The movie follows The O.C. alum as he attempts to pull back the curtain on the cryptocurrency industry and the culture of hype, misinformation, and speculation that fueled its explosive rise. The film serves as a follow-up to McKenzie’s 2023 book, Easy Money: Cryptocurrency, Casino Capitalism, and the Golden Age of Fraud. Ben McKenzie is taking the cryptocurrency industry head-on.
In the first trailer for his documentary Everyone Is Lying to You for Money, The O.C. alum, 47, trades in his title of actor for investigator, as he attempts to pull back the curtain on the cryptocurrency industry and the culture of hype, misinformation, and speculation that fueled its explosive rise, per a synopsis. The film serves as a follow-up to McKenzie’s 2023 book, Easy Money: Cryptocurrency, Casino Capitalism, and the Golden Age of Fraud, in which he details the origins of crypto — and argues that rather than a currency, crypto is an unregulated security, or oftentimes just plain fraud. “Cryptocurrency,” McKenzie begins the trailer, speaking directly to the camera. “It’s pretty stupid.”
Through firsthand reporting, expert interviews, and a clear-eyed examination of major collapses and scandals, the film traces how crypto became one of the most aggressively marketed financial products of the modern era—and how warning signs were ignored, dismissed, or deliberately obscured. The film travels the world and interviewing major finance and tech industry figures — including convicted crypto-fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried — to get to the bottom of this crypto business. Another clip shows the actor testifying in front of the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs in December 2022 — during which he called the cryptocurrency industry the “largest Ponzi scheme in history.” Everyone Is Lying to You for Money is described as both “a cautionary tale and a call for accountability—cutting through the noise to expose a system built on speculation, influence, and belief rather than truth.”
“As fortunes are made and lost, Everyone Is Lying to You for Money asks a sobering question: who benefits from the chaos, and who is left to clean up the damage?” the synopsis adds. In a director’s statement, McKenzie opens up about making his first foray into the world of cryptocurrency in 2021, and described his first reaction as “one of bewilderment.” “What is this crap?” he writes. “As an actor, I consider myself a professional bull—-er, and when it came to crypto, my Spidey sense that something was seriously wrong went berserk.” “As I applied skills gleaned from Hollywood, as well as what little I could remember from my undergraduate degree in economics, nothing about crypto made sense. Unless, that is, the whole thing was a scam.”
Leave a Reply