Ben McKenzie (on cryptocurrency)

I'm Dan Shepherd, you're Lily Padman, and we have an expert that will be confusing to people. - I was confused. - You were very confused. You saw Ben in the yard, and you said, "Oh my God, it's that Ben." - Yeah, when I read that we were having Ben McKenna, and I knew it was an expert episode, and I saw what the episode was about. I read the right up. I was like, "Oh, okay, so there's

an expert with the same name, and then walk in, and it is the actor." - It is. And I got to tell you, I say this in the fact that this is one of the smartest actors I've ever met in my life. So fucking smart, I had such a blast talking to him.

- Yeah. - And yes, he has done his homework. He has an incredible book about this topic called

Easy Money, a New York Times bestseller, and a new documentary that's in theaters now called everyone is lying to you for money, and he's obsessed with cryptocurrencies, and are they really a currency? Can you use them to buy things? What are their value? Very entertaining. Obviously, you know, from the Ocey, Southland, Gotham, great dude. So glad we had him. Please enjoy Ben McKennazzi.

“- I think one second funny story that you just overlap with you. - Yeah.”

- So I see on the schedule like a few weeks out, this is a couple years ago, Brian Cox, in the schedule, and I'm like, "Oh, cool, the guy from succession. I can't wait to talk to him." And I keep saying, Rob and Monica, I'm like, "I'm going to try to get him in the interview to say "for the off of your own succession." So, day off reading lunch about an hour before he gets here. I say it again to them and they're like, "Why do you keep saying fuck off?" They go, "You know,

it's not the actor Brian Cox. It's the physicist." I said, "I was like, "Oh, fuck!" I need a lot more research stuff about physics stuff. Anyways, I just saw Monica in the yard and she goes, "Yeah, I was like, I thought it was the actor." I think it was an expert separately, just with the same name. You see, it's like, "Yeah, I know you all started this." That one was like, "I was like, I was like, I was like, "and they're like, "I didn't know you were an expert."

Oh, I'm always trying to snatch another identity away from acting. First of all,

writing and directing, and then yeah, anything else, I'm like, "Yeah, please validate me in another way." Yeah, I know, right, because I think it is hard as an actor. You're so not in control. And people pre-judge you based off the work you've done or whatever, and it's just like a very vulnerable place to be. And I had made up career of playing idiots, particularly. So, yeah, yeah, yeah,

“I had a little bit of a chip on my shoulder. You should try teen idol, you know, it's a different thing.”

I think all these things come with their trade-offs, don't they? They do. Pull that fucker a little closer to you. Yeah, I want to hear that. Dolce at home. Dolce at home. Dolce at home? That's the word, I can't remember. Feel free to do that. Oh, look at this. Don't worry. Fantastic. Wow. Guys, can I call these a man? Oh, my God.

That's a longest legs for this couch. It's not a great couch, okay? This is a great couch. I am just too short for couchers today. All scouches are too deep for me. They really did go deep. They're fine for you. You can do this. Yeah, there was a paradigm shift about 18 years ago in couch. Isn't they got deeper in deep? Yeah, these are not the couches we grew up sitting on. No, no, no, no, no. And they are more comfortable, except I just feel

like such an old man saying this. My back is always like, yeah, feel free to take that pill. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's a bit comfortable. We're going to be here for four hours. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's going to go deep. My spiritual head

“quarters is Austin and specifically my church is Barton Springs. Yeah, buddy. It is glorious. Isn't it? Yeah. Did you as a little kid?”

Yeah. It hasn't changed, right? They haven't like fucked up at have they? No, that concrete 75 years old. And it's a grass hill. Great. Yeah. I mean, so much has changed in that town since I grew up there and to be blunt, Elon kind of fucked it up in my opinion. Cyber trucks are not what I think of as the Austin vibe. When you think of weird that doesn't. I mean, it is weird. It's not the same brand weird. Yeah. Exactly. But I would argue that transformation is already happening when I did idiocracy there in two days and four because Dell was

there and a couple big tech companies that are going to move there. By the way, idiocracy. Wow,

talk about movie that was ahead of its time. I'm sure you've heard this a million times, but

generally during elections, people like to talk about it, indeed. There's been screenings at times, but your multi-generation Austin, right? Yeah. Grandfather. You don't want Brian Cox anymore.

radio and television stations there. And he passed the 1967 public project. Yes, exactly. Wherever the public tells it, which now they're doing their best to rip apart. Yeah, he was a great man. He came through all asylum, which his parents were Dutch immigrants and first guy in his

family to go to college. That generation, where there were guys who came from nothing and did incredible

work and you're kind of aware of that at a very early age. You got to tell the line a little bit. A little bit. You're such a sweet, but formidable person. He loved to throw these dinner parties and

“I remember the family gathering and obviously when the grandfather said you had to behave and I just”

come from summer camp. Oh, of course you like cursor, cursor, blue string. No, it was language. He was a person. And I can't remember what I did. I dropped an F-bomber. I did something totally inappropriate. Okay. He was record scratch and I tried to retreat into the chair. Was that your father's father? Father's father. Yeah. And then he became an attorney or father? Yeah, my father's an attorney. What type of law does he print? He practices a personal injury. No, thank God. Regulatory litigation.

Which sounds as sense-lating as it is, but he has been on the good side. He represented a plan parenthood when they were being attacked. You know, trying to cut those clinics down, which unfortunately they succeeded in. He's done environmental law. He's an expert on workers comp in taxes. Okay. Wow. I say all this because it makes a lot more sense. You're turning to this right arena. You're kind of third generation civically minded. The grandfather's getting

legislation passed your father's working in that capacity. Yeah. That kind of makes sense. Was it an

“idealic fun? If I could have grown up anywhere, I think I would have picked off. It was. Yeah. Your”

Drew Breeze and you are like flag football teammates. Yeah. And he's a great guy. I haven't kept up with him, but holy crap. As a kid, you would never have imagined that someone that you grew up with is going to be this, I guess he'd probably be a Hall of Fame quarterback at some point.

I remember the first day went to the park to, like, throw him. He immediately was always great.

Like, yeah, you're just born with that. A little bit. His dad was a quarterback at Baylorer. And so I think he just had great technique. Not a tall guy. Probably 5-10. If I love him. Yeah. I've only met a month. I did this bit for the Ellen Show at the Super Bowl in Minnesota. And we're trying to tackle each other with these remote control fucking punching bags. And I took him out on accident at that legs. And I was like, oh my god, what if I had fucked up?

He's holding him in a couple days. But he was such a rad dude. The one he was playing in? Yeah. I actually, so I went to, like, a public middle school. We met at this private middle school that we both went to. See an Anthony St. Andrews. Yeah. I didn't get it exactly. Yeah. That was cool. The fact that you're not reading on something and you've learned this is really genuinely impressed. We had to apply to get at it. You had to take some test.

And it was just me and him. And we were both nervous. And, you know, we're 10 or 11 or some of that. And he was just like a really nice guy. And I didn't know that he was an athlete like that. I mean, I could look at him even at 10 and go like, I guess, he'd probably can play sports. But yeah, then we got in and then it was flag football because there was private school that he wanted us to play with moments. You'll thank God. Yeah, I know. Now, I'm so grateful.

But I had already played tackle elementary. I loved it. And then I, high school, I played for Austin High and he went to West Lake, which was this incredible program. It's where they shot a lot of friendly lives. What's like the Beverly Hills of Austin? Yes. And they had an artificial turf stadium in like 1997. Wow. You know, they crushed us. Like crushed us every year. But he really

“earned it. I think he started out as like third string cubiques. Again, not the biggest guy.”

And hide's important in your quarterback. You want to be able to see over everything. Yeah, you literally probably could not see over those linemen and was having to like drop a ball $30 on the field. You didn't do that spooky spooky. Yeah. So yeah, you played high school football. You were a wide receiver. Why don't you have a strong safety? Yeah. And then you went to University of Virginia, you're a Virginia. I can do it. Virginia. Virginia. Virginia.

You went to the University of Virginia. You went there again. Now you're a third generation going there, right?

Yeah. Yeah. You say that in it sounds to me. Anyway, it's always kind of weird. Like I was

expected to go there, which was not the vibe. I was basically not that focused in high school and grades. I went to a regular public high school. Austin, Texas, which was wonderful. But I was slightly football and drinking and chasing girls. And I was just not focused on the academic side of it. Were you having the Friday night's life experience that I watched and TV like you're on the football team in Texas? Yeah. Yeah. I love you. There was a little bit of that. I mean, not

Reagan's level. Right. None of us looked like Tim Reagan. Yeah. Tim Reagan's early of those guys. And it was Austin. You're not like a Desa Permian. That's all there is. But yeah, no, it's in tense. Texas high school football. People show up. You know, Friday night, people show up on a Friday. Oh, I would have loved it. It's like your first taste of being famous. Yeah, a little bit. Also, your first taste of like what happens when you fail publicly? Because I remember we played West

amazing. It was a regular season. But they were incredible, right? They went on to a belief in

“when the state championship or at least get to the game. Anyway, we play them. We're at our home”

field. House Park is packed. Both sides. They're already up in the first quarter. But they do a dive. The fullback takes the ball off center. And I'm strong safety. And they've just like a obliterated alignment obliterated alignment, obliterated alignment backern. It's me and this fullback in the hole. And I try to hit him. He just trucks me. Uh, like trucks me to the point where I'm back on my ass in front of thousands of people. My memory anyway is that he laughed as he did it,

playing true to me and laughed. Oh, taste of him. But University of Virginia's relevant in this because you got a degree in economics. And I guess my curiosity is why the game plan. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there wasn't much of a game plan at age 18. I didn't go there knowing what I wanted to study. My dad is a lawyer. I was talked about. So I was like, oh, I'll just study things I'm interested in that could plausibly prepare me for law school. Okay. So potentially you were in a law school.

Maybe. I also was like, I'll be an international businessman. You know, I don't know. I've seen you're a boy. I don't know what I was doing. Am I right to guess? And we've interviewed a lot of economists. I'm on a can I were just talking about this two days ago. I was like economists are far more interesting than meets the eye in that they came up with game theory that most of social science these psychological experiments are on the backs of these economic principles.

“Yeah. It's a very fascinating force in the world that I think people have very little understanding of.”

It's why we have revolutions. It's a bit mathematical and there's some predictive qualities to it. But it's like very fascinating domain that is applicable to lots of other areas. Yeah. But I can't imagine when you entered it, you knew that yet you were maybe like I'm good at math. So that's the irony is I think a lot of people think of economics as this sort of dry mathematical science. It's really has a mathematical side to it. But of course, if economics is the study of how people behave

in an economy and interact with each other on the individual level and also on a collective level and group settings and societal settings, it is really in some sense is the study of human behavior.

Darwinism in a sense is market forces. Sure. Everything's a market. But also I was always interested

in the behavioral economics, which is the study of how human beings actually interact because there's a couple of schools of thought and there's a sort of a more traditional economics that basically takes this huge presumption that everyone is a rational actor. They are maximizing their utility, which is this wonderfully vague phrase. And then you ask of what's the utility. It's like, well, it's whatever they did that's rational. It's sort of like a non-falseifiable

and it's like circles back on itself and behavioral economists poke holes in that all the time. Yeah. Because we do all sorts of things that aren't quote unquote rational. And again, start self-interest. Yes. And so I've always been fascinated by that, which maybe perhaps let me a little into acting in the sense of it's the study of human behavior as well. And also maybe into true crime, too, because I'm also fascinated by that, which has led me to this weird

place where I'm now. They have illuminated all these inherent biases we have that make us irrational in pursuit of these outcomes. So we have confirmation bias. We have lost bias. We can observe people acting in a way that's not good for them a lot through these experiments. Yeah. And we've been able to identify a lot of these different biases we kind of inherently have. And they're fascinating. They're permeating every single topic at a university.

“And I think one of the things that it does that's sort of frustrating for these other economists,”

because they want to presume rationality so that they can model what's going to happen. Yeah, right. But the unfortunate reality in my opinion, in the pinnacle of behavioral economists, is you can't. You can try, but just like humans are fallible and irrational.

The models are never going to be able to predict that. All you can do in its misleading is you can

observe the outcome and make sense of it after the fact correct. And that leads you to believe that okay. So now we know what led people to this decision. So we can pull these levers and we'll get a different outcome. But then you run that and then we learn another batch of things about people. Exactly. Which maybe perhaps brings to crypto. Because it's like, yeah, you can look back at financial menus of the past. And I was finding a lot of similarities between crypto and a lot of

these other things in economics and through different lenses. But while you're in the middle of it, until it actually collapses, who's to say, really, am I crazy? Or are they crazy? Only time's going to tell. Right. Even this debate. So I happen to be on your side. It's okay if you're not like, oh, yeah, yeah. Some of my best friends right now, we debate this all the time. It's a very guy thing. It is a very guy thing. I want to get into the type of person that's really, really

drawn to crypto. That is evolved. But I've always danced around it because to be honest, I know how

fervent the community is and I don't need them as an enemy. Right. There's a lot of people sitting in front of computers like 12 hours a day and I don't need them against me. So I've always just shredded lightly. So I love having you as the canary here. I don't make it say a lot of the stuff that I've been thinking of it. But I have from it's first explanation been like, hold on. It seems

to be the first interview you ever do when I'm not going to say a certain word and I've watched

“your doc and so that's going to be an offering. So, suffice to say you had a really successful acting”

career. Oh, I see what you're doing. Is it one word or two words that you're not going to are three words? Well, now that everyone needs to know what the words are. You know what the word is. He was on his show for years. Then he was on his show for five years. That was hugely popular. Then he's on another show for five years. That was hugely popular. And as he's gone to Congress

and to CNBC, I'm always right now. It's great. It's a fun part of the documentary. You run straight

out that. Yeah. That's funny. So anyways, I might be the first person to not save this word to him. I'll write this for you or this acronym. But at any rate, by all accounts, anyone who can end up on a TV show that goes multiple years, you're in the single digit percentages. Of course, to have three shows that go a total of 14 seasons is almost impossible. Yeah. It's pretty on like, I'm pretty lucky. I am talented. I'm actually like a humble brag. There's also an

incredible amount of luck that's involved there. There is. I'll argue you do in June bud right

“out of the gates. Oh, what a blessing. Do you remember June bug? The movie. Yeah. I love that movie.”

Yes. Amy Adams husband with the mustache. Oh my god. I haven't seen it since college, but I was obsessed with it for a minute. I watched it like over and over and over. That was. So I had done the first season of the O.C. I don't know what that is, but I'm going to be exactly whatever. I love the show that's coming up. And you know, it's all about finding the highest movie and I don't have any idea of what I'm doing right. I'm very young. You got it quick, man.

It will be a set of how fucking quit. You moved here in 2003 or something. 2002 and got it in 2003. Yeah. Fuck you. Yeah. No, no, no, no. What happened? It happened really quick. It was a year and seven days after I landed in LA where I got that gig on the show that won't be named. And it was just like a rocket ship, which can only really happen. I feel like in this town and Silicon Valley, ironically. Right. Sam back when free. Yeah. Totally. There's a lot over a lot. And then you

start believing yourself a little more than you. Yeah. But you also have severe imposter syndrome. Yeah. Because it's been a lot of time. There'll be talking about the show that will be named. I'll just share some things with you. Which I'm sure you're many guests have mentioned similar things. But imposter syndrome is ubiquitous. I feel like everyone has some of it. But it is particularly weird to get fame at an early age because nobody in my opinion deserves it.

Right. It's not a thing you deserve. It's like a thing that happens to you. And so you feel as weird tension between this is awesome. This is great. But also fraudulence. It could go away like that. Yeah. Yeah. Like what happens if people know who I actually am as opposed to the tough kid from the wrong side of the tracks that I'm playing. Yeah. And just like this Egon Dork guy. Dude, I had spent so little time on a set. I had done like a guest art, a co-star. Maybe spent three

days on a set prior to getting the lead of this pilot. It was so bad that I was shooting the first

“day. I think I was method because I didn't know what else to do. Sure. Sure. I was just so terrified”

that I was like, I'm just going to stand. I barely have my hands on it. So I can't exactly exactly. But we were rehearses scene. We break to light. And this guy comes up to me who kind of looks a lot like me. And you just sort of stand there awkwardly. And he's like, when you for you to move

over. Yeah. I had never had a stand up. Yeah. As a guest art, a co-star. You do your own stand up.

You do the standing. Yeah. Yeah. So just that. Which was hilarious, too, because then I got this reputation as a really intense actor. Oh, I'm like, no, I just didn't know I was doing. Yeah, back to June bug. So I remember loving it. But I didn't remember it enough. I watched the trailer again today. And yeah, what a movie. You're fucking great in that movie. Oh, my God. She gives you that kiss on the cheek. And you ask, you just got a cigarette. So dead. Yeah. So we're trying to find

the hate as movie. And I think I literally got offered a script where the main character wore a white t-shirt and a choke chain and did fighting. It was literally like O.C. the movie. Yeah. And probably a lot of money. And I was just like, I can't, if I do that, what happens if I'm that guy forever? Thank God. That's a lot of. And press flow. The sighted mist also fear, too, of course, like double down on it. But then I read the script. It was tiny little movie,

less than a million dollars and shot on film, less than a million dollars. And I just loved it.

I understand this world. And from the south, I mean, Texas is sort of southwest. But it has a lot of overlap. My parents are both from the south. You've gone to school in Virginia. It's going to Virginia. Dad's from North Carolina, Mom's from Louisiana. And this was set in a world that I was very familiar with. I love the director, Phil Morrison, who's going to do some other great movies. So that was my first movie. And I don't think I've been able to top it.

Well, no, I didn't really click. Not to shine the light on her so much. But I am watching that. And that is her breakout. Yes. That's her kind of introduction to the world, the Academy

she's talking so fast. And I try it out for cheerleader. You've ever been cheerleader, blah, blah, blah. When you were observing that, you were pretty new still. But were you like, oh, my goodness,

“something fucking wild going on, right? Yeah. Yeah. I think because I was hot at the moment,”

they were like, OK, we'll do him. But we don't know about the female lead. And we don't have the money to pay anybody who's already established. And so I read with a couple of people. And yeah, it was just like a different. You know, it was like playing with Drew Breeze. Yeah, a little bit. Yeah. And to the point where you're like, oh, crap, he's throwing the ball at me fast. You know, yeah. Oh, fuck you. Like, at least get your hands up. So it doesn't hit you in the face,

because it's coming. And it's very sobering when in the edit. It's like, oh, it's just that. Yeah, that was interesting. You hear me a lot, but you know, see me a ton, see me deliver the line. Yeah. I'm reacting to be deliver. OK. So I guess Gotham is the last series run for extended period of time. And what I admire and relate to is I guess season three direct an episode. Yep. And then season four is even better. You write an episode. It's fucking great. Every actor wants

to direct. They're like the boss. Right. No one's offering to write. And I came from a family of writers. My mom's a poet. My uncle, Robert Shinkin is a playwright and a screenwriter. Holds a prize. Well, it's a prize winner, Tony winner, Emmy winner.

It's interesting how you sort of define yourself. But I had never thought of myself as a writer.

And yet I was fascinated by it. And I had also done so much TV, you know, a couple of hundred hours of TV that I was like, I got to try new things that you got to give me more stuff to do. Basically, I just kept asking. You know, I got to go to the writers room after the first year and sit with them and hang with them. I didn't get to write yet. And so you slowly build up that trust and you basically slowly break them down to the point where they sort of have to, like,

you know, that for me, I sat wrote an episode of parenthood. I'm like, I'm going to write an episode. I've already sold screenplays. I'm already like writer. I should have just asked can I write? But instead, I'm like, I'm going to just speck an episode. And then when I gave it, I underestimated what that kind of looked like a little bit. Because that show was so serialized. It wasn't an episode. You could just write a random speck episode. I didn't know what the full

arc of everyone. Sure. I don't know that it came across in the way that I was intending to do. Perhaps. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, shows are so interesting. Politically, there's all sorts of stuff that's going on. Yeah. I did not do it right. I'll take all the blame. But I was just like,

“look at this thing I've written. I think this would be a great episode. It was a little bit like,”

you think that you just dropped so tough. Well, if it helps at all, I feel like I sort of have the opposite experience where you're assigned the episode that you're going to write, because the season's already broken down. You've been in the room, at least a little bit. I do remember doing a pass and like, there was a lot of red. A lot of suggestions. Yeah. The suggestion slash we're going to change that. But it was fun, man. It was really good. And it really did prepare me because it was

a network show. There were commercials. So you're writing to commercial breaks like every single time. So there's a lot of story math. Yeah. A lot of stuff. I was like, okay, he needs to go up. And then

it goes down. It's very technical. And yeah, yeah. And that's really helpful. It wasn't always the most

fun as an actor to have to hit those beats every single time. It does get a little repetitive. And I love Gotham super proud of it. When you leave that show, though, I think you obviously you have an intention to do more directing and maybe writing. Yeah. Okay. So I guess now I want to know how do you get to the point where you're going to write easy money and then also direct the dock. What's the order of events? So Gotham is in 2019. Done a lot of TV and I kind of feel like I need to

do something else. I get to do a play on Broadway, which I had never done before. I was super excited about that. That shut down immediately. So it didn't actually. It actually was a limited run that closed on its own. Oh, March 2nd 2020. Okay. I got an pilot. I was like about to go shoot this pilot. And the next week, New York shut down. Oh, I was wondering because it got nominated for a Tony. Well, play was it. Grand Horizons written by Best Wolf, who I had known for like 20 years.

We've done Summer Stock Theater together. It was really cool. That is cool. Moment. But yeah, then Ben and McCats. I don't know about you, but I was freaking out. Well, you weren't New York, too, right? We weren't New York. Yeah. And my wife has chronic asthma. And so given what we didn't know at the time, we were freaking out. And so we moved out of the city. Did you have new babies? Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, we had young kids. We didn't have our third

kid. Yeah, but we had our first two kids. It was a lot. It's a lot. So we ended up renting a place in Western Connecticut. Beautiful area. It's where North Western Connecticut. And it was so tranquil and

“lovely. There was a land. There was a pond on the land. I remember my stepson going out like”

catching frogs every day. And a second kid was singing the son will come out tomorrow. And he was under pee. Yeah. At that moment, tears. Because you're feeling at that moment. Is he right? Is it? You know, it's a lot of emotions. And so a lot of emotions. But I was like,

look at for the next thing. Then I started looking at the financial markets because I never

really paid attention to them. Even though I had an econ degree, I was really conservative of my money. Real estate index funds. I know enough that I don't know that much. My buddy Dave

investing because he had come to me and said, or the mid-autts, he was like living in my guest house.

“I was shooting the O.C. He was like, dude, you got a buy stock in his company. That's like a”

obscure company that I had never heard of. He had found up from a dude out of wedding, from

dude at a wedding. He was always a little bit sore. Yeah, exactly. In retrospect, it's comically stupid. But he's like, they've produced synthetic blood. They're going to make a fortune. It's like a penny stock. You're like, yeah. Okay. But I'm young and dumb. And I was excited by his excitement. And I was like, okay, I'll put a little money into it. It was a ton of money. But it was like 10 grand or something. And he put far less, but a little. And we both lost. I don't know if it was

technically a fraud. But it definitely was overhyped. Turns out synthetic blood's pretty hard. Pretty difficult. It wasn't what's her name. There are no scents. There are no scents like that. Like a precursor. Yeah. So anyway, Dave came back to me in 2020. He's like, dude, you got a bit Bitcoin. He's hoarding for Bitcoin. But to everywhere, right? Like all of a sudden, the celebrities are doing it. It's because the pandemic hits, the reason we call the book Easy Money is

the Fed flooded the zone with the money to keep the economy from crashing. Because you can imagine a global pandemic, obviously work is going to be hard for a lot of people. They're not going to be able to do it. So what happens if they don't work, they don't earn money, they don't spend money. They hoard. And then the whole thing, it can just, knows I've really, really fast. Yeah. So in the macro, they did the right thing in terms of keeping the economy from crashing.

But the results, one of the weird spillover effects, is all these people, but particularly young dudes, had money to spend. Yeah. They're getting like $2,000 checks or whatever. Right. And they're sitting at home or their apartments with their phones. And they have nothing else to do. So why not gamble on crypto? And so crypto is nuts. This Dave says I'm going to buy Bitcoin like Dave. I'm not going to do that. But what is it? And he's like, it's a crypto currency. This is in the dock.

How was that recorded or was that re-enacted? To movies called everyone is lying to for money. Okay. I include myself. Yeah. We should talk about that at some point because I had a lot of fun. I fuck with the audience a lot. Yeah. There's a dock you drama element that you're going to have to tell a story. Yes. A personal story, not just a story of credit. Exactly. So we did we recreate it. It was just like, how did you have the force like that? Okay. I'm not that smart. Okay. I asked Dave,

I like, what is it? I'm not that taxable. I'm sure I'd heard the word cryptocurrency, but I had never

“spent two seconds thinking about it. He was like, it's cryptocurrency. I mean, yeah. Okay. What is that?”

I'm remembering my 20 year old Econ degree. And I'm like, so currency's money. One of the things you can do with money is buy and sell stuff. Can you buy and sell stuff with this Dave? And Dave is like, well, I'm putting money in and I'm hoping that, you know, it's going to go up and then I'm going to sell it. So I'm like, it's an investment then. And he's like, well, it's kind of both. I'm like, I'm not sure because you can invest in currency other than trying to trade on the margin of the value

of the US dollar versus the Swiss market. Exactly. You can't do the quiet currency and the currency goes through the roof because that's just inflation. Is that holding something that has the exact same value, even though the numbers went up? And if the inflation was as steep as it is in crypto, it would be world worth three. Yeah, it would be insane, right? Give you the apocalypse. Stay tuned for our chair expert. If you dare, we are supported by all state checking all state first could save you

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“So I started looking into it and I couldn't stop. Well, I think what would be helpful to”

is to lay out the history that kind of leads because there's another element involved that I think is really relevant and something I've been fascinated by for 18 years, which is the oh eight meltdown. But before we go to that, there's the obvious explanation, it's just like this gets pitched to you. You're like, I don't know, I want to learn more as I'm learning more. This doesn't seem legit, but on a personal level, how much do you identify with? I personally have a really

huge radar for getting fucked. I'm just a skeptic. By nature, I'm very, very skeptical and I could spin a story from my childhood, why I'm skeptical, but I don't know, but is it fair to say are you skeptical that you put a lot of energy into this? Yeah, I would say I'm also a contrarian

or I'm always kind of that obnoxious guy who's going to take the devil's advocate position on a lot

of stuff just to have the conversation, just intellectually. If we were both at a dinner party, I wonder what's that specific immune structure? That's in my role too. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's not all good with two, me, and I also have a hard time, like, I just go deep. I'm not really good at

think you're just genetically that way? I don't know, that's a good question. I knew at the time, or I can now understand at the time that because I didn't have anything else going on, this, when it presented itself, there was no one saying, oh, you can't spend 10 hours a day reading economic history, but also studying the crypto markets, but also following the true crime of it all. There's no competing project. There's no competing project. Yeah, but the irony is

“that's what they were doing, too. Exactly. I was doing the same thing they were right or effectively”

like a memory image that they were doing just from the skeptic side. So I just kept looking at it more and more and more and very quickly. I was like, it doesn't feel right. If it's not actually being used as currency, which it wasn't then, it isn't now really the Bitcoin in particular. I couldn't go to my neighborhood daily in Brooklyn and buy a bagel at Bitcoin. They look at me like, I'm crazy. And I didn't know why originally, but as I looked into it, I found a lot of different

reasons that we can go into. But whatever the reasons were, it wasn't being used that way. It was being used as an investment. And the retail public, a regular public, was being sold on this idea that everyone could get rich, instantaneously, for free, offer this thing that very few people understood or used. And then the celebrity's got in. And I was pretty sure the celebrities didn't know what they were talking about. I mean, I don't want to talk trash about anyone. Yeah,

they're all personally. Almost everyone that got ensnared it and I lied. Totally. And I don't want to be a jerk. What I did know or what I felt pretty confident about was having been at Hollywood and having been in a show business. Like I could have imagined how this went, which is like, all of a sudden the crypto exchanges where all these crypto's are actually traded. And again, they're traded. You're going on these weird places to buy and sell these speculative things.

They're taking a cut of the action. They're taking a little transaction fee. They're making money hand over fist. They got ton of money. And they want to keep marketing it. And so I just imagined

a scenario where in Sir Crypto Exchange, they go, they have a hundred million dollar marketing budget.

And they're going to the three agencies that are left or whatever it is. And they're like, any 10 million bucks. Of a certain caliber actor, we will pay them $10 million for a one-day shoot. So I get it. It's perfect. Confluence of exact opportunity. And there's nothing wrong with celebrities hawking consumer goods to hawks, soap, or cars, or without out your wife. She's in a commercial. Yeah, because she did like an air commercial. There's nothing wrong with that. I mean,

there are reasons celebrities are hires because they have a relationship with the audience and people trust them. And if it sort of helps you separate your product, you know, there's a lot of different hairsprays you could have, but this one has rent a background. So you know, buy it. That's totally legitimate and fine. But this was a financial product. This was an investment of some kind and something. I didn't know this until the dog. So as you point out the dock,

it is illegal to give financial advice. If you're not a licensed financial advisor, which is a

very obscure rule and is never enforced. And it's also sort of like, why do we even have that on

some level? Because you're telling your buddy about stock. Yeah, it's not like they're committing a crime.

“You know, no one's going to come in and arrest you. But I think it is there, quite frankly,”

not that they could have anticipated this, but in a sense to deal with this issue. Yeah, where someone with a lot of influence is kind of quasi-giving you financial. Like they're not telling you to invest in particular things. But they are particular cryptos, generally speaking, some of them did. Like Kim Kardashian showed this thing called Ethereum Max, which is not Ethereum. It's another one. And did a post about it. And it went to all their followers and then it crashed it fantastically.

And the guy that I wrote the booklet, Jacob Silverman, we wrote an article, our first article, was like criticizing celebrities and using desks as an example. And she ultimately had to pay a fine to these securities exchange commission because you're not allowed to sell a specific financial product. Like I can't go on this podcast and pitch you on a specific stock that I think is great without disclosing how much do I own? What's my financial incentive in my paid spokesperson? Right.

So this was in that gray area. We're like, well, maybe what a lot of them are doing isn't illegal. But to me, it was incredibly just tasteful. And dangerous, dangerous for the public, of course. But also even for the celebrities themselves. Also look at, let's be honest, all these actors are paying 10% of this money to a group of people that are advising them that are supposed to flesh out things. I mean, what else are you paying for? So if your agent

brings you this product from this company, you assume they've done some due diligence on the company. They're there to protect your career. There's a lot of also blamed the spread around. Oh, definitely. Yeah, yeah. I mean, that was my kind of sarcastic advice to the celebrities after that, you know, think crash and all these celebrities got a lot of agon there. It's like, blame your agent.

“Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You got his back there. They're there for it. They're there to give you the advice. And I give you the bad advice. And you just like that. That's what you've been given them this month.”

Yeah. Exactly. No, I love it. It's all good. I think I should do five minutes. I just want to first start by saying, and I only learn this through.

I'm a kind of obsessed with biographies from the end of the 1800s. So if you're reading the Cornelio's Vanderbilt or any of these banks were failing. Every couple months, huge institutions would fail. There'd be run on banks. Everyone would be left holding the bag. We had a really, really shaky and untrustworthy banking system for a hundred and some years. Until finally, again, this ugly word regulation. Regulations stopped at that pandemic of bank collapses, which were

helped because otherwise, you're dealing with all of these different smaller banks that were actually,

“it has a direct relation to crypto. They were issuing their own currencies during a thing called the”

Wildcat Banking Era, which was in the mid-19th century. We were trying to expand West and provide credit for people West being like Michigan at the point. And so the idea was a bank was allowed to issue its own notes. It's own currency. If it held a certain amount of state bonds, you were allowed one chapter of your bank when physical location. And so sometimes people would set them up as far away from their depositors as they could, where the Wildcat's roamed. And once they had your money and you had to get there by horseback

or whatever, they could just run off with it. And so there was a lot of fraud as well as instability. And then also just what is the primary concept of a bank? Well, you're going to deposit your money.

And I'm going to get, let's say, I have a hundred million dollars of people's money. They've deposited.

And now I'm going to make loans with that money that even trusted me with, not going to charge a percentage on that. And that's all I'm going to make money. And part of the regulations, it was like, well, how much money should they hold? Let's have a minimum amount of percentage. But the bank still has to withhold in case people want it withdraw their money. So, this is where regulations come in. And then yes, the central bank helps standardize all this stuff.

Yeah, the federal bank. So that takes us up to, oh, and it's pretty darn stable as far as world banking goes. The U.S. has done a good job. Yes, since the Great Depression, that was where securities laws come from, because there really weren't securities laws at the federal level prior to the 1930s. And securities laws are basically predicated on

“disclosure, like you need to know who you're giving your money to and what they're doing with the money.”

It's very broadly defined on American law, because human beings are very inventive. And we're always

coming up with new investments. A lot of them are legitimate, right? The vast majority of them are legitimate, even if they don't work. They're well-intentioned. But you need to have rules around it, so that fraudsters can't exploit people. And that's what we realized. Because in the 20s, you could do anything. You could corner the market. Yeah, well, insider trading wasn't evil. No, it wasn't evil. So, O.A. We get a new kind of version of it, right? So, in O.A. it's all blamed

on the subprime mortgage crisis. And if people remember, they were encouraging people to remorganize their house. They were encouraged people to take these no interest loans. And that was blamed on that. But that's not the real story of the O.A. meltdown. I think the total of those toxic mortgages really amounted to like $68 billion or something. But what was more troubling, and what caused the collapses, on top of the $68 billion, they built products that were

anchored in those products that amounted to $1.3 trillion. Yeah. So, we had these things credit the fault swap. So, I don't own this stock, but I can ensure it. So, I'm going to ensure Lehman Brothers, say I have $10 million of value, and they're going to pay this little fee to ensure that. And then case it collapses, I'll get paid up $10 million. I'm money. I don't even have invested. And so, Lehman Brothers, all these things, they were started on rumors, the collapse of them. And they

were started on rumors by people who held enormous credit default swaps. So, then we went, oh wow, there's this other version of massive corruption that is just so high tech. The people that sold the products didn't really understand them in a lot of cases. When they were testifying, they were to explain this. And like, one person at the firm understands this quality of the event, but they sold to a bazillion people. So, again, we're in a situation in 08 where the entire financial industry's

going to collapse if the Fed doesn't step in and save these banks. We're not going to be able to come back from it. So, it was the right decision. But the U.S. American, the average citizen, they're the ones that had the loan on the house. Yes. And their credit got fucked. And they got their house repossessed. And the government didn't come and bail them out. They bailed out the banks. Also, no one went to jail. One guy went to jail. And people got huge bonuses in the same

exactly. So, rightly so, Americans were disgusted by the financial system. So, that's a really

important piece of the story leading to crypto as well. It's essential because in October of 2008,

this thing called the Bitcoin white paper is released on this cryptography mailing list. The small list of cryptographers that communicate with each other. And the white paper is just lays out the sort of intellectual foundation of Bitcoin. But the cryptography, but also the goals. What are we trying to do here? Yeah. So, it's the height of the subprime crisis. People are so angry at the banks, like even more than usual. And what the white paper proposes wouldn't be cool

if we could avoid these fuckers who screwed us and just transact directly. Why can't I just send something of value to Dax and he sends it back to me and sounds like a good idea?

“And it's built on this new technology blockchain. Well, that's what's interesting. It's new”

ish, but it's not really that new. Like the blockchain goes back to 1991. There were these guys. We're going to get real dark here. We can do this right now. So, blockchain, I would say started with Stuart Hayward and Scott's friend at a Bell Labs building off the work of Cryptographers, like David Chon, who I interviewed for the book. There had been this idea of trying to do encrypted money,

building off a thing called public key encryption, which basically allows us to buy stuff online without our credit cards being hacked, right? It sort of encrypts the data. The data's got to travel from me and my computer to the bank to the bank and then to the merchant. There needs to be a record of this, but we also don't want it to be public so that people can

“rip you off. So, public key encryption is actually vital to our modern economy. But blockchain had”

been around since 1991 and the Bitcoin white paper didn't come out to 2008. So, it had been sitting there for 17 years and no one had really done that much with it. And even Bitcoin, when it came out as the obscure mailing list, very, very few people, these are like really hard core. Cryptographers, nerdy cryptographers are probably nerdy. So, it's very obscure and it really

didn't have a use case. The problem was it's sort of like always sunny in Philadelphia.

I could give you a piece of paper that says it's a dollar, but why is it actually a dollar, right? Just because I say it is, what's giving it value, which is sort of about what money is. But anyway, there was nothing that could be bought with this stuff called Bitcoin. There's a famous story of a guy buying two pizzas with 10,000 Bitcoin. Now, let's work nine billion dollars. Yeah, yeah, whatever. And that shows you how worthless it was at

the time. The first use case was crime. The first use case was buying drugs and other things that were illegal on the Silk Road, which was this dark web drug marketplace where you could also order assassination attempts or the guy that ran it tried to to like an FBI agent or something. Anyway, it got shut down with the feds. But crypto proved because what a blockchain is is just a ledger of transactions. It's just a record. They call them wallets. This wallet sent something

a value to this other wallet. But it's synonymous. Get obscures the identity of who's sending what to whom. It's not anonymous. If you can figure out who owns what, then you have a whole record of every transaction they've ever made. Potentially. But it is synonymous. And there's also

“other ways of obscuring it. Yeah, I think we should attempt to make a really good faith argument”

for all the appeal of it when it first presented itself. And that was one of them. It was absolutely

as completely anonymous. It was pictures and anonymous. But to me, the crypto story is quite simple in this sort of the broadest sense. It's two parts. The first is, do you hate our current system? Right. Every single person raises their chest. Right. And well, different reasons. And the second part is Bitcoin fixes this. It's become a meme. It's a cure all. Right. And then it gets more nuanced obviously as people articulate different reasons why they believe in it. But that really is the

essence of it to me. It's insatiable to remind ourselves it was sold to us initially as a currency. Yes, it was. And it did operate that way. But as a black market currency. Right, as a currency for drugs, the time was also like marijuana. And so just to be perfectly clear, I love marijuana. Sure. Like, I have a medical card. I'm not knocking drugs. You're also buying much harder drugs and doing stuff that was much worse than that, including child sexual abuse material, or all

sorts of stuff, really narrowly stuff. But that was the use case. It was crime, facilitating transactions for criminal activity. And then it kind of languished. You know, like it was kind of just sitting there. Interestingly enough, we only found this out recently. But after the so-called crashed in 2015, Jeffrey Epstein stepped in and secretly funded what's called Bitcoin core development, which is the group of programmers that maintain Bitcoin's operating system. Yes, there are people behind this,

like supposedly computerized future. There's always people. And he was secretly funding it through

“I think, or them MIT Media Lab because he was already a registered sex offender and they didn't want”

that to be public. So I don't think that anyone who's being intellectually honest can claim that the crime is just only a tiny piece of it. It's never been that important to it. Like, I really don't think that's honest. If you look at the history. And a varying degrees of illegality. So another thing is taxes. So yes, child pornography. These are bad people. But then the person who's already paid income tax in state tax. And they decide, I don't know why I have to pay another

50% tax to give this to my children. I'd like to get this money somewhere else without the US government. Sure. This could be a system by which I could do that and no one can see it and be involved in it. Totally. And let me give you maybe even a more sort of morally compelling argument I was listening to. So what crypto can do is you can send something of value instantaneously anywhere in the world and avoid the regulated system, including the banks. And so I was hearing

a storyable with an Afghanistan who cannot get banking under the Taliban because she's a woman and so she's running a business and she's paying her employees in crypto. I don't personally know this person. So this was secondhand, but I have her similar stories. Yeah, yeah. So we can all agree that's a good thing. But we like that. Later we can critique our those arguments true and right equivalent. So volatile that it's not stable. So it doesn't actually work that way. But in

premise. And so when I say crypto can only be used for speculation, which really is gambling, because you're not really speculating on an asset of any value in my opinion. It's just lines of code, speculation, gambling, and crime. When I say crime, I mean that literally in the sense that technically, although we morally agree with this woman in Afghanistan, she is violating her country's laws. We just don't like those laws because we're in another country. We have different values.

we can't just hand way of away. I mean, to give you a sense of the amount of crime and crypto

last year, a crypto company estimated $154 billion of criminal activity was facilitated via crypto,

$150 billion is a lot of money. Right. It's a GDP of a lot of countries. Yeah, and it says it's a trillions of dollar market. But I really don't think that's true in terms of the actual liquidity backing these speculative assets. You know, it's in a massive amount of crime. And to give you a sense of the kinds of crime. It's like Russia, it'll look like selling sanctioned oil to the Chinese in exchange for drones that they sent to Ukraine. Right. It's like global criminal cartels.

“There's a Southeast Asian system of credit called Awala. I think it's what it's called. And”

basically, it's like, if people don't have banks, how do they get something of value to someone else? They go to this local community leader. And that person has a ledger. They call their buddy in the neighboring village. And like, hey, mark this down. We've sent this to you. And it's basically the system of trust, which is what money is. Money is this made-up thing that is essentially trust. You don't have to trust the individual if it's scaled. Like, I could give you tax dollar.

You take it for me not because you trust me. You trust that you use it to govern it. And that's another tool. Yeah, that it works. And so money does three things. It's a medium of exchange. You can use it to buy and sell stuff. It's a unit of account. You can run your books with it. And it's a store of value, meaning it's a value stays relatively consistent over time. And crypto can't fulfill or Bitcoin couldn't fulfill any of those three because you couldn't

use it to buy and sell stuff really unless it was crime to pay for stuff that was illegal. It was so volatile that really wasn't an effective unit of account and store of value. Now, all currencies are fallible, just like all sorts of constructs, all humans. So none of these are perfect. Imagine a bagel costs $1 than then 10 and then 10 cents. Yeah, you know, you just can't, if that were to be a currency, it would be unusable.

People would just freeze and hoard, which would sort of plunge the economy into a session, which is actually, well, whatever. We're getting a little far afield, but it's actually what contributed to the greater pressure. We were on the gold standard, the amount of money that the government and other governments in Europe could hold was predicated on how much physical gold they had. Like a dollar was equivalent to a certain amount of physical gold.

And the idea was to give it tangibility. It's linked to something real, right? Yeah, yeah.

But the problem is that when there's a crisis, when there's a collapse,

like there was during the Great Depression when the stock market collapsed and country started raising tariffs against each other, and the economies just started folding inward, because you couldn't expand the money supply, because you couldn't do what we did during the pandemic, and just print more money. You can't print more gold. Exactly. It just crashed. It makes a finite economy in a sense. It can't grow beyond the value of the gold that it's backed by.

So it's also a very limiting concept for money. It is. And there's a great book called "Lords of Finance" by L'Oquat Ahamed, that talks about the Central Bankers of the 1930s. And there are adherents to the gold standard. Really did contribute significantly to how bad it got. It was going to be bad, but if they had known better the time, they could have stayed off the worst of it. And that was really one of the takeaways

from economists like John Manner Cains. Why are we sticking to this thing? So Cains, and others critiqued this in the sense of like, I know we say we want it to be based on something

“quote unquote real. But let's think about that for a second. Why is gold valuable?”

Yes. It's not the most scarce mineral. You can't eat it. It's pretty and limited. Exactly. It is something that has been historically used as value for thousands of years. So if money is trust, it's a social construct, just like government or religion. They're only as strong as the social consensus that underlies them. We have playful sequence at the beginning of the film's graphics sequence. You're showing you very quickly all of the different things that have been

used as money for years. You know, feathers and different coins, things like that. Okay, now we have to go back to where we were before. So this is how it was sold to us. And it is an appealing thing for these several reasons, I think. And I think we understand now that one last thing I think we need to explain before we get into your uncovering of a lot of things. I think people need to just know

it very basically a stock is so there's a company I believe in it. I think they're going to do

great and they're going to grow. And I buy a fraction of that company. That's a security in that company, right? And I buy it at $100. And for it to go up, someone has to buy it ultimately off of me for

“$110 or $120. And that's how the value of this stock's going up. But again, back to the trust thing.”

It's like, it is anchored to some performance of that company, whether they're solvent or not, it's anchored to reality in some capacity. They're producing a good or providing a service. Yes, they're either growing or shrinking. And so the stock generally reflects that. There's been these anomalies like Enron whatnot. But in general, that's just the concept. So if you want to invest in a speculative asset, be it a share in a company, in theory, that company's going to determine

and then it's also important to look at crypto and go, well, if you're investing, what are you investing in? Because it's just lines of code. And lines of code could be valuable if they

“correlated with a real-world asset, right? Google's lines of code are very important to run”

the Google account because they're selling advertising on the back. Exactly. There's ways of monetizing it. But with crypto, because it's just the code, what are you investing? And I would argue that you're sort of investing in its utility as a criminal as a vehicle for a crime, not purposely necessarily. But I'm just saying that's one of the things that's used for. And you're investing in the story of it. You're investing in the idea that other people give it value, which in economics

is dangerously close to what we call greater full theory. Greater full theory is when a speculative asset rises so far beyond any real-world use who can have any real-world value. There really it's prices is determined by your ability to buy it and sell it to a full greater than yourself, which is a really fun game until tops out and you're the biggest idiot holding the back. If it's an investment, but there's no product really or service or service.

I don't even get how it works even in crime. Why would I? I don't get it. Because I'm a cartel boss in Columbia. I'm getting all of this cash and I can't use this cash. But I can convert this cash into crypto. And then there is an apartment salesman in Russia who's willing to sell me a very nice apartment with this crypto exchange. So I have now just converted this cash that I can't use into an apartment. You're scary. Good at those decks.

Is it exactly right? Why would the apartment guy want it when he then can't use it to buy anything in the world? Yes, he does have to cash on the other than usually. Although if you follow that Southeast Asian Hewala example, he could then send it somewhere else and get something else. Get some more drugs. No, no. Like some point someone's like, I want money. Yeah, yeah, that's the best part. Yes. The thing that it promised to do it actually

“doesn't even do. Exactly. Did you watch that? I think on Netflix, it was called like the biggest”

heist of all time. And is this very bizarre couple that had successfully stolen what in the current

value of Bitcoin is in the like $30 billion. Right. Right. The problem is they're sitting there with

at the time $8 billion in Bitcoin. They can't do anything with it. Because ultimately in this country to convert it into an apartment or a car or anything else, you are going to have to go on record and break your anonymity and convert to that thing. So they were sitting there with $8 billion. I was completely fucking useless. Totally. They were not living like billionaires. No. And so it's not even the thing that was promised to be. Yeah. She was like financing the world's

shittiest rap videos. Right. Was it you? Yeah. That she was a huge wild. That was the rap name. I forget. Some of the cat maybe she was in the cabin. It was so bad. They were bald. Something else. But that's such a vivid illustration. The only place you can really convert this into real money is in some shady situation in some other country where you're dealing with a dirty bank. It's really this lawless system of like black market money that's circulating all over the globe,

right? For up governments, for up politicians. Yeah. Okay. So back to your friend Dave. And then you getting really curious about Bitcoin and wanting to learn a lot about it. And so that's where the doc starts. Well, it starts with a book. For some reason I thought I should write a book. I don't know why I didn't occur to me. It's kind of funny and retrospective like why I didn't think to make a movie. But I thought I should write a book. I didn't know how to write a book. I'd taken an edible

and I was like, oh, I'm gonna write a book. There's a lot of people who have this experience. And I woke up the next morning and I was like, fuck, I don't know how to write a book. Yeah, yeah. You know, I took another out of a book. I was like, oh, I just like find someone else. You know, right together. A journalist Jacob Silverman had written an article for sleep that the headline is even Donald Trump knows Bitcoin is a scam. Because Donald Trump is recently as 2021 was going to Bitcoin's scam, which is interesting now. We

can talk about that later. But I thought that was funny. He was a tech sort of critic first late

and other places and I don't know, just had a good way about him online anyway. Fought him a Twitter. He followed me back. I invited him to drinks at a bar in Brooklyn, and I pitched him on this crazy

“idea of like, yes, crypto is going to the moon right now. This is like 2021. But I think it's”

going to crash. And I have all these reasons hidden with probably way too much of my opinion on it. He happened to be going on paternity leave. And so he had a window and he was like, okay, let's try it. So we started writing articles. The first one was criticizing celebrities in Slade and we wrote different articles from places like the Washington Post and the Interceptor places like that. And we were doing it to do our research, but also to prove our bona fides to sell a book.

We sold a book proposal. And we went out in 2022 to actually go into the real world. Again, we're getting out of the pandemic and back until IRL. And we were going to sell myself Southwest in an Austin to give like a talk and I should just turn a camera on. It's not that expensive. I'll just ask my agent, find me some guy with a camera and a sound pack. The worst is

I'm out $750. And the first day we show up at South by we're on the floor of the convention center.

And I see a booth for this company called Celsius, which is super sketchy already because it's like give us your crypto. We'll give you this return on your crypto. It's really high-red or return. It's like 15%. That's like literally the definition of a Ponzi scheme or one of the

They were being sued by the Texas Securities Regulator at that time, but it hadn't been a

“due to get it yet. So they still could technically sell their customers on it. And I look at the”

booth. And I look over the other side of the room. And there's the CEO, just like say something. Alex Machensky. He's sitting with you to the guys. And then I'm like, well, I got to do this. All right. These guys are just hanging on a couch in this convention. The whole thing looks like you've walked into a booth mobile store here. Yeah. He's still there. Yeah. The largest booth mobile store. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So Celsius was presenting itself as a bank, even though

it said explicitly on the website, they were not a bank. Very small font. Yeah, give us your money like a bank when we're going to give you a 15% return, which again, and you point blank ass the guy. So how are you making money? And he can't answer me. Because he's like, where the opposite of bank, we're about the community. He's a Ukrainian. I can't want to exact somebody's like, we were about the, I am going to do it. Apologies to any Ukrainian friends. I'm a big pro.

Ukraine generally, but this guy was such a character. He's like, we're a bank, but we're better than a bank because we give the money back. And I'm like, well, then how do you make money? And he just

wouldn't answer. It was a wild interview. If that was our first day of filming. Like he said

stuff like the camera cut out, but we have the audio to the movie. Ask him like, how much real

“money is in crypto? It's like 10, 15% the rest of speculation. So I think you need to explain that”

part. Yeah. That means that basically, because people are doing things like borrow money to bet on crypto, the crypto exchanges would give people like a hundred and twenty five to one leverage. So they would give you like a hundred and twenty five dollars of poker chips to play with for every one actual dollar that you put, which sounds awesome, right? Like, oh, wow, fantastic. Of course, it really means the poker chips aren't actually worth that much. And when it's going up,

you're having a great time. But when it goes down, they just liquidate you. There's no margin called margin calls when your finances aren't looking that great on your investments or whatever and the bank calls you or the investment firm is like, hey, you need to put some money in because, you know, otherwise you're going to be zeroed out. They don't even do that. They just, you're done. So it's really a vehicle for this crazy gambling. And the hard core crypto people

are a segment of them call themselves Dejens, which stands for degenerate gamblers. They're owning it. They're owning it. Yeah. Yeah, it's right. Yeah. But I kind of admire it more. I guess it's a brand mail. Oh, say I'm a DJ. Yeah, I can. Sounds like it's a little bit. Yeah, a little bit. No, no, no, I'd be some crossover. He said some crazy stuff. Like he said things like, I asked him about all the fraud and crypto. And he goes, you live money on the street.

You expect it to be there when you get back? And I'm like, so it's their fault. So it's like the investors fault for like just not. So like, wow, the marketing guy is like, oh, the other side of he's like, no, no, no, no, no, no. Don't say that. You also ask him if he's being investigated for any criminal activity or there's any kind of legal case legal proceedings. Yeah. And he claims zero.

“And there were multiple at that time. In fact, I think they'd already been shot out of Dejersie.”

I think the Dejersie skirt is regularly already shown down. Anyway, yeah, it was just nonsense.

And so that's the first day. I'm like, well, I gotta keep going. Yeah. And it got weirder from there, actually.

So the part that was a revelation to me, you interviewed this crypto skeptic. He remains anonymous throughout this. If I sell my share of Amazon, someone has bought the Amazon at a certain price. And then we all kind of know what the value of that stock is because someone just was willing to pay that amount. But then it was explained to you that some 95% of the trades in the crypto world are someone with two accounts that's trading with themselves. Yeah. So they bought $100 with a crypto.

They buy it for themselves for $200, which they didn't lose any money, because they give themselves to $200. And now it has the appearance of being worth $200. And then they sell for $400. That blew my mind that 95% of the trades are these bullshit trades. I don't know if they're percentage. That's his claim. I'm not making that claim. But just a notion that's even an option to do. But it's a lot. It's especially a lot. I would say on the overseas exchanges. And we should

talk about that for a minute, because especially at the time before they collapsed, when you were buying crypto on an exchange like FTX, what you were actually doing is send your money to the Bahamas, because that's where FTX is based in banked. I may told you you had X amount of Bitcoin. Right. They sort of trouble with that should be obvious, right? Like then you're sort of subject to Bahamian securities regulation, I guess, or Bahamian banking laws, which may not be quite as

tight as American. But what's funny about it to me is that this has such a direct overlap with online poker. You were a similar age. You remember in the mid-auts, all of a sudden you could

And Dave was really into this. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, shocking. And I loved poker. I was living up in nickels can. I was single. I had an actual poker table in my house was that guy. But like I loved it. It was funny. We were hanging with buddies, drinking beer and taking each other's money.

But I never messed with online poker. And I remember asking Dave, so you're game with real

money. Where are you sending the money? And he was like, "It's the same places. They were based at the same Caribbean countries that the crypto guys were running their companies." Yeah. Which is such a vivid illustration where we're talking about to the retail public. This is gambling. Sports betting, now, to is it also those same places? No, those are probably American companies.

“I would say, I think the difference with sports betting is they can't manipulate the outcome.”

Well, I mean, I guess player is good. I don't think that happens. Well, that's one of the problems with making this gambling so ubiquitous. It just compromises everybody, including the leagues. I would say the leagues are in on it now. Yeah, it's all sponsored by Michael Lewis on to talk about his podcast on this. Interesting. It's another terrible. And again, this is where I get pretty sympathetic to these people.

It's praying on a lot of young men that are increasingly not going to college. There's decreasing amount of jobs in their town. There are less and less options for young men. And they're just like, well, then, what am I going to do? Oh, I guess I'm going to gamble. I'm going to get rich on crypto. That's filling a void of opportunity. Yeah, and to give you a sense of like how strong it is in the young men.

42% of men 18 to 29 have dabbled in crypto. I've treated crypto. 42% almost half. That's a lot. Yeah, that's right. And look, most guys are just messing around. They're just messing around.

A little bit of money. I never go off a financial advice. But if you're messing around with money,

you can afford to lose. That is a different story in terms of how I feel about you. I'm not worried about you. If you can afford to lose a thing, I ask is like, just imagine you lost whatever you put in, like all of it instantaneously.

“What did affect your life? Right. I think it's worth considering the arguments about the criminal”

activity because even though you aren't financing it, the real money you're putting into it is giving it value so that it has value for the criminals. A more meta, the Wall Street dudes who have drank the cool, laid the institutional banks that have drank it. Me too. You're already this huge institution that's worth all this money and you got it, you know? Let's talk about that argument for a minute because the crypto guys are not like, oh, I guess you know more than all the big banks.

And it's like, first of all, that's deeply ironic. If you were set up in reaction to the banks and the subprime crisis and now you're growing about how the banks are on your side. But it's also wrong because the banks aren't in it taking a directional bet on whether crypto is going up or down. They're just facilitating the game. They're just the house in Vegas, letting you gamble with your money and taking the rig, taking a tiny piece of the volume. They're just in called ETS, exchange

traded funds. They're sort of like mutual funds. We're like, put money into it and whatever money you put in represents a fractional share of the Bitcoin. And so BlackRock, which has the biggest Bitcoin ETF, you put money into BlackRock ETF, they just go to like Coinbase, the crypto exchange,

and like, hey, hold this amount of Bitcoin for this customer. BlackRock never even touches the Bitcoin.

Also, do you think you know more than we've had two guests with books on the bankman? And I

“think it was Peter T.L. Don't sue me if it wasn't him. But I think it was him who said like,”

yeah, I sat with him and I funded FTX. I was an investor and I do it again because the model of the senior track, I'm going to lose on a bunch of these, but the payoffs going to be so big in his thing was so compelling. Guess what? It was just as compelling as the ones that work. We're also in this abstract system where there's a model where 95% of things are expected to fail and that's tolerable. So it's like, you could say, oh, you know more than that person. What's like, in a sense,

I'm playing a different game than that person. And so are you. So you can't think that way. I am looking at it at a different level or it's certainly a different angle, which is like, it's not just about who wins and loses in this thing. Although we should talk about how many people went and how many people lose. So economically, if these things are more just gambling devices than actual investments and things that exist in the real world, what are they? There's zero

some games, which is like poker, right? Like, let's say we saw a set of table and Vegas playing poker. You might win a hand, you might win a hand. I might win a hand, but if you win, it's coming out of our pockets, if you win, it's coming. You know, there's no value creation. We're playing a game, where maybe it's entertainment. That's great. We get some free drinks. Meanwhile, as we play the game, the house is taking the rank. The house takes a tiny bit of money to allow the game to

go so they can pay the dealer. And so, can you win in Vegas? Of course, but if you play long enough, in Vegas, on average, you're losing because how else do they keep the lights on the casino, right? They build pyramids. Right. And so, crypto speculation is like, Vegas without the drinks, the dinner or the show. There's no entertainment value I would argue personally. But also, you're playing in an unlicensed and regulated casino, or maybe if it's an American exchange,

maybe because it's loosely or somewhat regulated. But you can also do this thing where you win all these poker ships, and you go to the Tyler to cash out, and the Tyler Windows closed. They're not coming cash around. Also, it's more like Vegas in the 50s when the Mafia ran it. You win, and then you end up in the desert, you know, six feet under. You won too much. So good. There's another part I'll just add of my sympathy to it. It's like, there's not only

the lack of opportunity and just kind of this really troubled group of young men right now.

Yeah. Because once you get into Bitcoin, you talk about it all the time.

You go to chat rooms and you watch the videos of the people that are super into it. It is a turnkey community, and a lot of lonely dudes are in need of that, desperately. So that's another sad aspect. It's an identity. What's so sort of toxic about it is it's so easy to fake real communities online. I talked to the victims of Celsius, and I bonded with them, but I asked them because Celsius said, we're like a community bank, but they weren't a bank.

They existed only online. There were no physical chapters of Celsius. And they talked about we do it for the people, you know, bank for the people or something like that. We do it for the

“community. That's what Alex Machensei kept talking about. Do it for the community. Do it for the community.”

But I asked them after they lost to this money. So Celsius collapsed. Alex Machensei went to jail. He had made tens of millions of dollars off of these people. I asked him now. Do you think that Celsius community was like a real thing? They're all like no. Oh, there's a lie. They still believed in crypto. Interesting enough. Yeah. When you're running a con, when you're running a fraud, it's way easier to do that online than it isn't real life. That's hard to lie to people.

You can't fake buildings and actual people. The difference between a had I gone to Celsius's website back then and looked up professional, looked in smart versus when I saw you talking to that guy. My first thought was like, you wouldn't trust this guy, so you were fucking watch. She's so obviously a fucking crook. Exactly. He used car salesman all over the planet. And I asked one of the guys who had lost money in it. He made that point. He was like, it's just easier to fake it online.

If I had ever met this dude, but he never did and all they were doing is doing slickly produce

videos talking about how everyone's gonna make money and they were so great in the care of the community. So that's just an observation about how frauds work, which I think is really fascinating. And kind of dark. Yeah, just praying on the vulnerable. Yeah. I want you to talk about going else Salvador. Just talk quickly the story of El Salvador because it's really heartbreaking. If you don't feel bad for tech bros, which I can understand. Exactly. We went to El Salvador,

and the reason we went to El Salvador, Jacob Silverman and I had a film crew down there. We went there because El Salvador was the only country in the world that was trying to use Bitcoin as real money. Huge marketing. I was, say, stunned, but it was really a national experiment and like can

“Bitcoin work as money? Almost as their national currency. Yeah, that's what it was going to be”

heading parallel to the dollar. There were already dollarized that the Salvador is a very poor country. The average Salvador and it makes about $400 a month. And the foundation of El Salvador's economy, a quarter of the economy, is remittances. Is the money that the two to three million people of Salvador in Descent, who live here, send home to the friends and family. That's really how the economy works. And so they would use things like Western Union and Money Graham in order to

send money home. The pitch from this guy Buquelle, who now American audiences are familiar with for

a different reason. But this guy Buquelle came in. He was a former marketing guy and he had the idea that will look if we can build a system on top of Bitcoin, a national system. And people can use crypto to send money home and avoid the fees, the Western Union and Money Graham charge because it could be like, you know, 5% or 10% or something like that. And we just take a tiny piece like we took a much smaller percentage to facilitate it. Then it's a win win. To people win, we win,

government raise a little money. So they did this big system. And then you got a wacky president that makes that's important, you know, charismatic, bizarre, a little Trumpy son of a rich guy tweeting all the time and saying like not what you would think of as a leader of the country. We - It's racking about buying Bitcoin while seated on the toilets. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

- Any very videos of himself looking cool. - Yeah, refer to himself at one point in Twitter handle as the world's coolest dictator.

“- That's who you want as your president.”

- Yeah, that was very weird. - So anyway, with much fanfare, they announced the Bitcoin was gonna be currency. They had a system called Chivo, Chivo means cool, which to me is so lame that the name,

there's just can't call something cool. - Don't call something cool. Such a rookie government move, bad move on a marketing guy. Anyway, they gave everybody like 30 bucks of Bitcoin. Everybody saw it on citizen.

All you had to enter was your national ID number, which is sort of like your social security number. But the system was terrible. People had their ID number stolen, and you had to take a picture to get the money

and people would like put their pets up to the camera. So it's just a mess. So a lot of people didn't get that money, but not only that, on the day that it came into effect, the price of crypto crashed fantastically.

Like 50,000 to 40,000 in the span of few minutes or few hours, something like that. Which is really interesting. 'Cause if you think of the whole thing as a lot of insider trading,

that might be front running, you see that this big publicity event is happening. People are expecting the price to go up. That's a really good time to sell. As it goes up, you sell.

And you could be shorting at the same time and making it totally, anyway. I have no evidence if that's true, but it is weird that it crashed so quickly. That failed, Bobo Kelly was undeterred.

He was like, "I were gonna build a Bitcoin city "in eastern El Salvador. "We're gonna mine Bitcoin from a volcano "and we're gonna build a city off of the proceeds "and there was like a model of this golden city,

"very cadafi-esque." And I'm like, "Okay, I gotta go check it out." So we drove 100 miles east. Tiny little fishing village, super remote. Ten Salvador is a somewhat big city,

They are also a net importer of electricity,

“like they don't produce enough electricity”

for their own country already. So this was not financially feasible, but it was a marketing play. They're gonna build a city, they're gonna build an airport to service the city.

So I go out there, there's not going on, but what they're doing is they're displacing this whole community in order to build this airport for the city

that's never gonna exist.

It still doesn't exist to the state in any form. But they wanted to build an airport, which I don't know what that's about, exactly, 'cause I already have an international airport at 100 miles away.

I will say I don't know that this is related, but there's a lot of trucks muggling and money laundering in Central and South America. Anyway, they displaced this whole community. So I'm talking to this fisherman and we'll pray to,

who doesn't know Bitcoin, like the guy dishes for a living. And he's like, "What is going on in this world?" The government bought up their land for a fraction of what it was worth. But Kelly controls the judiciary,

so there wasn't any real ability to peel this thing. And it was just sad. - And what's really telling is you're moving around the city and you are trying to buy things actively with Bitcoin. You're going to all these different renders.

That's really telling. Okay, if it's a currency, this country's actually adopted it. If there's any place you could use it as a currency, it would be this place.

- There's not one place you can find. - It's the biggest market in Sen Salvador, the capital. And it's funny, I'm just going through the market, asking to pay for things in Bitcoin. Everything is cash there, it's a cash dollars.

And there's looking to be like, "I'm the stupidest gringo, whatever has walked." - It's very obvious it's not Bitcoin. Oh, back to the Celsius thing. When you go to the 2022 Expo,

put on by, I forget what company at the time. - Right. - Bitcoin convention. - You can't buy anything at the convention with Bitcoin. - Yeah.

- I'm trying to buy a beer of Bitcoin. - Oh, there you go. - And then they all know how to work. They got a process and he's like, "How long is it 20 minutes?" So think of a currency where you've got to wait 20 minutes

to get a beer. - It's not a currency. - Now, it really is. And the remittance thing didn't come to fruition either to finish that.

The government's own figures said less than 2% of people were using it to send money overseas. It's not less than 1%. It's a failure. The government's actually abandoned the whole crypto project.

To get it alone from the IMF, they basically had to say, like, no, we're not actually even doing the Bitcoin thing anymore. The takeaway from me is eight very sad that the whole community is displaced.

There's also a funny aspect. The only person who was living in Bitcoin City was this Gringo named Corbin. This light dude from Illinois who works construction, just moved down there.

- On to be the first citizen of Bitcoin City. This imaginary city, living in a center block house on the beach. And it was interesting to talk to him because I asked him how much Bitcoin he had.

He didn't want to tell me, I respect that.

“But I was like, clearly it was important to him.”

It was a meaningful amount of money. Otherwise, why would he have done this incredibly drastic thing? I was like, why don't you sell it? How's that isn't made out of a center block?

Sir, by a motorcycle, I don't know.

And it was very clear he was never going to sell this.

- Yeah, it takes on a religious quality to it. - Exactly. So that really illustrate a lot. It was like both the cultivate, the marketing of it, the lack of substance of it and basically every level.

So yeah, Al Salvador was really important to the story. It was wild about it. It was always going to be a part of the movie 'cause I was like, I love that country and I was really sort of charmed by the people.

And it's hard to make things tangible and cryptos. Like, well, this is a tangible thing that's happened. But I was like, no, it's ever going to care about El Salvador. I couldn't have found it on a map beforehand. And then Trump sends illegal immigrants

or illegal immigrants, sends people to that prison. - True, yeah. - Yeah, it's really wild to watch it now. - You also get a sit down with Sam Bankman Freed. I think he thinks he's coming to meet

the dude from the aforementioned show. I mean, you start hitting him with some pretty hard questions. It's funny, this was the point where my 13-year-old 'cause he's so nervous and he's so autistic that she's feeling bad for him.

I can see her feeling more and more bad for this guy. And I said, oh honey, he still billions from people. You don't need to feel bad for this guy. - Even I have felt that temptation to be honest with you. I didn't know what exactly he was doing,

but I had a sense that whatever he was doing was not good. You know, at the time, he was the king of crypto. The market was crashing, but he was supposedly this boy genius who'd figured it all out. And he was supposedly going to bail all these companies out.

He was called the JP Morgan of crypto, which is a reference to like, when JP Morgan had to bail out all of these banks for get his rich friends to keep the economy from crashing prior to when we had to central bank.

Anyway, he was like the king of the world. And then you saw with him that you'll see it in the phone,

“I just ask him basic questions, like, what does it do?”

What does it do that's good for the world? And he says, "Remensis." And I just spend a little more of my bullshit. And then he goes, well, it's not working now, but in the future.

And you go and it says in function as a currency. And he's like, yeah, well, now it doesn't. It will in the future. But one of the interesting things about Bitcoin is that it can't function as a currency

because of the technology. So the technology, one reason why it doesn't work so well, is it can only handle five to seven transactions a second, whereas Visa can do 24,000. So it just can't scale as a payments method.

Other blockchains are faster, but they're not limited supply.

Right? Like Bitcoin is the 21 million Bitcoin

that have could be mined. And also, they're issued by individuals and companies and there's a lot of fraud and things that can go wrong there. So really Bitcoin, even Sam actually asks Sam

He's like, now.

“So I think that argument that Bitcoin even is a money”

at any scalable global way is kind of falling away. You don't see people arguing for that anymore. But I just thought this worth mentioning because it's really important to understand the tech sucks. I just want you to hit me with the real world consequences

because all we ever hear is the person who bought it at $1,000 in 100x. That's the person screaming from the rooftops about it, of course, to what's the real fallout of it? Are they like MLMs, like what percentage make money?

So multi-level marketing scheme, pyramid scheme. Imagine the top is the original investor, the original person who created it or whatever. And then as you go down, it's the next adopter, next adopter, next adopter.

In an MLM, 99% of the people lose, 90 plus% of the people lose. Because it's really just about getting something for free or very cheap and then selling to someone for more. And it relies on new recruits.

The second there's no more new recruits.

The money can't flow up in the entire thing collapse. Exactly. And so one of the strongest psychological arguments that Bitcoiners have is, you'll say, like all these facts we've been talking about in the movie.

I bet you wish you had bought it in early. Yeah, they love that. And it's really effective because it's like, yes, of course. But if I'm describing it as a Ponzi scheme and a multi-level marketing scheme,

and your report is, well, if you bought it in early, if you have the top, it's like, dude, that's literally how Ponzi's kids, multi-level marketing's, he's worked. That's not a reputation of my argument. That's just a psychological trick.

Trying to give you foam, right? Trying to make you wish that you had bought it in early. And yes, I can wish I had that money

“that doesn't mean I think the thing is real.”

Right, exactly.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

For the world, yeah, yeah, yeah. For the world, yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. I think the consequences are a lot. It's not only all the people that have lost money,

which is tens of millions of people. A lot of them lost money. They were just gambling with and they're fine. But some people lost everything, right? I mean, I talked to people in Celsius who were definitely

affected materially by that loss. Yeah, I feel terrible for that guy in the dark. Me too, and wife's like disappointed at him. He's daughter, you know, I'm a dad. And he feels like he let her down.

I'm like, oh, but it's not just that. Now, because it's come back in such a big way. And it's integrating itself into our banking system to a certain degree. And one of a president who believes it should be incorporated

in our own holdings as a country. Yes, my worry is what if there's another downturn? And people try to solve the script, though. They can't. There's too many sellers and none of buyers.

And it crashes. And it also infects the banking system, which it almost did in 2023, just months after I testified to this in it. And I'm telling him, like, if we get this in our banks, it's going to be bad three months later, three bucks fail.

And they're all tied to crypto. And then the US government and we bail them out. And the all point was the fuck you to the US government. They're not be regulated. Everyone just wants more regulation once they hold it.

And we want to be able to cash out.

“And the only way it works is if you make it just”

what the US dollar was, right? And so it defeats the entire premise initially pitched three banks collapse. And that's terrifying. And yeah, so if the subprime mortgage collapse was on the back

of $78 billion, whatever that number was somewhere in there. What is the total value right now of crypto? Yeah, I mean, it's more than that, probably. I don't know the actual liquidity. So there's sort of that side of it in terms of the speculative stuff.

But there's also just these stable coins. So these cryptocurrencies that are pegged one to one to reel the US dollars. And they're even scarier to me than the other stuff. Because the other stuff is gambling.

But that is basically a black market dollar. So the price doesn't go up and down.

It's always whatever the US dollar is.

Exactly. But it's not backed by the full faith and credit of the United States. It's not issued by the government. Yeah, you can't call the FBI if it disappears. Right.

And so it's used for all of this crime. The criminals don't want the volatility of the other cryptos, right? If they could avoid that, that would be way better. Sure, the price could go up. It could also go down.

You'd rather it just state stable. Most of that $150 billion that I'm talking about. Most of that of credibility last year was stable coins. I want to say for anyone listening who's like it might sound too technical. The doc, everyone is lying to you for money, is super duper fun and very, very well and

entertainingly directed. But I was curious, again, I said at the beginning, I have shredded lightly on it because I know it's a religion for some sect of people. I want to know how scared you feel about being the like most vocal and popular whistleblower. There's been on the unnamed show before.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like what has been the fallout of you going on many, many, very big shows and sounding the alarm on this will kind of reaction if you receive. I mean, he's a lot of it's in the doc. Yeah, I mean, you get a ton of online hate, obviously.

I'm not on X anymore, which is really nice. I love to Twitter. I met Jake of Silverman on Twitter, I've had such a good thing for a journalist and you got all this news, but then he'll on to get over and all of a sudden I got hacks on Twitter. And I can't get into my accounts, my accounts sits there, but I haven't posted in years.

Oh, which is interesting. Okay.

“This is after I was, that's book and encrypted, so.”

But I'm really grateful, actually, because now that I'm not on it, I don't see that stuff. And it seems to have gotten worse over there in the last couple of years and I'm on the other social media, as early as some of them, and it's a way better experience. So it's been online vitriol. What's interesting is that in person, I've had very few really gnarly interactions.

I've had a lot of, like, we see in the movie, goofy interactions, or people who are just kind of odd and/or scammers. But yeah, I mean, in terms of my security, I was really worried about it when I went down the rabbit hole before I started this, because I saw how much criminal activity.

And if I'm a guy that has $100 million in holding in this quote asset, and I can point

to a guy who made that asset, debris sheet, right, a rock, although I haven't exactly succeeded in that. Yeah. Hopefully, I'm not single. I guess I'll say I've made friends and I know people now who, I think if someone

were foolish enough to do something to me, I think there would be hell to pay. I guess it's my hope. So you're not too scared. It's a ballsy dock. Let's just say that.

And in number of docks, you could have made, and to me, this one does seem pretty risk-heavy. Definitely. I mean, I'm also feeling this thing as a middle-aged guy, father of, like, I'm not happy with a lot of stuff that's happening in the world. And I've been asked a lot, like, why are you speaking out on this?

I feel like my answer now is, if I can't, who can, I'm a white, rich, college-educated man. It's status in public from status of, yeah, if I can't do it, isn't that setting a terrible

example for everybody else?

You know what I mean? I mean, not that people who aren't doing or doing anything wrong, I just feel like I've ever gone. I feel the need. Yeah.

“If you feel the pull, then you should do it.”

And I feel like weirdly, I'm way qualified for that. Straight. Yeah. So weird thing to say, especially for people that only know we're from the O.C., but hopefully if they've been listening for this long, they'll be like, okay.

But also, a lot of people, I imagine, just be like, why do you care, right? Yeah. That's like a logic. Even care, let these people gamble on the thing. But for me, I know why I kind of say out loud a lot about it or push back is like,

I feel protective of the people that are getting hoodwinks. Like, I don't love that these dudes are getting sold a bill of goods, and I feel like I am in a position to say, like, hey, man, I have that kind of calling to that. Totally. And I mean, I'm on the side of the people that are investing.

I'm trying to protect them, and I will point out, the industry is the one that is not protecting them. The industry is the one, they'll do the performative like, oh, I'm so sorry, you lost your money. They're not doing anything about it.

They're not actually changing the system what they're doing is watering down the regulations to give special rules so that they don't have to operate like banks, which do have law.

“We don't like the banks, and they fail all the time, but they do have to adhere to laws”

and regulations. They can be held accountable, right? And they really don't want to be regulated like securities because the disclosure thing we talked about. So there's a bill that's trying to get through Congress called the Clarity Act where it's

going to put it under the CFTC, the Commodity Future Trading Commission, which is the weaker smaller regulatory agency. And they've long wanted this, and they may get it, San Bangman freed one of this, too. That's why he was on Capitol Hill. And so it's like, they are the ones that are screwing you guys.

I don't know if you can see it or not, you know, whether you want to admit it. But I'm on your side. The retail customer has not got to accounts and driving up the price of it. No, who benefits and cryptos the insider? Should I always?

It's always the exchange owners, the guys that issue the coins, there are always people

behind the coins, other than Bitcoin, but even Bitcoin, there essentially are in the sense of that. Bitcoin is so cheap initially. The people at this top of this pyramid, the people that bought it, really, really early. The whales, they call them, they can do a lot to affect the price.

I feel like. Right. If it was a commodity, it would be like a commodity where they have cornered the market in a way. And can sell to themselves.

And that's crazy. Well, Ben, I just am delighted you made this movie. It's a highly, highly entertaining movie. It was out right now in New York and LA. Yep.

Again, it's called, everyone is lying to you for money. And it's a fucking just very well done doc and it's insanely entertaining all this technical stuff. It's just floating in there. Yeah.

Yeah. It's very character-driven. If you've made it through this interview, we have very smart listeners. You do have very smart listeners, you're going to love the movie because it's a piece of entertainment.

Yeah. If you're in LA, AMC Burbank and Lindley Royal, New York, IFC Center, and I'm a Traftops Brooklyn. And, you know, this is a true indie. I finance it.

Oh. Yep. We're unique. I'm major. The Dave tell you to finance it.

Finance, Dave. This is in my book. I finance it partially off of a short bet that I made. Oh, I bet the crypto is going to cry as betting against a bunch of fraud. So this film is partially financed by me putting my money where I'm out there actually.

That's in the book. You already have a streamer deal or you'll have no, that's been weird. I don't know. I think we'll get there. Yeah, you will.

That's so good. It's a weird environment. You know what I mean?

“But I think if people show up at the theater, especially these first couple weeks, it's”

going to get written about a lot. It draws from an interesting crowd because I feel like everyone has heard about crypto.

80 plus percent of the country has never bought it.

They always say the same thing when I ask them. What do you think about it? They go, I don't know. I guess it's me. I guess I'm stupid.

It seems complicated, but scammy. And I made the movie for them to say, it's not you. You know what I mean? Yeah, you're into it. Yeah, trust yourself.

Yeah, it's them. There's no there there. Yeah. And so go and have an hour and a half experience and have a few laughs. And then if you want the deep dive, you can read the book.

But yeah, audiences are loving it. Easy money. Is the book. Ease money. New York Times was seller.

So also look into that. Ben, this has been a blast. You're so bright. That's very, very attractive. And it really appreciates.

All right. Didn't reference that show. [MUSIC PLAYING] Hi there. This is Hermy and Hermy.

You like that.

You're going to love the fact that Miss Monka.

Two. Bless your heart. Thank you. Allergies? I don't know.

If I'm getting another book, I might as well just call it a day. What's the name of the new virus? Hand to virus or something. I know I'm so worried I have it. It sounds gross.

I guess all of them sound gross, but haunt to virus. It sounds like haunt. Well, I think I'm sure that's part of it because it's like rats. Wait, what? It comes from rats.

Yeah. Were there rats in the ship? Yeah. And there's like a whole thing happening. There's a vermin everywhere.

Oh, yeah. They've shut down a couple of institutions here in Beverly Hills. They've said they shut down the peninsula's restaurant. I shouldn't say that. I don't want to get sued.

But I saw that they had violations. Roted violations. Yes. And it happened at San Vicente, Bungalos, too. Oh, no.

When I saw that I immediately sent my friends who I go to Dantanas with. I go right now. I go tonight. I want to go now.

More rats the better. That's it. The more rats Lafayacone Island had and Detroit the better. The doctor. Why are they everywhere right now?

If you don't have rats at your restaurant, your food sucks. Because they'd be there. Yeah. I guess it was maybe it was a really fun cruise.

“And that's why the rats wanted to be on it.”

Yeah. I mean, rats on a blow, boy. Horrifying. But like, there are rats places and there are rats places. Yeah. Like there are rats places and hand to birds hasn't been a thing until now.

Well, it's all about how close proximity you're into the rats so that the fleas on those jump off and get on you. I mean, that's the bubonic plague story. I know. But remember, I had rats in my house. Did you have a mouse in your house?

Well, we decided to call it a mouse because I couldn't handle the thought of it being a rat. But it has it. Technically, I know we've already beat this into the ground. But is there any technical difference between a mouse and a rat? Yep.

Their tails, their size. Actually, their poops are different. That's how you can tell. Oh, holy smokes. You just brought back the immediate flashback of my dream last night.

Oh. Yeah. It was dealing with so much like it was a deer poop. It was the pellet kind of poop. Yeah.

I picked up some crate. And the poops are falling out of the bottom because there's a cute animal in there. But I was like, even though it's cute, there's too many poops. And then I was running, those fucking poops everywhere. I wonder why that happened?

Oh, yeah. That's weird. I didn't step in poop yesterday. Yeah. Sometimes there was poop in your yard because dogs.

Yeah. There aren't. Pretty often there's poop. Or maybe you read about this hand to virus. Something infected my sleep.

And it was just full of poop. And those pellets. It was a deer. I mean, like, rabbit ones? Yeah.

Yeah. I was, I realized I'd been standing on them. I don't want to talk about it anymore. This wasn't a dream. I had a, I guess I should like this.

“I like when I have like a, I think I know how I feel about something”

that I find out I didn't. I kind of like that. Okay. Counter-tuit of things. So I hate coyotes.

The year everyone's pets. They howl like crazy. We know how I feel about them. I'm very scared. And I bought a lot of deterrence.

Yeah. So anyways, I'm writing my bike. I guess two mornings ago or something. I took a long bike ride. And on my bike ride, I saw a coyote that was crumpled in half.

You. What is this? The fact that it is horrible. I hated it. I thought really bad for the coyote.

And then I was like, they are cute. Oh, no. And vulnerable. They're so good at dodging traffic. Because they're running back and forth and traffic.

And you never see them hit.

This one might have been drinking or something. I. But also Carly just told me a story that. The coyote was hit. Oh, a bed or one or the same.

What did she say? No, this was then she got involved in like a story. She rescued a coyote. My kind of. Of course she helped.

She helped. I don't know if it died. I think it died. It did.

What's the story, right? It was like in the middle of the road. And they had to say. No, I just asked you and you said I don't know. Okay, right?

Well, no. I was just saying, okay. Go on. Go on. It wasn't a bit of a loss.

It feels boulevard. And it stopped traffic. Because other. It was dying. It was hit.

And then it had crawled into the front lawn area. Overhouse. And then died. And then they wouldn't come get it. So she said she helped get it out of the road.

Yeah. And then she had to put in a garbage bin. Oh, I guess I do know. This was a bit of go. There's a few.

Yeah. A couple weeks ago. Yeah. I do have. I'm worried about because.

You know. Sometimes I have. Magical powers. I can't control. I.

That's right. I've talked about it on your like. How I. Could you give me an example? Yeah.

How the dogs in the yard? No. Like sometimes I have thoughts. And then. And then things happen.

Okay. And I don't me. I don't want that to be the case. I just don't have control over my powers yet.

“I think Drew Barrymore is a baby in a movie.”

She's like a fire starter. And it wasn't her fault. She just had powers where she could start finding her. I didn't know. She's a baby.

Yeah. Like me. Yeah. So. Little all me.

So you know, I tell this whole thing on here about the coyotes. And then the whole and then two end up dead. I know. If I were an investigator. I would certainly be asking you like,

Hey, where were you the other night? Well, I don't want those feelings. Well, obviously. I wouldn't be killing them because I can't get close. Well, this was killed with both.

We're killed with a car. I'm going to inspect your Mercedes and see if there's a lot of it for everyone. No, no, no. I'm still too scared even in my car. I just stay until they run away.

Oh, wow. Yeah. But my. So my body's scared.

But my brain is powerful.

It is interesting. Know that that. I wonder what's going on. I've lived in close feels for 20 years. I've.

I've only seen a few dead coyotes in the road. I know. And now we're talking about two in the matter of month. C.T. Delicious.

Do you think they have C.T.E. What's going on? I think. I'm not sure. I'm going to make a whole movie about this.

What if they have hand to virus? And it's slowing them down? Or just making their vision blurry or something. Anyways, I found myself feeling very compact. Yeah.

And I was glad that happened to me in that. I was like, look, they're just a little guys too. They are, but they do scare people. They do kill everyone. Yeah.

They eat people's pets. And they like say, hi. And then you turn around. They come back and they have three of them. And they're ready to eat you.

So like, I don't want them to die. But I do want them to go away from me. You know? I wonder if they could just like, you know, I wanted the big issues. I think with bearer.

I don't want them. Bears in the wild. They get. They congregate around trash dumps. I know.

“And that's what's to be real bad for them.”

Oh. And then they get accustomed to being around people. It's like a big thing. But I am feeling like, there's so much food in LA. This is the problem with the crows.

I've been trying to get the crows to be my friends update. There is a crow that seems to be trying to make friends with me. He's in my backyard a lot. And he's walking. He's on.

He's terrestrial to love. Yeah. This is of two ducks that live in the pool now. Yeah. You have a whole thing going.

I have a bird sanctuary happening. Yeah. I mean, birds. I mean, I'm really. I should get binoculars and really start studying me.

I hope you didn't know. We have occasionally an owl that sits on this garage. Oh. I love when I was here. Yeah.

I love owls. I love owls. Do I love a more than. Man, they're great. I don't know how smart they are.

They got to be smart for me.

They are the always have little spectacles on.

That's true. They're very well. They're wise. Yeah. That's the same.

Okay. So. What was I saying? Well.

“I remember the crow on a coyote, funny food.”

Oh, no bears. Oh, yeah. The reason that the crows aren't like when you fear crow elsewhere in New York City. Like, yeah, they need the food. Yeah.

What the fuck are they going to eat? But here there's fruit trees everywhere. Every single yard has fruit trees in it. Fig trees. Like, they live in a salad bowl.

Ding, ding, ding. Grillas. Oh. Yeah. So I don't know why the coyotes got to eat all the, all the pets.

Like, well, they're no less. They're not vegetarian. They're not vegetarian. I guess my point is, people throw their left over. No.

In an aquarium. Probably a fox. No. This is what she said. Okay.

There's more to the story. Yeah. There's more to the story about someone else on the street who puts out chickens and stuff for them.

There's always a guilty party when the curly witnesses are something.

And that's the reason the coyotes are there. That's the reason I got hit. And she yelled at her and said, this is your fall. Okay. I don't know.

I think that we're not supposed to be doing that according to Carly.

Stay tuned for more armchair expert. If you dare. But if we're dumping it, like we caught an awful little area in Griffith Park and just like, hey, when you get carrying out in on the way home, you're like, I'm not going to eat this.

Just swing by there. Check it out the window. Who's going to drive by there when it's full of bears and coyotes? No bears. This is the coyotes.

Well, the bears are going to come. It's also close to the zoo. Yeah. They're going to break out of this zoo. There's a fucking prison break at the zoo.

They go, there's a young man. There's such good leftovers here in LA. There's so many good restaurants. They'd be like fine cuisine. It's unlike these trash dumps in Yellowstone.

It's like they're eating fucking two-week-old hotdog buns that campers throughout. This is creamy. Well, don't tell them. Then they'll really start coming around.

Come around here. I don't want that. I don't want that.

“I got nervous because, okay, so here you have to take.”

You take your trash out. The big bins on Wednesday because trash comes on Thursday. Pick up. And what I've been the apartment I didn't have to do that. I didn't have my own bins.

So I had to always walk around and go throw in the big dumpster.

But I didn't deal with that stuff. Then you're stupid with you about not breaking down the box. Exactly. But I didn't have to deal with getting the trash cans out to the street, okay? So this is new to me.

And I forgot twice in a row, two weeks in a row. I forgot to take it out. So then I got very nervous that I was like, bears are going to come. I mean, the trash cans full of food, two-week-old rotting food. And then I was really nervous about the vermin.

And then that are clearly all over the place. And then third and most of all maggots. I'm so scared that I'm so scared. I got a couple of those outbreaks. I know.

And I like, I can't handle it. Yeah, it's extreme. I will just light it all on fire. It's extreme. Yeah, so I can't control it.

I don't want that to happen. Take it over. Oh. Yeah. So.

“Remember there was a maggot, aren't you?”

Not in the story that I'm forgetting, but I remember. I now remember the feeling. It was like in the event above the oven or something. No. Yeah, they're cooking.

They're cooking. Yep. Good. Good. I want to fell into the field.

Yeah. We've also had people who's the wounds. We've had some nurses. I'll talk about that. Okay.

So, are you guys going to name the crow? Well, before I talk about the crow, I want to talk about the monogos. Miss pair of ducks. Okay. Go ahead.

It's so cute. I think she must have. Well, although she would be sitting on the eggs, I don't know. There's something so sweet going out with these two ducks that are at the edge of our pool every morning. And then they take a little swim together.

In the hot tub? No, no. Well, sometimes, because it's not hot. Right. Sometimes in the hot tub, more often in the pool.

Oh, okay. And then they have to flap their wings to get up back up on the thing. And he waits for her to do everything and then he kind of follows her. Is he a ballet? Yeah.

He's a mallard. He's beautiful. And she's ugly. No, I'm just kidding. But they don't have any color of those.

You know, they're just brown. The girls. The boys are so beautiful. I think you're thinking of a goose. Maybe a duck.

You know, just a brown duck. How come the ducks? Why do we teach kids that ducks are yellow? You know what I mean?

Yeah, like the cartoon version of the duck is always or the peeps version.

Maybe it all stems from peeps. Well, the babies are yellow. The babies are yellow. But are they? Yeah, they are.

They're golden. They're golden. This is a white duck on the internet. This is an American peacon. It's white.

Yeah. Okay. That's a real crack. That's a real crack duck. That white one you just showed me.

I can hear the crack. Me too. Okay. He's caring for her and looking out for her to the juggers. We're going to have chicks in the backyard here.

Like this all looks like. But they could be grandpa and grandma. That she could be in menopause.

“I don't think that's how their life cycle works.”

Well, I don't think they live much longer when they're not. But it's very tender. What's happening with this monogamous pair of dogs. How do you know the monogamous? Because ducks are monogamous.

Well, so are people. Yeah. Okay. Point taken. What are you going to do?

If you see the mall are mallard with a new lady in the pool. Well, the good news for him, I probably won't be able to discern the difference between his sidepiece and his. You will because the sidepiece is white and pretty. What would be more exciting is if I looked out the window and there was two mallards on the scene. Yeah.

She had a thing going on. They're in a polysage. Yeah. But it was this this this this crow is is.

It's heading towards friendship. Okay. Because we have lots of grows in the area. That's where how it became obsessed with them. They live in a lot of our trees.

Yeah. And.

But they never walk around the yard.

That's not what grows do. They're not. Trust real bipets. But this one is he's constantly strolling in the backyard. Yeah.

And landing in different spots that he knows a very. Sacred to me. So he's been hanging out on the guard on the railing. Leaning into the attic.

“And I'm like, if you want to get the interview, just say the word.”

Just email us at armchair expertbooking.com. Stay on the railing when I go up the stairs and I'll know to let you in and get it going. And then, um, and then he landed on the railing of my balcony this morning while I was journaling. And I was like, Oh, give him a scrambling to get my camera out. And I didn't succeed.

Oh, oh, he didn't want to be photographed. He didn't. But I'm in love with him or her. And I really am like a mullowing mindset. It's like I'm putting myself back out there.

You know, I have to hold for people to remember. I tried my heart to become friends. And I was trying to feed. I was putting a food out everywhere. I learned their calls that you did.

Yeah. I was doing everything. And then if I was like, yeah, they're not going to be friends with me. Okay. Yeah.

But this one's I feel like he is like me. He's like, yeah, these people are interesting. I kind of want to know what's going on with him. And do you think maybe he's like, um, an outcast. Yeah.

And so he's like, I'm going to go explore. But he's not in a murder. Exactly. Yeah. Probably because he prefers to walk.

He loves walking. But the murder is like to fly.

“This whole fellow is walking all over the yard.”

Yeah. Yeah. So cute. Oh, my God. What happened?

I just like maybe. I'm just like, I'll write about him and coyotes. Can you even for real, the imagine this. You know, I'm just like a evolved to a point where we were such good friends that during the interviews. The approach is sat right here on the.

In between us on that little stand or hung right here on the bookshelf. Okay. That would be. People tune in even if they hated us just to see this crow that may be. I think it might be considered.

Well, we'd have to just show that the door was always open and that he could lead.

We get letters from Peter no matter what. I'm not even allowed to interact with animals. Right, but we're not. He just came in. I'm just leaving doors open.

Yeah, you said just now when I was sitting outside that he was trying to be friends with me. You missed it. Yeah, I was inside. You know what me on. And I saw outside.

I saw him coming the backyard and he was so close to you. And he's just plotting. Do you think he was trying to attack? No, no, no, no. No, no.

No, he's not an attacker. He's like a. So he made a lot of a. He's just a fun guy. Okay.

I'm just. I'm just nervous that like you made a lot of, you know, it's like this is your version of the women having the tigers. No, like the opposite. No, we don't know. A coconut kill me.

It could like pluck one of our eyes out or something or sleeping. If you were anesthetized within you, went into a coma with your eyes wide open. Perhaps it could do that. You're going to say how smart they are. If they're that smart, they can kill.

Okay. Okay. And now this is it. I might show them on movie. But crows like, you know, they become your friends and then they start like killing people.

But in weird ways, like, you know, they. They. Somehow get like big boulders and then they're flying. They drop on your head, you know, but they're smart. You're the one is.

They would definitely have to use tools. I think. But they know how to use tools. Okay. Yeah, they do.

Yeah. They've been seen. So, or yeah, they go to the tool shed. They get like, you know, pliers.

“No, I think for they're going to need a come alone.”

I don't know if you know what that device is. No. It's a steel cable wrapped around a ratcheting device. And you can lift engines out with them. And, you know, okay.

Yeah. So that's what they're going to need. All right. Well, I don't know what. They're smarter than me clearly. So they can figure out how to murder.

Uh-huh. And you won't even see it. You know, because you're so blinded by love.

I'm going to shift gears for a second and say as much as I love the crow.

That's all in the back of the house. I'm loving what's going on in the back of the house. There's also hummingbirds. You know, we have babies. I told you about this year.

So cute. And they are all in the yard. In the front of the house, I have a difference in a situation, which is some birds made a nest by the front of the house.

And they have fucking painted my house in the shed. Oh, no. And the driveways covered in shit. Oh, the fence railings covered in shit. The camera into the house was slathered in shit.

So I had to get out there with the power washer this weekend.

Yeah. Why are you complaining? I mean, I hated what I hated is. It was one of those things.

“I was like, I got a power washer with that bird shit.”

That was in my head for like a month, you know. And it's like every time I take the trash out, like, oh, fuck, another shit all over the trash can. Oh, yeah.

Anyways, it finally got around doing it.

And why I love it is very instantly gratifying. You can clean up bird shit quite quick. That's a power washer. I have a sense. The crow's are going to, the crow's are working in cahoots with them.

Okay. Because they're, they're pooping all over the cameras and stuff that sounds so suspicious. So you're very ocean's 11. Yeah, exactly.

They're doing a high smurder together. And that's kind of fun. They're going to be bummed when they get inside to try to take the valuables because there's just really not. Let's think of how to get a TV off the wall.

And even those are. Well, I don't think they want to steal it. I think they're more, um, I think. I think they're. No, I think they want to kill.

Oh, they have a taste for. Good taste for their homicide. Yep. Okay. Exactly.

Taste for human blood. Um, all right.

Well, let's do some facts.

Let's do some facts. I want to say. For the record. I feel obligated to say it. I think Ben's as smart as actor.

I've ever talked to. Wow. I cannot believe how smart Ben was. I mean, I can believe it. I was with him.

Right. He's so fucking impressive. I definitely felt like I was talking to an expert. Period. He is an expert in this.

Yeah. And historically, like he just he knows. He just is very fucking bright. Yeah. I enjoyed talking him so much.

“I think I told tender from people how much I loved.”

To the point was like, Oh, I don't even care about acting. But if I was stuck on a show with him, that'd be a blessing. Like the amount of shit you could have. That would be smart would be so fun. And we know.

We have friends of friends who worked with Ben. And clearly like him because they're still doing favors. They, they really speak very highly. Yeah. Yeah.

So that's straight up. Good guy. I know. Austin, Texas. What else would you expect?

That's true. Uh, one of our friends who loved those C was like, Did you guys talk about it? And I was like, honestly, no. Yeah, refused to. Well, it was more just like, that's not.

Also, if you saw the doc and you see what he goes through, I can't, it's just going to do it to him. Yeah. It's every single fucking interview. The guys went on through two other hit shows.

It's hard. It's sometimes that happens. I know. And I know. But I'm like, I'm not doing it.

Yeah. It makes sense. But uh. Yeah. People will be mad.

But that's okay. Okay. I want you some facts. How long did each of the shows run for? Go see 0307 for a season 92 episodes.

Well, that's a lot of things. That's five seasons isn't it? It's said for season five. Okay. Southland, 2009 to 2013, five seasons 43 episodes.

Gotham, 2014, 2019, five seasons 100 episodes. Well, so they're making a lot of episodes for season for that show. That's what I mean. Yeah.

“How much did Kim Kardashian have to pay in her fine for Ethereum Max?”

In 2022, Kim agreed to pay 1.26 million for promoting Ethereum Max and allegedly collaborating

in a pump and dump scheme to inflate the price before selling to investors. She received 250,000 for advertising it. Other people who misledingly promoted it were Floyd and Mayweather. Junior and basketball player Paul Pierce. How much is the Bitcoin worth at the guy who bought pizza using Bitcoin?

In 2010, Lazlo, Heneis made the first real world purchase using Bitcoin paying 10,000 Bitcoin for two Papa John's pizzas. That was roughly $41 at the time, but is now worth between, oh, my God. 900 million to a billion. Yeah.

This is a billion dollar pizza. That's why it's so memorable. I would have a very hard time recovering from that. If not impossible. Imagine you just sitting around going like, I could be a billionaire.

But not real. Well, he could cash out right now. Well, see, this is something I was kind of confused about when we were talking about it. Like, it's like fake, but it's real. Well, you can sell it right now for whatever it's at now, 70 or whatever.

That's what I mean. But it does have value in that way. If, and when it collapses, it'll be a collapse. It's not like Amazon. There's a run on it, and then people go, oh, it doesn't have any assets or it doesn't generate any money.

But there's a floor to it, because it has an intrinsic value of its assets. Right. This is nothing. But you can sell it now and make real money. Now you can.

Yeah, that's pretty good. Well, sure. If you still had the 10,000 Bitcoin, and you know that the British press has unveiled the man behind. He is back. No, no, no.

Hmm.

But he's an English cryptographer.

They think. Oh, no. It's creepy.

“We got to wonder how much that guy's got.”

He invented Bitcoin.

Well, he has internet, I guess.

I'm sure he has a lot of it. OK, what is the Southeast Asian currency? Oh, a wala question mark? Ho wala.

“It's not a physical currency, but an ancient informal method of money transfer in Southeast Asia.”

A trust base network of brokers known as ho walleders are used.

It is primarily used for remittances. Many countries like the US and India have laws against ho wala due to regulatory and anti-money laundering concerns. Did Peter Teele invest in FTX? Yes, his family trust inventor capital arm held shares in FTX as well as through his investment in crypto lender block five. Let me say he would do it again. Cool.

That's that. Those are the facts. Those be the fact.

“OK, yeah, we trust Ben with many of those facts.”

Yeah, he was knowledgeable. Very, love you. Love you. [MUSIC PLAYING]