Ben McKenzie stepped onto the stage at Ace Hotel Brooklyn on April 16, drinks flowing from sponsors like Aplos and Faccia Brutto. About 100 guests settled in. This was WIRED’s first WIRED@Night event, a cozy pushback against screen fatigue. McKenzie, known for brooding Ryan Atwood on The O.C. and later James Gordon on Gotham, grabbed the mic. He didn’t read barbs aimed at himself. No. He zeroed in on mean tweets about WIRED. “When did WIRED die?” he intoned, emphasizing the all-caps ‘DIE.’ Laughter rippled through the room.
But punchlines aside. McKenzie sat down with WIRED senior correspondent Andy Greenberg, who covers crypto scams. They dissected cryptocurrency’s hold on believers. McKenzie called it extreme gambling, one that ballooned during Covid isolation. Its secret sauce? Male loneliness. “It’s the longing for community, actual community,” he said, as reported by WIRED. Guests nodded, sipping mezcal from Manojo. Crypto promised belonging. Delivered speculation instead.
McKenzie’s night at the Ace wasn’t random. His directorial debut, Everyone Is Lying to You for Money, hit select theaters April 17. Self-financed. Based partly on his 2023 book Easy Money: Cryptocurrency, Casino Capitalism, and the Golden Age of Fraud, co-written with Jacob Silverman. The film tracks his 2022 probe: Bitcoin conferences in Miami, a squalid outpost for El Salvador’s unbuilt Bitcoin City, chats with true believers and fraudsters. He even cornered Sam Bankman-Fried pre-FTX collapse. “To be honest Sam, it doesn’t feel like it’s creating a lot of good for people,” McKenzie pressed, per clips in the doc. Bankman-Fried, now imprisoned, squirmed.
Critics praised the knife-sharp takedown. Variety called it lively, researched, funny—answering crypto’s obtuse allure. The New York Times noted its intro to virtual currency traps. McKenzie, economics grad, spots Ponzi echoes. Money is trust, he argues in a Rolling Stone profile. Crypto mangles that. “The face of it was sorta pathetic—luring in young guys to gamble on this thing they were going to lose on. But behind it was real crime.” He shorted crypto frauds once, pocketed a million, lost half re-betting, funneled the rest into the film.
Backlash brewed online. Crypto enthusiasts fired off at the WIRED event. One X post likened inviting McKenzie to a flat-earther on astronomy. Another mocked his grasp: “Ben knows nothing about the workings of crypto or blockchains.” WIRED promoted it anyway, drawing 7,000 views. McKenzie anticipated the heat. His film mocks celeb shills—Matt Damon, Kardashians. “If there’s one thing I did know right off the bat it’s that Matt Damon didn’t know fuck all about crypto,” he told Rolling Stone. “As I looked into it, it just got worse and worse.”
So why him? Actor spotting lies. Pandemic boredom sparked it—a friend’s tip. Skepticism snowballed. Congress testimony followed. El Salvador trek exposed vaporware dreams under Nayib Bukele. He interviewed Celsius CEO Alex Mashinsky pre-arrest too. Patterns emerged: hype, collapse, bagholders. Bitcoin hit $126,000 in 2025, now hovers near $65,000. Volatile. McKenzie lost a 2021 bet it’d dip below $10,000. Doesn’t sway him. “I really believe strongly that what crypto represents is quite bad for the world,” he said. Everyday folks foot the bill.
Events like WIRED@Night amplify that. Intimate. Real faces, not avatars. Greenberg probed McKenzie’s travels; audience questions probed deeper. No panels, no slides. Just talk. WIRED eyes more nights like this—storytelling over screens. McKenzie? He’s pivoting. A legal-political thriller brews, shadowing NYC corruption. Political whispers too: 2004 DNC speaker, recent fundraisers. “I know I’ve said I’m not running for office this time around, but I could do it in 2028,” he joked to Rolling Stone. Won’t muzzle himself.
Crypto endures. Believers cling. Skeptics like McKenzie persist. That Brooklyn evening captured the divide—laughter at mean tweets, nods at hard truths. Community sought. Sometimes found in unexpected spots. Like a hotel bar dissecting digital dreams.
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