insurrectionary currency. It was operating outside the laws of the financial world (which was now seen as the enemy). That made it cool. And that was the neo-1960s snake oil, all built around the idea of flattering the potential marks who wanted to think that they \u2014 like bitcoin itself \u2014 were going to be joining in some sort of transgressive undermining of The System.<\/p>\n \n\tBen McKenzie elucidates all this, and he tracks down some of the reigning hucksters who have led the crypto revolution. He goes to El Salvador, the first country to use bitcoin as legal tender, where the president, Nayib Bukele (who has been in office since 2019), is like a grinning Marcello Hern\u00e1ndez character. He has promised to build a place called Bitcoin City, which will be a utopian metropolis of gold. (When McKenzie gets to the location, it\u2019s just a sleepy fishing village whose residents are being squeezed out.)<\/p>\n \n\tMcKenzie then stakes out Alex Mashinsky, the Israeli-American co-founder and CEO of Celsius, a now-bankrupt cryptocurrency lending platform. Mashinsky is a vintage hustler, selling the idea that crypto can make you rich, but here\u2019s where the old-fashioned underpinnings of the scam are revealed. Celsius turns out to be a Ponzi scheme. The price of Celsius crypto would go up, but it was being manipulated by those in charge, all as a way to get ordinary citizens to invest. And millions upon millions did, which kept the charade afloat (and funneled the \u201cprofits\u201d to the top).<\/p>\n