<\/p>\n
\n
\tI read news articles about everything more or less, but I’m idly looking at the possibility of reading articles about cryptocurrencies. That’s because even if you read the book, you won’t fully understand it. What is cryptocurrency, how does it work, and why is it treated as a second comer while some roll their eyes? The future of many things, including money, will definitely be digital. So are cryptocurrencies just an adapted version of the future of digital currencies? But if that’s the case, why does it always feel like cryptocurrencies are like the ones once promoted on late-night TV alongside K-Tel’s hit song collection? And why does the very concept of crypto turn me off so much? confused<\/em>?<\/p>\n \n \tIf, like me, you suffer from eternal half-depressed anxiety about cryptocurrencies, the movie to watch is “Everybody Lies to You for Money.” This is a lively, knife-sharp, impeccably researched and reported documentary that answers every question you could ever think of about cryptography, in a way that is lively, entertaining, and enlightening without being intimidating. More than anything, this explains the hidden reason why cryptocurrencies remain a strangely insensitive and intimidating topic, despite all the media hype about them.<\/p>\n \n \treason? Because it’s all designed to sell an illusion. <\/em>The nature of cryptocurrency is that it’s meant to look like a shiny new object, something so enthralling and elusive that it feels out of reach. That’s the secret charm of cryptocurrencies, and what makes them a kind of cult among true believers. (Cults are built around magical thinking.) And that gives cryptocurrencies a mystique that allows their marketers to inflate the viral junk cash phenomenon into attractive digital snake oil.<\/p>\n \n \t“Everybody Lies to You for Money” is the unlikely brainchild of a Hollywood actor, written, produced and directed by Ben McKenzie. (This work was made in conjunction with his 2023 book, Easy Money: Cryptocurrency, Casino Capitalism, and the Golden Age of Fraud, which he co-wrote with Jacob Silverman.) MacKenzie is remembered by many as his exciting co-star on The OC, where he played glam rebel outcast Ryan Atwood. He’s had a few TV roles since then, including co-starring roles on Southland and Gotham, but in Everybody Lies for Money, Mackenzie, now 47, is proud of the fact that he’ll never be able to transcend his somewhat dull past on TV from his youth, but that doesn’t matter to him. He still works as an actor (sometimes), is married to Brazilian-American actor Morena Baccarin (as seen in the film, they have two sons and live in a beautifully renovated Soho townhouse), and is a very serious man with a degree in economics.<\/p>\n \n \tIn “Everyone Is Lying to You for Money,” Mackenzie busts through a series of misinformation and conducts low-key but confrontational interviews with well-known and powerful financial figures (he also speaks to many people who aren’t). He follows the story of cryptocurrencies and gets to the bottom of it with such obsessive enthusiasm that by the end of the film I was convinced he should become a politician. (I’m not kidding. He’s as photogenic and combative as Gavin Newsom, but mentally he’s closer to Pete Buttigieg.)<\/p>\n \n \tMacKenzie begins by demystifying Bitcoin, the first decentralized cryptocurrency. Bitcoin marketed itself with a clever hook: the declaration that only 21 million Bitcoins would be issued. In other words, the number of Bitcoins does not increase, so the value of each individual Bitcoin increases. But here’s how Bitcoin actually became the prototype for all crypto-currency paranoia that followed. The new currency will function like a stock (people will trade it and its value will fluctuate)… except it is not tied to the companies that make the actual goods. It served as a kind of bank…but it’s different It wasn’t like that<\/em> bank.<\/p>\n \n \tAnd this was the insidious part. very<\/em> 21st Century Part: I felt like I was part of a rebel movement. The 2008 financial collapse and its corrupt aftermath (namely, the Obama administration’s irresponsible bailout of banks) set the stage for a world in which ordinary people no longer trust financial institutions. At the same time, the launch of Napster was ushering in an era in which we would all become rebel disruptors. Therefore, Bitcoin did not offer protection like traditional banks, but the very fact <\/em>They made it look like it was rebel currency. It operated outside the laws of the financial world (which was now considered the enemy). That made it cooler. That’s what neo-1960s snake oil was all about: compliment<\/em> They wanted to think that they were participating in some kind of transcendent system disruption, much like Bitcoin itself.<\/p>\n \n \tBen McKenzie unravels all this and tracks down some of the reigning scammers who have led the cryptocurrency revolution. He goes to El Salvador, the first country to use Bitcoin as legal tender. President Nayib Bukele (in office since 2019) there looks like a grinning Marcello Hern\u00e1ndez character. He promised to build a place called Bitcoin City, a utopian metropolis of gold. (When Mackenzie arrives on the scene, it is a quiet fishing village where the residents have been locked out.)<\/p>\n \n \tMcKenzie then stakes Israeli-American Alex Mashinsky, co-founder and CEO of Celsius, a now-bankrupt crypto lending platform. Mashinski is a vintage hustler who sells the idea that you can get rich with cryptocurrencies, but here the old roots of the scam are revealed. It turns out that Celsius is a pyramid scheme. The price of the Celsius cryptocurrency would rise, but it was all manipulated by those responsible as a way to encourage the public to invest. And millions of people did so, which kept the farce alive (and the “profits” funneled to the top).<\/p>\n \n \tCelsius eventually declared bankruptcy, but that was dwarfed by what happened to FTX, the cryptocurrency exchange founded by Sam Bankman Freed, who was famously convicted of seven counts of fraud and currently serving a 25-year sentence. Mackenzie is interviewed before Bankman Freed explodes, and this scene alone is worth the price of admission, as he openly reveals that Sam Bankman Freed is a special kind of weasel.<\/p>\n \n \tThe scale of his business (the huge amounts of money lost by those who invested in him) has led many to liken him to Bernie Madoff. But what is so distinctive about Bankman Freed is his youth and generational vibe. Beneath his saintly, dark tech-geek curls is a teasingly awkward, faux-passive-aggressiveness derived from Steve Jobs’ seminar style, which Bankman-Freed mixes with his own mode of “What a sensitively evolved Zoomer brother I am!” When MacKenzie asks him how much he has contributed to politicians’ coffers, his avoidance of the question is pure slanderous play. He is truly a shameless poster boy for how to fool people in an “enlightened” way.<\/p>\n \n \tBut the most surprising comment in “Everybody Lies for Money” comes in interviews MacKenzie conducted with ordinary people who have lost money in cryptocurrencies. They were shocked and betrayed. However, near the end of the film, Mackenzie returns to them and asks if they still believe in the code. And they all say yes. They may have been caught up in fraudulent transactions, but their faith in the crypto dream remains undiminished. “Everybody’s Lying to You for Money” captures the brave new world where snake oil salesmen believe their own hype and no one lies to their victims any more than they lie to themselves.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n #Lies #Money #Review #Ben #McKenzies #Incisive #Documentary #Cryptocurrency #Destruction<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I read news articles about everything more or less, but I’m idly looking at the possibility of reading articles about cryptocurrencies. That’s because even if you read the book, you won’t fully understand it. What is cryptocurrency, how does it work, and why is it treated as a second comer while some roll their eyes? … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":839,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2064,2155,2162,2163,1513,2156,2161,2159,2160,277,2158,561,2157],"class_list":["post-838","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-ben","tag-ben-mackenzie","tag-cryptocurrency","tag-destruction","tag-documentary","tag-everyone-is-lying-to-you-for-money","tag-incisive","tag-lies","tag-mckenzies","tag-money","tag-o-c","tag-review","tag-sam-bankman-freed"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/yasbou.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/838","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/yasbou.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/yasbou.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yasbou.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yasbou.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=838"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/yasbou.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/838\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yasbou.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/839"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/yasbou.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yasbou.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yasbou.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}