Actor Ben McKenzie slams Bitcoin on Jon Stewart show

By TheStreet Roundtable

3 days ago

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Hollywood actor Ben McKenzie is best known for his film debut in the Academy Award-nominated film Junebug (2005) and his performances in 88 Minutes (2007), Goodbye World (2013), Some Kind of Beautiful (2014), and Line of Duty (2019).

McKenzie is also known for his sharp criticism of cryptocurrencies and has even co-authored a book with journalist Jacob Silverman, Easy Money: Cryptocurrency, Casino Capitalism, and the Golden Age of Fraud (2023).

He also directed a documentary, 'Everyone Is Lying to You for Money' (2025), to expose what he calls the "culture of hype, misinformation, and speculation" that fuels crypto's rise.

On Aug. 14, McKenzie appeared on The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart and blasted Bitcoin (BTC). In a wide-ranging discussion featured on The Other Side of Bitcoin: Crypto Corruption, McKenzie laid out a blunt case.

The crypto industry, in his view, is less about innovation and more about systematic wealth transfer fuelled by hype, confusion, and weak oversight.

Crypto’s core problem is no real economic output

McKenzie says unlike traditional assets, crypto doesn’t produce anything.

Stocks generate earnings. Bonds pay interest. Real estate yields rent. Crypto, he argues, does none of that.

Instead, crypto relies on price appreciation driven by new buyers entering the market. It is a dynamic that makes the system inherently fragile and dependent on continued inflows of capital, he added.

System designed to enrich insiders

One of McKenzie’s strongest claims is that the crypto ecosystem is built in a way that advantages early adopters and insiders.

It is sustained by retail investors entering late, and in McKenzie’s view, this isn’t accidental, it’s baked into how the system operates.

McKenzie argues that wealth concentrates at the top while losses cascade downward when momentum slows.

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'Greater Fool Theory'

McKenzie repeatedly points to what investors call the "Greater Fool Theory" in which assets rise in value simply because someone else will pay more later.

Crypto prices are not anchored to fundamentals. They are driven by belief, narrative, and momentum. It creates a cycle where early participants profit, hype attracts new entrants, and latecomers absorb the losses when prices fall, he argues.

McKenzie emphasizes that wealthy insiders often exit early and retail investors tend to enter during hype cycles.

That dynamic, he argues, leads to disproportionate losses among less experienced participants, raising ethical concerns about how crypto is marketed and sold.

Exploiting distrust in TradFi

To McKenzie, crypto’s appeal is rooted in public distrust in existing traditional finance (TradFi).

While he acknowledges institutional failures and lack of trust in banks and governments, he argues crypto capitalizes on those frustrations without solving them.

Culture of hype, celebrity, and marketing

Crypto’s rise wasn’t organic but was driven by celebrity endorsements, influencer promotion, and aggressive venture capital backing, McKenzie adds.

These forces, he suggests, help create a perception of inevitability and draw in everyday investors who may not fully understand the risks. He has been especially critical of celebrity involvement, calling it a major driver of retail participation in speculative assets.

Fraud isn’t bug, it’s a feature

McKenzie doesn’t treat fraud as an outlier in crypto but as pervasive and systemic.

From exchange collapses to misleading token projects, he argues the industry has repeatedly shown weak transparency, poor accountability, and limited regulatory enforcement.

These issues, in his view, are not incidental but are enabled by the structure of the ecosystem itself.

Wall Street's involvement

McKenzie argues the Wall Street firms like BlackRock (NYSE: BLK) offering Bitcoin ETFs dilute the decentralization principle of crypto.

“The democratized, decentralized future of money, brought to you by BlackRock. Right? What are we talking about? This is nonsense."

He said it's the ultimate irony that the "democratized, decentralized" future of money needs the U.S. President to pitch it.

He also criticized Donald Trump's meme coin and the associated Mar-a-Lago dinner for top token holders. Most people lost money by investing in this meme coin, he added.

Jeffrey Epstein’s ties to crypto

McKenzie also brought up the disgraced financier and child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and his support for Bitcoin research through the MIT Media Lab.

"And why would Jeffrey Epstein like crypto? Well, if your main businesses are blackmail and money laundering, you know."

'Casino' disguised as innovation

McKenzie compares crypto exchanges to "unregulated, unlicensed casino." He describes it as a system driven by speculation, detached from underlying value, and sustained by volatility.

As per him, crypto becomes less a technological breakthrough and more a financial casino operating under the banner of innovation.

Bottom line

McKenzie’s message is clear: crypto is not a new financial paradigm but a speculative system. He described it as the "largest Ponzi scheme in history" and a "multi-level marketing scheme."

Like all such systems, he warns, it ultimately depends on one thing: a supply of new participants willing to buy in.