Ben McKenzie and Sarah Matthews: We Are Drowning in Scam Artists

Hello, welcome to the Bullard Podcast. I'm your host Tim Miller.

“We've got a double header for you today.”

In segment two teen heartthrob, Ben McKenzie, aka Ryan Atwood, has a new movie out about the crypto and how it's a big scam. It seems like he was pretty pressured to on that front, given what's happened in the White House. That's a really fun conversation stick around for that.

But first up, she was White House deputy press secretary and Trump's first term. But you know, she did the right thing at the end. And we'd love that for. And she joined us at the Bullard Work Thank God.

Doing TikTok videos. You're not following us on TikTok. What are you doing? Follow us on TikTok as well. She's doing some other stuff. And it's been overdue for it to join me on the podcast.

It's my girl Sarah Matthews. How are you doing? I'm doing well. Thanks for having me. All right. Let's do it. We got some news items that we want to run through. But before we do that,

I'm just curious if we're at like, but we at the regret stage yet. Whatever I go on shows people are like, what do you, what are people saying? What are the mega people saying?

I'm like none of them talked to me anymore. I was like it's been 10 years since I was a Republican. Is it relatively more recently from for you? You're in DC. You see these people, if you once in a while,

does anybody, is it again any whispers yet? I feel like that's a good barometer for how bad things get. When Sarah Matthews starts to get some whispers. The people are like, boy, this is rough. No, that that's a good point.

I definitely still have connections within the Trump administration. And people will privately say things to me like, I just want you to know that like, really big fan of everything you're doing and like support you privately.

They're like, I'll never be able to like one of your videos,

but just know that like everything you're saying, I agree with.

“And I think there's a lot of those people to who are now seeing”

everything that's playing out. And they're like, oh, yeah, this is really bad. And you know, there's a difference. I think between going and working in the first Trump administration, versus Trump 2.0.

So a lot of the people that I do have connections with, they're a little bit more disconnected from maybe like the immediate White House inner circle, you know, orbit. But I think that there's a lot of people who are looking at

what everything that Trump's doing, and they know that shit is hitting the fan, whether it's price is going continuing to go up, Iran war, etc. You haven't had a satisfying, you are right,

conversation about those. Anybody giving you that? Oh, definitely. There's definitely been some people that were like, yeah, how does it feel to watch everything that's playing out?

I'm like, I don't get me wrong. Like, of course, there's a little part of me that thinks internally, of course, it feels good to be right. But like, I didn't want to be right about all of this.

So I did.

“And that's one way that we're different.”

I don't want to be a modest or anything, but it does feel like, as I survey the news, already go to this morning,

like the most extreme cringe version of never-Trumpism,

seems like it was correct. Like whatever person you have in your mind, like this person, like, hates Trump so much. But some of their takes are even a little bit,

like, you know, make you win so little bit, because they've gone so far around the bend. Like that person, whoever that person is in your mind, was like way more right.

Anybody who tried to say, like, let's call it balls and strikes. Like, let's see, you know, he had some good points on this or that. And it is just an across-the-board shit show.

No, exactly. It's like, I remember thinking, like, when I was working in the first administration and looking at never-Trumpers, I was never really fully bought in on the Maga brand,

but I was in that camp of thinking, like, oh, but, you know, he's, I like some of the stuff he does, and like, they economy's good and all that, but then it's like,

it's never worth it.

And like I always knew deep down,

and so I'm happy to be on this side of things now, and now obviously, like, you know, five years of being, but on the anti-Trump side, and yeah, feels good to know that we were right.

Me too, right about everything, what we survived the next two and a half years. Let's run through it's happening in Iran, trolling, Trump calling it the Straight of Persia now,

asking if they change the name. I hear just a couple of news items. Iran is saying that they control the straight, they're taking tolls, and they've actually gotten revenue from their tolls now.

We have evidence of that. Trump, on the other hand, is saying that we have control of the straight, and that it's, quote, "sealed up tight" until such time as Iran is able to make a deal.

The problem Trump says they can't make a deal, because we don't know who we're negotiating with. And part because there's internal strife in Iran, and we killed a lot of the leaders. So we thought they were going to negotiate with.

Trump says now we're going to shoot and kill any of the small boats. So, you know, we're back to active hot war with Iran on the sea. He also bleeding that additionally are mined sweepers,

I don't know why sweepers are clearing the straight right now, and he writes, "I am here by ordering that activity to continue, but at a tripled up level." There's some chillin' just with that. We don't really have a lot of mine.

So we, I don't know if we, I don't know if we're capable of doing it at a tripled up level, but that is his announcement. And so, amidst all this, lots happening on the sea. The Secretary of the Navy was fired.

Or quit. We don't really know. I was dismissed. They haven't explained why. And this is like one of the comedy of airs,

Trump's stories. John Feeling was a Trump donor who had no qualifications to be the Secretary of the Navy. And then he got in there. And I guess Pete Hankseth had imposter syndrome.

Because with the Secretary of the Navy, even though the Secretary of the Navy didn't know it was a Palm Beach donor. And so they butted heads. He's out.

He's been replaced by hung Carol, a perennial magga candidate loser in Virginia. So it doesn't seem good to me. No, it does not seem good.

I mean, first off, yeah, it's just crazy to think

that we had someone who had no military background even serving us in the Secretary of the Navy and then dealing with a naval blockade during a time of war. And so, you know, whether he was fired or he quit, it's just astounding to me that, yeah,

someone like that would be appointed to a position like that. But then, I mean, this is,

“I believe the 34th person that Pete Hankseth has fired”

in the military. I think I saw that number floating around somewhere on Twitter and you know, if we're assuming that this guy was fired, which I'm going to assume that he was because it reporting says that they were budding heads.

So, you and I talked a while back and you asked me who I was most concerned about within the cabinet. And I think at that time, your answer was Christy Nome. Yeah. Yeah.

This was obviously before her firing. And mine was Pete Hankseth because I just thought this is not the guy that I want heading in the Pentagon. And that was before we even got ourselves into a war. And so I just can't imagine anyone worse right now

to be in charge of the Pentagon at a time like this. But then going back to the straight of her moods, too. I mean, what a shit show. I saw a tweet about this where someone compared it to Schrödinger's cat and how is it,

it can be open and closed both at the same time

because Trump is always tweeting or truth-socialing

about how it's, you know, now it's open. But then the Iranians are like, no, it's closed. And it's so frustrating because it's like, Trump is out there pushing this narrative of, oh, like, yeah, we're going to be tripling the time that we're going to be

mind sweeping. But I also saw reporting saying that it could take up to six months for them to clear the straight of her moods of all of the minds. You watched him post. Yeah.

And that assumes that you're probably having to shut down the straight in order to clear those minds. And so can you imagine it being closed for six months and what that would do to gas prices? We're going to find out.

That's that my thing about his beat this morning. And he says the straight is, quote, sealed up tight. We don't want that. That's not good. That's not good.

That's the problem actually. And it's almost like he doesn't even know at this point.

“He just wants to spin any news item as positive, right?”

And as you're saying, if it's open, that's great. If it's closed, it's great. And like there's no clear objective. We don't have a counterparty. The negotiations aren't on.

I continue to think this is just far worse than I conventional wisdom. Like the normies of my life really understand. And you mentioned the six months. That waschenberg post report yesterday.

Six months to clear the the minds. And then there's a piece from the F.T. That says that even if the straight were to open tomorrow. Energy markets will show the scars of war for years. It might be 20 30 before the market for a fine product.

Returns to the old equilibrium. 2030. God willing, we're all here in 2030. You know, with deteriorating dog's finger on the button. So I talked to this with Sam yesterday.

We kind of are past the point where Trump was able to do the face saving. We won. I'm out. You know, and like that's like the classic Trump move.

You know, the thing that he can, he always has been able to do.

When he gets into a problem. It's like I created this problem. But now now I've solved the problem. And people who pay attention to the news recognize that it's all. K-fave, but his fans go along with it.

That doesn't work when everyone's paying more in gas. The plan doesn't work. And the Iranians know that they have them over the barrel. Pun, pun, not intended. No, exactly.

“I think that the Iranians know that they have them back into a corner.”

That he wants to end this war as quickly as possible. But when you look at the Iranians, they're war with Iraq last eight years. And so they're willing to drag something out and make it painful for us. And they know that they have the upper hand right now. And that he needs to end this war and get the straight open.

So that way gas prices can come down. And they see that he's watching his polling.

And so that's what's really concerning is that when we're looking at the

negotiations and you know, speaking of the negotiations, having, you know, Steve Whitkoff and Jared Kushner leading the charge. I couldn't be any less, you know, impressed by who we're sending for negotiations. But I think that the Iranians know right now that Trump is panicking.

And he needs that this war to end because of the price of everything. And just going to continue to skyrocket, not just gas, because the ripple effect of gas going up is going to affect everything economically. Yeah. The Iran Iraq war history is good to go back to your reference because like there are

parallels and obviously, you know, these things are complex and there are differences. But just at the top level, like Iraq went in fucked him up. And then wanted to negotiate a ceasefire. Then Iran was like nah.

Exactly. So the Kushner thing has been raged. Axios yesterday quoted a senior American official updating people

and then to negotiate negotiations.

And I'm like, that isn't a thing. There isn't a senior, like you're either in the administration and you're a senior administration official.

“Where you have to, you know, be vetted and get a background check.”

We have to know about your finances or you're the president's son-in-law. If like the president's son-in-law is doing side deals. Like the fact that he is the one being quoted is the news. Not whatever bullshit he spent. Anyway, this is like an insider baseball media thing.

But it's driving me insane. The people are letting him be quoted on background as a senior official. It's not a senior official. No, exactly. It was so comical because it was so obvious to anyone who has worked in, you know, political comms that he was obviously the source of that.

And it's like, if you're going to put someone on background. There's like a level of anonymity there where you're not sure which senior administration official it is. But with the attribution being a senior, like American official or whatever it was. I mean, come on.

It was obvious to the him. So it's like why not just force him to be on the record. And also when he obviously has such a vested interest with all of his business feelings in the Middle East and then he's the one negotiating. It's like, I think I would think that our media outlets would be forcing him to go

on the record if he's going to be talking to them.

But during my time at the White House, he was always very well connected and

was the source of a lot of leaks. And so it's not surprising to me that they let him be on background for that. All right, it's that time of year where you're starting to rethink what's in your wardrobe or you can be wearing the same shortly button down shirts. You've been wearing the barbecues, the last five summers.

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Did you ever meet him? Do you guys ever hang out? I met him once during my time there. But it was like brief. Yeah.

He wasn't like hammer to bullfathers or anything when he met him. No, no. He was in the west doing whenever I met him. But yeah, did not witness the behavior that has been outlined in the Atlantic. But obviously, saw it on video when he was with the USA men's hockey teamer.

His friends as he called them. I don't know if you caught that. Yeah, I was like, but he doesn't. Those aren't your friends. Like they were probably who is this guy.

Yeah. When you crowded with their friends. Yeah. This is the thing. He was a famous friend because he doesn't have real friends.

He has a new New York Times story about him. We've covered drunk cash. You're welcome to talk about that if you want. But this is from Michael Schmidt. The FBI began investigating New York Times reporter Lizbeth Williamson.

After she wrote about how cash was using bureau personnel to give favors and free stuff to his girlfriend.

So the FBI is going after a reporter because the FBI's director was unhappy that she wrote something mean about his girlfriend.

“Yeah, I didn't realize that traditional reporting was now equated to stalking.”

I mean, I can't imagine a worse waste of resources than having the FBI starting investigation into this reporter when all she did was what any good reporter does. They ask around, I mean, the amount of times that I've been asked by reporters. Oh, hey, you know this person, tell me a little bit about them. I'm doing a profile on them or I'm reporting on this event that happened. That is how it goes.

That is absolutely normal. That is not stalking. And for cash to use his power and his role to try to intimidate this reporter, it's just absolute bullshit. I mean, they're doing the same thing with the, you know, the Atlantic and the definitions to there too, where it's just an intimidation tactic.

And, and then to think that, you know, the Trump administration's going to be attending the White House correspondent center and celebrating the first amendment.

And all these reporters are going to have to, you know, clap along and it's just absolutely ridiculous. What do you think about that? We've got the core sponsors this weekend. Trump had skipped it. I had hoped the Trump was going to kill the correspondent's dinner. It's not for me. People can be asking if I'm going to be in time on this weekend and it was like absolutely not. Yeah, it was kind of annoying and decadent even in the pre-Trump Times. This sort of fake, performative, bipartisanship and we're giving awards to each other and everybody's dressed up in a toxic sea doubt.

And it's kind of like, it's when Hollywood does it.

“You roll your eyes at them, but it's like, that's Hollywood, right? That's, that's what they're trying to do. It's glitz and glam, right?”

This is DC, the supposed to be public service, like all of us pretending like we're Leo to Caprio and honoring each other, never really worked for me. But this time, it's like, Trump is going to be there and I don't know. It makes me feel achy. It's like, why? Why? I guess why? This is my question. Much of slap in the face to what journalism is that they're going to sit there and, you know, he'll ramble on for our plus giving a speech. And probably just shitting on them the entire time.

And not in a fun, like, hearted way where, you know, a president can poke fun at the media. It's going to probably be like a humiliation ritual for them to have to sit there through his speech. And I just feel like it's a slap in the face to what journalism is, what the first amendment is.

And because we've never seen an administration that has abused the first amendment more, even though that, you know,

they say that, like, that's why Trump ran on, you know, wanting to bring free speech back and all that. But it's like, no, we've, we're watching free speech die in this administration. I mean, the way that they're going after reporters, like how we were talking about with cash patrol and having the FBI investigate a reporter that had the audacity to report on his girlfriend. It's like, you cannot pay me enough to attend that dinner. And I didn't get to go to the dinner when I was in the first administration because it was COVID times.

So the dinner got called off. So I've never had to sit through one of them. But I can't even imagine attending this here. I have, and they were, they were long and annoying even before Trump just think about all of the staffers who were excited. All the people who in DC were excited to go to that dinner, who are listening to this podcast right now.

And now we've ruined their night. Now they're going to have to feel a little bit of sort of shame. A little shame. They shouldn't feel some shame. If they're going to go to the correspondent's dinner this year, feel a little shame.

Yes, if you're going to partake in the humiliation ritual that Donald Trump is going to thrust upon you, feel a little bit of shame. For example, speaking of which our managing editor Sam Stein was going to go into the cutter, the cutter correspondent's dinner party. Think about that Sam. I want you to think about your choices right now Sam Stein. You talked about the free speech attacks.

“The other attack on like traditional conservatism that I think merits mentioning.”

And the news this week is we're going to take over spirit airlines. There's a discussion that the government will take over 90% of spirit airlines. They're going to make the planes use the old Trump airline branding. Trump once people who don't remember Trump once did try to have an airline that failed. And went bankrupt obviously like most of his businesses.

I can almost like kind of annoying to even have to say it this way. But I can imagine what the Fox crowd would be saying if Barack Obama was like, you know, the government should really take over their line industry. We're going to have no bottom of the plane. It's going to be Obama Airlines now. And the whole thing is just it's ridiculous. No, it's absolutely ridiculous.

And that's one of those things where people will tell me all the time, oh, you're no longer, you know, a conservative because you left the party and you don't like Trump and all these things.

It's like, what are you talking about? But like, I can't imagine anything less conservative than something like this like the government taking a stake in this airline.

And it just makes me laugh because I'm like, no, I actually have kind of stayed true to my values. It's you guys are the ones who have changed because Trump is completely remade the party in his image. And this is just one example of it. On the taking over of the airline, the spending, I mean, everything is going the way of Trump Airlines and Trump stakes. Like, the end he's he's he's working on bankrupting the entire country and I guess he's going to he's going to probably fail with this airline too.

I want to end because I want to get to Ben McKenzie. I appreciate you jumping on so we can kind of run through the new stuff. I discussed this with Sam yesterday. Trump posted a bleed with picture of eight Iranian women kind of pretty saying that he wants Iran to not execute that on their up for execution. So this is going to the podcast yesterday. Trump announced that he had saved them, that the that the pretty Iranian girls have been saved.

“Iran says that's not true. Who the hell knows what the truth is honestly like who knows. It could be anything.”

But I wanted to get your reaction to how this story was covered on Fox. And I see this is kind of like, you know, Sarah Matthews is could have been your life moment. You know, had you just wrote it out, had you just stuck on the Trump train after January 6th instead of set of hopping off. Maybe you could have been on Fox News discussing Donald Trump's deep passion for human rights and Iran. Let's listen to kill and mother.

Well, first of all, Martha, only President Trump could save the lives of these eight beautiful Iranian women.

Who he has received direct word from the Iranian regime or what's left of it, that their lives are going to be spared. And that comes as a result of President Trump asking them directly not to kill these young beautiful women who certainly deserve a chance to continue living their lives freely and peacefully. And now that will happen. Thanks to President Trump because he's a humanitarian at heart.

“What do you think? Could you have pulled that off? You know, I know so many humanitarians who threaten to annihilate an entire civilization that just goes hand in hand.”

You know, it's so funny because I look at like Caroline Levitt and her career trajectory. And at the time in the first Trump administration, when I was deputy press secretary, she was an assistant press secretary. So the position right below me.

And yeah, I'm very happy that I hopped off the Trump train because I would not want to be doing her job right now.

And not saying that that, you know, that would have been me and whatever, but I think that, yeah, there's a possibility that it could have been me. And so I watched something like that. I'm like, God, I'm so happy that I don't have to go out there and spew a bunch of bullshit like that and kiss his ass. And I mean, it's just absolutely ridiculous. And then the fact that, I mean, even the story when we're looking at he saved these Iranian women. And then the Iranian regime is saying that this is all fake and that these, you know, women are weren't going to be executed or aren't even real.

The fact that we even have to question who is telling the truth here is absolutely mind boggling and terrifying that like there's a chance that the Iranians are the ones telling the truth and that the Trump administration's lying. And can you imagine that we live in a time that we have to question our own government over when it comes to like if they're the ones telling the truth or the Iranians are.

“I mean, that that just says everything about this administration. I mean, that's why Caroline Levitt is paid to be up there on, you know, on that podium and on Fox news.”

Telling lies and spewing a bunch of bullshit. Do you think you would have, I just like had the, had the Marlaga look, you know, they're her and make up the fillers. Sometimes I get some pretty mean comments on my videos and whatnot of people telling me that I look Marlaga. They're like, get rid of the blonde hair and someone called me the other day and one of my comments blonde, Christy Nome. And I was like, you know, I know, I was like, that is offensive. And I don't let a lot of hate comments get under my skin and I was like, fuck you to the person.

But you have the same face you've had since I've met you. So that's a big difference between you and Christy Nome, along with things, you know, you haven't. You haven't done any pain about those enough films that find foreign good. You know, you know, like, oh, yeah. And no alleged affairs with, you know, Corey Lewandowski or anything. But yeah, it is, it is funny to watch the transformation of so many women within Trump world and getting them Marlaga face. And, you know, I look at that world and I'm just very happy that I got off the Trump train when I did because I can't even imagine having to to be on Fox news and do what Caroline love it's doing and then be able to look myself in the mirror.

Feels good. Well, you wouldn't be looking yourself in the mirror for people looking at your new, your new face. My new self, yeah. I want to recognize myself. It feels good to know you did the right thing. It does. And we're grateful that you're helping us out with social media stuff.

I thank so much to Sarah Matthews and joy not going to nerd prom this weekend. Everybody else. Oh, wait. Hold on. Before Ben McKenzie.

I did a board take last night with Katherine Rampel that you can get on the board takes Peter on YouTube. Tucker went after her. You won't even believe what Tucker went after Katherine Rampel for.

“I could if you haven't seen the video yet and you're imagining like what could it be?”

It's even more gross and outrageous and bigoted and insane than you could possibly imagine. So I want to leave that as a teaser for everybody. You can go watch it. Tucker's despicable. That was Sarah Matthews. Up next, Ben McKenzie. You might know from the OC or Gotham or for being a six time teen choice nominee was zero wins.

He's also the author of easy money cryptocurrency casino capitalism and the golden age of fraud. And now he's made his directorial debut with a new documentary called Everyone is lying to you for money. It's Ben McKenzie. What's up, bro? What's up, bro? Why would I see you lately? Why don't we even hang it out? All right. So I want to tell the story. I invited you. So this movie is now in theaters, but before I was doing the festival route. Okay.

You know, and basically going to any festival I could get into trying to build some buzz because of straight indie movie. I have no idea to find a studio. So I buddies hooked up with the New Orleans film festival. One of my first thoughts where to got him was 10 Miller lives in New Orleans. He's in in the document or he would probably love to come to this.

So I mess, I messaged you, I DMD. You remember this? I DMD one blue sky. Yeah, of course, because I'm a Lib and there's such a way. I'm hoping that this story ends of blue sky being the problem because it is.

Well, no, no, no, no, the problem is is my dumb ass.

But I invited you to a screening on a Saturday afternoon to a documentary during college football season. And there was an LSU home game that day that time. Did I get you? That is right. That's what you did.

“Okay, so I didn't figure this out until after you politely were like, oh, I can't do it.”

But I meet for a drink the next day. And I was leaving town next to it. So it's my fault as a long-horn, as a die-hard, college football fan and long-horn that I did not realize. You can't, it's like going to church. I can't, I can't, I can't schedule something up.

Is it church? Yeah, I'm pulling it up right now. Here it is. Damn, I'm in VR that day. Sorry, you did tigers.

I should have come. It was an awful, they won that game. But it was an awful season. And F. Brian Kelly. And I should have.

All right, well next time. The next time. Yeah, you know, you got to prioritize in life. I have many people asked me right now. If I'm going to receive me in DC this weekend.

Because White House correspondent center is this weekend.

And if you're listening to this one, you know, you'll never see me at that again.

It's the weekend as jazz fast. You guys should enjoy it. But you know, I got my priorities in life. All right. So the movie's cryptoscaptic.

Hostile. Crypto hostile. And that's cryptic. We did this kind of already on your book tour. Easy money out of that guy three years ago.

Now almost people kind of went the long sermon on how, you know, Brian from the OC became, you know, an anti crypto advocate. You can go listen to that podcast. But I do want just kind of the basics for people who've missed it. I'm like, why you care about this?

What underpins it? Like what the main thesis of the movie is. Sure. I have an undergraduate economics degree. Oh, great.

Yeah. I got to see minus in macro 101. Yeah. That actually explains a lot. That's very helpful.

I appreciate that. No, I'm just kidding. You're very, very smart. Catherine Rampal is doing excellent work for the board. Yeah.

Luckily, we got Catherine on to you guys. Yeah. Help us all along. Undergraduate degree in econ. It was the pandemic.

This was on ice. I was 40 something years old and kind of a need of a new adventure. Anyway, don't call it a midlife crisis. Just call it a midlife. Reordering a priorities as the pandemic did to so many of us.

“But he, my academy said you should buy Bitcoin.”

I had never heard of it. But my buddy is giving me terrible financial advice before. So I said to Dave, politely, I'm not going to buy it. What is it? What is this thing?

And he said that word cryptocurrency, I was like, okay. So it's money. So can you buy stuff with it? And Dave, you know, you know, you can't buy it. Not really.

I put money into it. I'm trying to make money off of it. And I'm not doing any work myself. I'm like, so it's an investment day. If you're putting in sense.

That's what that's what investment is. And I, I very quickly, sorry. I did a Google.

Consider like basic elementary sort of economic terms and financial terms. Anyway, I just became obsessed with it.

“And I was looking at it both from, you know, point of view of economics, which was really confusing initially because if they weren't currencies, what were they?”

They were investment securities, but they weren't regulated that way.

Like basically how do we get here?

And then also I got fascinated by the true crime of it all. I love true crime. I particularly like what I call stupid crime, which is sort of a subgenre where like they're like obviously committing crimes and sort of like sometimes via tweet. And they then turn on each other as soon as the fed circle because of course all these criminals for all the community that they live in, they all hate each other and not competing with each other. So sort of co-in brothers ask crime.

If I like crypto a lot of that and share enough. I was right. So that's basically it. I started. I ended up, yeah, selling a book proposal with the journalist.

Jacob Silverman and we went out into the field to report on it. And I just turned the camera on and started recording, you know, what I saw. Well, I guess before you go into the negative crypto as people listen to us now, I'm also crypto hostile. I think maybe an interesting way to start the conversation by hearing you kind of steal man the case for it. Like after I had you on last time, for example, I have a buddy that works for one of the big crypto companies.

It's not happy calling me, you know, talking my ear off and making the case for it. I've other we have listeners obviously who are invested in the stuff who sometimes push back at my like little side swipes. And so oftentimes with you here, I'm going to start stealing man in the case for you. Yeah, and you can take from there. Oftentimes what you hear is something to the effect of.

Yeah, there's a lot of scam coins out there, but there's a lot of scams in the economy. And, you know, the good ones Bitcoin, a theory of some of the stable coins. Like that is legitimate investment. It provides a service. You can, you know, trade after hours.

“That's, that's I think the, the just of the case that I get, but how would you add to that?”

If you are representing the Bitcoin side of us. If I was representing the Bitcoin side, okay. Okay. All right. I'm not representing it.

If you're deciding making the argument. If you're, what's the best are you want me to do the John Stuart Mel thing? Okay. So I, I do. So our regulated system is terrible.

It's deeply unequal. People are getting screwed over both in this country and overseas. And it's an insider's game and Wall Street wins and regular people. Regular people lose and Bitcoin fixes this. Okay.

That's basically the argument.

I, I could go into the way, what they would say is, and then it's decentralized. And it's not in the hands of this terrible government. And you're going to be empowered and we're all going to walk into the sunset. All being super rich. Is there not some value in that?

Like is there not? I just shit with the weekend wars that we're having with Trump. Is there not point to being able to make wages outside of market times? Is there not value in, you know, a kid who's in a third world country, being able to get access to money that doesn't have a bank account?

So, sure. There's a valid, well, there's value to the second part. Right. Could you use crypto for good? Of course you could use crypto for good.

I heard about a one and a half gana stand. She can't get banking under the Taliban. She's running her business in Bitcoin paying up low. We can all agree. We like that.

That's a good thing. But if we accept that, then we have to accept the bad as well. And to give you a sense, if we're being intellectually honest, which I'm sure your crypto friends are going to be intellectually honest. Everyone in crypto is very intellectually honest.

So, to give you a sense of the amount of crime that's in crypto,

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

was facilitated to the cryptocurrency. $154 billion US dollars worth of crime was facilitated via crypto. I just want to give you a sense. This is a supposedly trillion dollar market. Trillions of dollars.

But you see in the movie a guy say, it's only about 10% real money. And the rest is speculation. Do you remember this? Yeah.

If it's a trillion dollar market and there's $154 billion of crime within it. And this is coming from a crypto company. By the way, that's their estimate. Then maybe what we're really talking about is gambling and crime. Like there are not that many women in Afghanistan running their business via cryptocurrency.

There are a lot of bad guys getting a lot of money for doing the worst things in the world, such as Russian oligarchs using cryptocurrency to sell sanctioned oil to the Chinese and exchange for drones they sent to Ukraine. Such as the cryptocurrency that the tankers are paying to the Iranians. You saw that one of them got ripped off that he was like they were scammed.

It's a scammer.

“It's kind of funny. You have to laugh about it.”

You have to kind of laugh. No, no. I feel so bad. So if it's a bad for this gamers, right? This is stupid crime.

This is what I'm talking about. I love this stuff. This is fantastic. For real, the boat thought it was able to go through the straight-of-form moves because they're paying in crypto.

But they were dealing with the scammer. And they weren't dealing with the Iranians and the Iranians fired on that.

Yeah. It's kind of like a victim. It is. Yeah. That's what's happening.

Yeah, I mean, you know, so the crypto people. Remember less than I came on and I didn't actually get a chance to respond. The criticism you had gotten from the friend.

And the criticism as I remember it is that basically he's a nice guy.

And he's the most handsome of the skeptics.

“I believe is what she said, which was sweet.”

But that I just don't understand the technology. So let's talk about that for just a second. Because I have some things to get off my chest. Okay. So blockchain technology is 35 years old.

It goes back to 1991. Stuart Haber and Scott Stornetta working out of Bell Labs. Building off of the work of cryptographers such as David Chom, who I interviewed for the book. Blockchain's old.

You'll notice something about blockchain. Hardly any other business outside of the cryptocurrency industry uses blockchain. If you can name a single one, then I will be very impressed. It's only cryptocurrency companies, right? Yeah.

But you remember it in 2022 when they were like, Blockchain's going to do this. Blockchain's. Yeah. There's a period of time where it was like kind of hot.

Or for like, you know, we're going to have laundry mats on the blockchain. And you know, it's like back there. Yeah. Yeah. It was going to be pet insurance on the blockchain.

It was going to be, yeah. It was none of those companies are around now, right? And in fact, the industry doesn't use blockchain anymore. Because it kind of has a sour taste as people lost a lot of money. Now they use digital assets, which is a wonderfully vague phrase.

Kudos to the marketing department. What is it? It's digital. What is it's an asset of what computer code? Is that what it is?

So here's the reason that companies don't use blockchain. And the NFT is like, yeah, it's like the monkey. Right. Exactly. Exactly.

The receipt for the link to the JPEG, which is what NFTs are. So why does nobody use blockchain? Because it sucks. Bitcoin can only process five to seven transactions a second. These are can do 24,000.

It literally cannot scale as a payments method. Even Sandbittman freed when I interviewed him, admitted that. It cannot work as a payments method.

“You have to build systems on top of this.”

Which would of course violate the purity of this incredible thing called.

You know Bitcoin by the way to protect those five to seven transactions. It uses an enormous amount of energy. Enormous. Right. Like a few years ago, it was the the equivalent of Argentina.

The entire country to operate this system. Right. I don't know what it is now, but it's a lot. So it's really inefficient. It's really slow.

All right. Here's a question. If crypto does not come from the government. This evil government. The Democratic government that we live in.

Where does it come from? They don't like to talk about this. But the answer when it comes to cryptocurrency is corporations. It's world liberty, financial. In the case of Donald Trump.

It's also with Bitcoin. The majority of Bitcoin that are mine today are mined by multi-billion dollar. Corporations. Many of which are publicly traded. So if literal corporate money seems like a good idea to you.

Then sure. But that is not good idea. Both because of the corruption element. So in economics. If it's not issued by the government.

A public money. It would be private money. It would be money issued by individuals and corporations. That's about idea for fraud and other things. And we tried it before.

We tried it in the 19th century during what's called the free banking era. Which is also called the Wildcat banking era. When banks were allowed to issue their own notes. Their own currencies. And there was a lot of fraud.

It was called the Wildcat banking era. Because you only were allowed one chapter. And you would set your physical location up as far away from your depositors as possible. Where the Wildcat's room. And once you had their money.

What's the stop you from running off with it? So there was a lot of fraud. It was very unstable.

And basically you scrap the system and we ended up with a central bank.

So not only is crypto not the future of money. It's the past of money. And it is a failure that we revisit at our peril. I want to get into how to fix it. And how particularly this intersects with the current president.

Because that's obviously the craziest development since we last talked in 2023. But just a couple other little things from the movie. And then we'll just give people a teaser. And then you'll watch for themselves. But you did get the SBF interview.

As you mentioned during your FTXT shirt. What's the tagline message? This is FTX risk management department 2022. Is that a real t-shirt? It's a real t-shirt.

People like it was a given to FTX staff in 2022. Or did you just make no. No, no, no, no. It's not not.

“Okay, I think because I wear a project orka sweatshirt sometimes.”

You know, Project Orka. That was on the Mitt Romney campaign. We pitched that there was this like really great system that we are going to use for monitoring the votes. And we're going to know more about the votes than anyone. And then the system totally collapsed.

And it was called Project Orka. But we did make t-shirts. And I do still have one. And I wear it. So I thought maybe it was like that.

No, this, this is like my hat make lying wrong again. This is just dad humor. I'm just a dad. I'm just a straight dad. I'm just straight dad.

Well, I'm a straight dad.

Yeah, that's a good dad. He wants a good dad. Okay.

So you interviewed at SPF, which obviously I just think his megalomania is behind that.

Michael Lewis obviously spent a lot of time with him for his book. And I interviewed him about this. And in some ways he was kind of charmed by us. In some ways he was kind of like SPF.

“He understood what the attract, because it's not I did it, right?”

And he's trying to make the case about why he was able to kind of manipulate so many people. But in your conversation with him, why don't you just kind of give everybody a little teaser of UNSBF Mano Mano. Sure. So I never met him. My DM10 said, hey, would you be willing to talk?

I'm loose guy. No, this was on Twitter when Twitter used to be Twitter and not X. By the way, I'm locked out of my Twitter account of the lockdown for years. Because people keep hacking into it after I started talking about crypto. So just if you've been DMing me on Twitter, just know.

And I'm so grateful to be off of it, because it sounds like it's turned into a cesspool. All I see is terrible. It was on Twitter. So he agreed almost immediately with no preconditions to an on camera interview. Which already I was like, what is happening?

Because Jake of Silverman and who's writing the book with me. In our Twitter bios, it said writing a book on crypto and fraud. Yeah, right. I couldn't understand for the life of me like why this guy did it. I can get to that later, because now I think I understand what might be a play.

I didn't know exactly what he was doing. But I had a lot of, this is in the book. A lot of red flags for why what he was doing was probably not good. You know, he owned a trading firm as well as an exchange.

That would never be allowed in a regulated market.

Obviously, insider trading trading on insider information. He was selling these things that looked an awful lot like securities out of the Bahamas. You know, so potentially he's selling on registered and licensed securities, which is a literal red flag for Ponzi's games. And he's selling them overseas outside of US law.

So there was a lot of things that I was suspicious of. And so I prepared, as any financial journalist should do, to actually look at what the guys say, it says in interviews and be ready to respond to him if what he's saying is bullshit. And so I prepared.

And I went in there and the one thing that I did was buy a cup on Etsy that said fraud investigator. And I placed it right down in front of him. And was very friendly. And nice. I brought him a look.

Look Roy. He likes look Roy water. So I was given him a little nice stuff. And I was given him a little, you know, Cyops.

I was, I was messing with him a little bit. And then I just tried to have an honest conversation with the guy. I was not charmed by him at all. I found him completely unimpressive. So much so that I couldn't believe that we'd gotten to this place.

Because people will see the movie and judge for themselves.

“But he couldn't answer basic questions like what does crypto do that's good for the world?”

Give me one thing that it does that's good for the world. And he said remetances sending money between countries. This was a big talking point back then. Right? Well, I had just come from El Salvador.

Like literally the week before I'd been in El Salvador. A country that was taking Bitcoin as legal tender. The, the foundation of the Salvador economy is remetances. 25% of the economy, quarter of the economy.

Is the money, the two to three million people of Salvador in the city.

Living in the United States. Send home to their friends and families. The foundation of the economy. So if this was going to work anywhere in the world. It should work in El Salvador.

Government launched the system to much fanfare. Gave everybody $30 of Bitcoin to try to encourage them to do this. And not want price of Bitcoin crash 20% in a few hours. All the exchanges shut down. Nobody used the system.

Less than 2% of remetances. According to the government's own figures. Use the system they built. It's now less than 1% and the government has abandoned the project. Because they needed to get a loan from the IMF anyway.

Sam. Like I said bullshit. And then he really didn't have a good response to that. And if you can't defend your industry and cite one example of the good that you're doing. Like I do question.

“What is your industry and why are you the figure at of it?”

Because that seems like a perfect illustration of just how stupid cryptocurrency is. That this guy, this kid, had worked his way all the way to the supposed Tom. Yeah. You mentioned El Salvador. It is.

It's not a coincidence how some of the worst people in the world in the worst scammers have flocked to this product. It doesn't seem like that as bi-accident. I just pulled this up. So it looks like the most recent data.

8% of Salvadorans have actually used Bitcoin to make payments at all. Ever. That's like crazy. Is that high? Yeah.

Obviously these things aren't. They supplied it. But it's like whatever it is. I mean, this is a miniscule percent when you're down there. Like obviously we've had all these El Salvador controversies since with Bucalai and otherwise.

because Bucalai likes to do extra legal things. Yeah. So I mean, if you want the inside game, this is a little bit in the weeds. But there's this massive company called Tether. This is a large stable coin company.

Yeah, that's going to get weird. Get there. Yeah. Okay, great. So I'll just go there now.

Yeah.

Tether has supposedly has 184 billion US dollars backing.

It's 184 billion Tethers. We can talk about whether that's true or not. We don't know. But regardless, it's a massive company with a lot of money. They're headquartered in El Salvador.

They at least have a real presence down there and they're very tight with Bucalai. So I just think that's worth pointing out. There are a lot across roads with El Salvador and the crypto industry in terms of where the players go when they don't want to be in America.

“One of them, do you fall the recent New York Times thing about Satoshi?”

Who's Satoshi? I don't care enough to have actually read it. But I read the tweets about it. Okay. So real quick, the guy they think it is.

This guy John Kerry, a great investigator reporter, broke the Theron out of story. He thinks he's proved that it's Adam back. He's a British cryptographer who could be Satoshi. Very much one of the top candidates because he was the first person that Satoshi emailed. I don't think he's proved it.

I don't see him controversial proof. But I do see a lot of evidence. So he made a strong case.

You certainly will likely can't.

Last time you're on the pod, you did say that you thought Chad Michael Murray might be Satoshi. I did. So it's been a chain. You know, we were learning more and we're adjusting our priors. I actually read into him.

It's something. And he knew. And I had to apologize. So I just went, you had to apologize to him over. Did you got him on my podcast?

Your podcast? Yes. Yes. But he was feeling. I don't know.

He handled it. I have to say Chad did a very nice Chad Michael. I do did a very nice job. Like not being angry. But I had to apologize.

So I just want to say that was it. He's unbelievably handsome. I don't know if he was very close. I said that in the last time. But I had the crush on him for decades.

So it hurts me to think that he might have even in all felt slight. No. No. No. I'll talk to him.

I'll talk to him. Please let him know. Did you probably want to do that? You want to talk to him. Yeah.

Yeah. So anyway. So Adam back is the supposed it's Satoshi. The way where John Kerry found back was in Al Salvador. Right.

The supposed it's Satoshi. Oh, God.

“A few other things you should know about Adam back is that Adam back.”

It's a company block stream received funding from Jeffrey Epstein. Hmm. That's it. The supposed it's Satoshi is. You know, his company is received funding from the world's most notorious pedophile.

You know what I mean? Like I want to have a real conversation with the crypto. They're freaking out whenever I say this. They freak out. But there's nothing you can do because there's an even.

That's the reality. Like the fake stuff is all the high mind to talk. Yeah. It's kind of like the McKellie thing. Like it's not surprising.

The Jeffrey Epstein was attracted to this new currency. That would help him evade the law because he was doing a lot of sex trafficking. Yeah. I mean, if your main businesses are money laundering. Sex trafficking in blackmail.

Then like yeah. Yeah. The pretty useful. Interesting product. Yeah.

Totally. And Epstein was also funding Bitcoin core development. So yeah. Bitcoin's maintained by this group. Bitcoin core development.

He was. Funding it secretly through the MIT media lab a few years ago. The new record did a big record on this. But he was funding it secretly because of course at this point he was already a registered sex offender. And so the MIT media lab didn't want to actually make this public.

But he was paying to keep Bitcoin alive by paying for these programmers and developers to maintain its operating system. And he was doing so in 2015, which is very early relatively speaking for crypto. You know, crypto started off absolutely tiny. Nobody cared about it. grew obviously and it's grown enormously over the years, but you go back to 2015.

“Like you're not talking about a lot of people, right?”

Like might even be just a few hundred thousand people.

Maybe a few million people.

But like Jeffrey Epstein was into Bitcoin before 90. Plus percent of the pros who are hawking it now even knew it existed. And they do need to wrangle with that. They can't just like hand wave that away. Crypto's only gambling in crime, guys.

That's all it is. One of the other outlets of film was talking to this guy Alex Machinsky and his really American CEO of the Celsius network. And other L.S. famous scammer. Then S.B.F. but. Well, you're were your thoughts on that.

That was our first day of filming the first day of filming. We walked on to the Austin Convention. Yeah, look straight up luck. Walked onto the convention floor saw the booth knew that Celsius was sketchy. It was being sued by multiple state regulators, including the Texas securities regulator.

It had been though the booth was in Texas in Austin. It just hadn't been adjudicated yet. It was like, get away with it. And they're trying to pinch people on this thing.

We'll give you a guaranteed interest on it. Like 15% interest, right?

“Which is a literal, again, go to the SEC's website.”

One of the seven red flags for Ponzi's game. You cannot guarantee above market return. That is just impossible. So I see the booth. I'm getting pissed.

I turn to my laugh. I see. If I see Mishinsky, I see the CEO who I recognize from his TV hit. And I, and it's funny. I got really nervous because, you know, I'm just an actor.

What do I do? What do I know? I'm not an investigative journalist. But I talked to the cameraman who I met that day. And to got the sound pack on and walked over to Mishinsky.

And it was like, hey, I'm Ben, I'm an actor. I'm writing a book about crypto. I left off the fraud part. And he was like, hey, oh, yeah, we met in Vegas, right? I am 47 years old.

I have not been to Las Vegas in a very long time, right? I used to love it. But I have not been there in a very long time. But I'm an actor, Tim, professional actor. One of the rules is, especially in improv.

Yes, and. So I said, yeah, absolutely. Anyway, would you mind chatting? Are we sat there together? It's in the movie.

You can see it. And I mean, the kind is just a car salesman, right? A used car salesman. Yes, but like he is just, their story was, we're better than a bank.

We are basically, you're going to give us your money, but we're going to give all the money back to you.

Right?

“That's why we can give you 15% interest instead of whatever you're going to get in the market.”

Three percent interest or whatever. So we're better than a bank. And we're he would say, we're we're like a community bank. And my first question is, okay, so how do you make money? Because if you're giving people this return.

And he couldn't answer the question. He couldn't give me like his business model, which was pretty funny. And then I asked him about, well, I asked. Are you guys in a legal show? Is anybody suing you?

And he kind of hinted and the marketing guy was on the other side of me. This like long-haired guy, very handsome sort of like a Southeast Asian yachting long-haired younger. And the marketing guy is kind of like waving him like, you know, just say no. Just say no. So venture the marketing guy says no.

That's a lie. Sorry, I skipped out the big lie. The big lies when he says he's a bank, they're not a bank. It's on their website and very fine print. They're not a bank, right?

Obviously, they don't have it FDIC license. They are, I don't know, FDIC and sure. They were operating under a money transmitter license, which is a much easier license to get. And then even that was being disputed by these securities regulators. So it's just lie after lie after lie.

It was sort of comically stupid. And that was our first day of filming. So I decided to keep going. So all that was what 2022, 2023 is during Biden era where the crypto people were talking about how Biden and Gary guns were really cracking down hard on crypto. And they were so mad about all the regulation that was happening.

And all of these scams were happening during that period. Now we're the time where there was a regulator who quit recently. You know, who basically said, if I was the type of person to do scams, I would do a crypto scam right now. Because there is nobody at home, like the cupboard is empty of regulators. And it's totally the wild west out there.

“I'm just going to want to like, what is your sense for like, are there other FTXs out there right now?”

Or is it more kind of small ball stuff like what do you see happening?

Yeah, I mean, there's always tons of small ball, right?

But I completely agree with that sentiment. The Trump administration is just banded. The crypto crime task force, the DOJ, had set up. The SEC has been gutted hundreds of lawyers, if not more, have left. I've heard from some of them.

Trump has pardoned. CZ who was the head of the largest crypto exchange by anance that still exists. By anance is an admitted money launder. CZ pled guilty to money laundering did four months, only four months in prison, but did do time. And Trump pardon him.

And if you remember the Wall Street Journal recording on this and others, I guess. The SEC that invested 500 million invested, I'm using her quotes. 500 million dollars in Trump's stable coin. They got the Nvidia chips, but they also got CZ. CZ also got a pardon.

And he lives in the UAE now. So, and this is an admitted money launder, right? Like, they're not even hiding the ball. The other part of the Trump stuff, just like the scale of the corruption. I mean, you mentioned the tether thing earlier with the things based on El Salvador.

Like, I, like, has put huge amounts of money into Trump's businesses. And they've created the stable coin. But I want to talk to you about, which is kind of pitched as a less risky product, but might be one that is more akin to coming along. It's not intended for the retail public.

So, stable coins are currencies, cryptocurrencies that are packed one to one with a real currency like the US dollar.

Meaning their price is not supposed to fluctuate. They're always supposed to be worth a dollar.

Obviously, they're not back for the full faith in creating a safe solution. She bought this company tether and others. So, it's a... And we're a little bit, you will kind of get a kind of a big idea. There's government now, because Trump's company knows.

No, they're not, it's not the US government. No, it's a...

“I know, I know you're joking, but like the distinction is crucial, right?”

But I hear you. The president's company is afraid. Exactly, exactly. What is it? And it's a way of going around the banking system, right?

Because you don't have to go through the banks in order to get these for the ones that are overseas. So, it's a block market dollar. It's a dollar that can be traded and sentaneously all over the world. So, anonymously, right? Like to skip over like what the technology and crypto really is.

It's the pseudonymity. It's the ability to achieve your identity while you're sending something of value. So, who does that appeal to? It feels to criminals and for stablecoins, particularly tether. There's been a lot of reporting on this.

It really is the preferred tool for criminals. They'd rather use stablecoins, because then they're not... They're not suffved to the volatility of that coin or any of the other cryptos, right? Right. And so much of the crime, whether it's pig butchering or the oligarchs sending the crypto

to the Chinese for the drones. But Aaron steals all this stuff. Yeah, Aaron steals trying to go through the... Ship's trying to go through the straight of our moves. Paying probably in tether.

So, here's the thing about tether.

Their broker is Cantor Fitzgerald. Hmm, our Latinx firm. Yeah. So, the kids in charge of tether's money or his kids. And it is the firm that, you know, until he was commerce secretary, he was running.

Yeah. And, you know, of course we saw that Latinx was on the island without seeing after we're saying that he wasn't. And they hit the picture and the picture came out. You know, so only the best people. And also Latinx, of course.

With next Epstein. Anyway. Yeah, you think that it feels kind of like a conflict of interest that there are black market dollars out there. Essentially, digital dollars that are being controlled in international trade by the commerce secretaries, kids and the president's kids. It's...

It's on a map out. On a map out. Like type of corruption. I need like literally. When you're out when you're taping, I can 2023 when you're talking about the scale of the possible corruption.

The idea that the president of the United States is family would be using one of these coins to do billion dollar deals overseas.

Like, I did not see it coming. I didn't. I think I wanted so much to believe that we wouldn't do this again. That we're not that country. Yeah.

That I wield myself in the bleeding. I think she'll pull it off even though like the circumstances were terrible. And I agree pretty much with your commentary on her campaign. Like what the Democrats did wrong and all that stuff, which is really I think to take away for me. We're at large, but at the time I had convinced myself, you know, she was going to squeak it out.

“But I remember that summer when Trump's so Trump, as recently as 2021, called Bitcoin a scam.”

And I was actually how I met Jacob Silverman, my co-author on the book. He'd written an article for Slate, even Donald Trump knows Bitcoin's a scam. Which I thought was funny and I was like, "Oh, I should work with this guy." And by the way, why did he like, why did he hate crypto before? And why does he love it now?

By personal theory, it's just a theory hypothetical. Is that Trump's business prior to becoming president or in the interim really was branding himself, putting his brand on hotel properties, right? He doesn't even build him anymore, he just puts his name on it. Well, you know, on an unrelated note, there's a lot of money laundering in real estate. I don't know if you do this or not.

It's not that many people know about that. But there's also a lot of money laundering in crypto, which, you know, is an interesting coincidence. And so, if Trump wasn't getting a cut of what crypto was business. In fact, it was kind of a rival business, potentially. So he didn't like, again, hypothetical.

So he didn't like crypto then. But then, you know, over the summer in 24, he realized two things. First, I can make a lot of money at this. And second, that's a pretty willing, like those are the get-able guys, right? Those are guys who, if they're not already voting for me,

would definitely vote for me if I write a lot of them, right? Well, it's the perfect Trump scam because he can just brand it. He just brands it. He puts his name on something fake. He doesn't have to build like, you know, they don't even need permits.

Yeah. No, it's literally for building. Yeah. Like, he just put your name on it. You know, you have these fake digital cards with him with muscles.

He doesn't have muscles. It feels like there's a mega, well, man. Yeah. He just creates scam artists.

“I know it was honestly the perfect business friend.”

So much so the David Crapactor got the New Yorker. We had on a couple months ago. It's like kind of breakdown all the money he's been making since he's been in there. Just to follow up the New Yorker this week.

I'm this week where he's up to 4 billion.

I'm going to his assessment. He's made 4 billion almost all of it is crypto. Almost all of it is crypto. 4 billion. He's Trump and his family has so has outrageous.

And I just like, I guess I have two thoughts about it. One, I want to go to the solutions next. But first, let's both that for a second. Yeah, please. You would think that the people that the people that object

who are like, this is legit business.

You know, you got to get on board. Like there's value here. You would think that they would be furious a Trump. You would think that J would be the ones that are right now. Yeah, because you would think that they would be the ones right now.

If they actually thought it was legit and not a scald. That's important. That part's failing. Yeah, actually thought it was legit. And you would think they would be the ones going to Congress right now and saying,

guys, we need rules to rain this end because what he's doing is so comically corrupt that when he eventually leaves whoever replaces him is going to ruin our whole business. Right. And yet nothing.

Like almost nothing. Everyone wants to know. No, no, no, no, no, no. That is way too generous. It's not nothing.

It's how much can we help you.

Coinbase is contributing tens of millions of dollars to the ball.

Ballroom, right? Yeah. I can't remember the number, but it's a lot of money. They've paid a lot of money to various, you know, they've been enormous amounts of money on political campaigns.

And they use it as both a carrot and a stick. And the people that import that support them, which are the majority of which are Republicans, but there's a lot of Democrats as well. And I'm happy to talk about that if you like. But a lot of Republicans have gotten a lot of money.

So it's not just like, oh, they're, they're just sort of timidly, you know, it's, by the way, first of all, I thought these guys were the tough guys. I thought they were libertarians. I thought they hated government. Oh, now the guy that's the head of the entire government who's a convicted fraudster

himself who's selling you on this fraudulent coin. You, you can't criticize that. Wow.

“That's really, really telling, you know, like, I honestly, first of all,”

it's supposedly the decentralized future of money. And now it's being sold by the president of the United States and his own private coin, which is not exactly. I guess it's one of those things where it's kind of similar to, and discussion with you around more.

Sometimes you hear people who are on the pros real side make this case, which I think is like not irrational, which is the, like, hey, this is your last chance at the table. You know, like, you got this guy in there who's going to do what you want. Like, let's put the paddle to the big metal.

You know, make as much money in the case of the crypto guys. Make as much money as you can. See how the chips fall afterward.

You can always, you know, do your math,

call buzz, and your apologies and paid lobbyists on the inside game and try to protect yourself in the future. But I get all the get-ins good. I think it's kind of what the mindset is, which I guess I get. I think that's absolutely right.

And of course that's shameful, but you can understand. It's unbelievably shameful and disingenuous. So never lecture us again on your supposed morality then. If that's, if that's the moral laying you're choosing, which is immoral, you know, unethical, then fine,

but live with that. And by the way, don't expect us to forgive you. What I think they're really planning on is yes getting the money now. And then buying off Democrats when they need to. And let's what they're doing.

Okay, so let's talk about that.

“And because I think it'll be important for a lot of pressure on Democrats on this.”

What are the options? Let's just say we get out of this fucking harass and it's 2020. Shine and whatever. Like there's a, there's a workable threat. You know, there's not somebody who's a crypto scam

or running the government. Okay, there are two types of things on the get your take on. One is like, what are legit reforms? And then what are legit investigations, right? Because I do think that, you know, that part of the risk,

I think that people outside of government are playing and getting the business with Trump is they could be subpoenaed. Like this administration might not investigate them, but the next one might. And, you know, is it possible to find out who's been putting money

into the various Trump coins? Or is it so anonymous that it's not possible? Like what are the options on the investigative side? The options are a lot. Great.

Well, can we start with what I would do regular regulatory rights. Okay, we'll do regulatory that in a minute. Just let me just real quickly. Because I think it's relatively simple. It just requires political will.

So all the speculative cryptocurrencies, all the ones where the number can go up and down. Bitcoin, Ethereum, FARC coin, Malani, a contract, a com rocket. Thank you. See, you jumped the punchline.

I love com rocket. Com rocket is my personal phase. Is that your favorite, too? I love com rocket. I mean, I wish there was a butt plug coin.

But since there isn't com rocket. I'm pretty sure if you say that enough on this podcast, it'll be created within the machine. Okay. All of those are investments for the retail public.

They're all putting money in, hoping to make money off of them. That is a security or should be under American law. We regulate them like securities, and just watch if crypto, how crypto does.

I'm not saying it's going to go away tomorrow. I say in the film, the crypto industry is going to keep selling a story for as long as people are buying it. And I'm not asking you for it to be outlawed.

I'm just asking for it to be regulated properly. Why does the industry not want crypto's be regulated like securities? Because securities laws are predicated on disclosure.

“You need to know who you're giving your money to”

and what they're doing with that money. Gee, I wonder why crypto doesn't want that. All right. So that's the speculative ones. For the stablecoins.

That is a different story.

It's supposed to, I mean, a lot of stablecoins.

So we're, I'm sorry. So not just the meme coins. Oh, like you think big coin and all of that. Absolutely. Yeah. 100% 100% security.

Yeah, the way Bitcoin got classified pseudo as a commodity is a very bizarre story. And it's just really like, we're the only country in the world that separates our commodities regulation

from our securities regulation. And so we've created two rival agencies competing over jurisdiction. You know, overseen by rival committees in the house and the Senate, you know,

centers and Congress people who want to be on those committees in order to get donations from the very industry as they are quote unquote regulating. It's really that. And we should consider merging the CFTC and the SECC.

And there's going to be a lot. You're going to get some comments on the board because the nerds and media like we're, we're into this. So, so security is wise.

“That's, I think, honestly, really, really simple.”

It requires a very simple piece of legislation. On the stablecoins, I think we need to ask ourselves this question if something is representing itself as a US dollar. But it is not a US dollar.

It is not backed by the full faith in credit of the Einstein's, which where do we, where does that credit come from? Us.

Us all 300 million of us.

All the work we do. We do our economy. All of the 250 year history of this country, both the good and the bad, is all contributed to us being at this point

in history where we are lucky that people are still trusting the US dollar. Give in for now. Yes, for now, given how irrational and insane our president is behaving.

So, if these people are drafting off of all of that, that is to me, a counterfeit dollar. That is a dollar at its being used for crime almost exclusively. If someone is issuing that,

and these sketchy tower guys are issuing it, and Howard Lawtonic is profiting off of it or his kids are profiting off of it. We should have an investigation into that first, honestly,

and then see what happens and see what legislation we can get through. But my guess is when everything comes out,

“like I think people are going to be shocked”

about what's happening underneath the surface. Like there is just a staggering amount of crime. So to that point on the digital dollar, like a lot of the crypto guys are very opposed to having a US digital currency.

Yeah. Yeah, central bank digital currency. I know nothing about this. This is outside of my wheelhouse, but just listening to you,

make the case for opposing, or regulating or just designing a counterfeit, stable coins, particularly US dollar would be smart to pair that with having a US government digital

coin or digital currency. I think so. The libertarians lose their mind. But why? Because they want private money,

that they may believe in. But again, like we've gone over the history, it hasn't worked before. Look, here's my thing,

libertarians, the hardcore ones that insist that crypto is a good idea. They fundamentally misunderstand what money is. So money is made up. It's just a social construct,

like government or religion. All social constructs are only as strong as the social consensus that underlies them.

And always that social consensus is in flux.

It's in perfect. All currencies are in perfect. All governments, all religions, I might add,

in practice, the actual practice of them. And the only way we've been able to figure out how to create that social consensus is originally by force.

The emperors of ancient times would, you know, you had to accept the coin or you were going to get fogged to death. But now,

they're issued through, you know, at least in our case, a democratic government, right? So all of the problems with our financial system

are really problems that start with our democratic system. So this is united in the influence of corporations and the inability for our representatives to actually represent us,

the majority of their population instead representing effectively a minority and corporations. When the crypto people think that they can just issue private money, like, what do you think is going to happen?

You can't scale the trust necessary because no one should trust these corporations that are ensuring these coins, right?

“Just like they don't trust Amazon to issue coins, right?”

Which, by the way, you're going to happen later this year, one of these big companies, the bad law that they passed, is called the Genius Act.

If you know this Congress, and the legislation is called the Genius Act, you know it has to be fucking stupid. What it does is allow corporations to issue their own money in the form of stablecoins.

This is something that meta has wanted for a very long time. They're going to be coming out with their own currencies. You need to get on Amazon, you're going to have to buy an Amazon box or meta box work. And it's very clear how they benefit

because then they have your real money that they can collect billions of billions of dollars. So they'll make money. Pretty unclear how the customers benefit. And a hundred Democrats voted for this,

including hockey and referees, including my Congressman Dan Goldman, which is why I'm supporting Brad Landard.

if you're a Democrat, I don't have a lot of litmus tests.

“But if you're a Democrat and you're having trouble”

deciding between supporting people or corporations, my humble advice to you is get the fuck out of the party. Like, I'm really angry. I'm really angry, that they are voting for literal corporate money

against the interests of their constituents.

Can I throw out there as a never-tomper?

But you can even have sold me on you being pro crypto money, if at least as a condition for passing the bill, you had done the minimum amount to put some type of regulation or limit

on what the fucking Republican president of the United States is doing to enrich himself by four billion dollars. And there's generational wealth being created by the Trump family. And you guys, it was your one leverage point that you had,

and they didn't do it. And so they went along with the genius acts and kind of like said, well, we'll deal with, we'll deal with putting some rules in place

around whether administration officials can trade and crypto. We'll deal with that down the line. Like that to me was just totally unacceptable. I should note while you were rightfully ranting,

but plug coin is available on DEX. No, DEX, you know. So we can come up with that earlier. That's already out there. You want to go in on something?

“No, I'm not going back to the cryptocurrency.”

Well, I feel like, I feel like if we're promoting it, we might be able to boost the price. Yeah. Do a little run-off.

Do a little run-off. Do a little run-off. Do a little run-off. Do a little run-off. Do a little run-off.

Do a little run-off. Do a little run-off. Do a little run-off. Do a little run-off. Come on.

I'm not a run-off guy. I'm just-- You don't want to pull the butt, pop, pop, pop. It's not a lot of pull-up. It's like, all right. It's not going to be hard.

Okay. Where was I? You got me distracted now. I'm going to let him in.

I can't remember the second part of the first part of the question.

Oh, no, I was. Can we figure out who's put money into these Trump coins? Definitely definitely. Definitely definitely. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So one of the misperceptions of crypto is that it's an anonymous blockchain, but anonymous ledger. It's not a pseudonymous. It's basically like accounts, which accounts are transacting. You know, you can follow the money.

You actually record of all of the money and where all the money went. So you can do the blockchain analytics. And you can know, you know, who's giving what to whom.

“But more, I mean, personally, I think more important for a jury.”

Let's say you're trying to get, you know, Don Jr. in 2029, not protected by the sort of, oh, he was the president of the United States. You know, I'm not protected by the office. I'm not sure those guys are real tight lips. That's just my impression of Don.

Maybe they're smart like Trump and don't send emails. Maybe. But I think there's going to be a lot of people. I think, you know, you do the investigatory thing. You work your way up the chain.

You start with a small fish. You get them to flip. I'm going to take a wild guess that that the small fish in the Trump pyramid scheme are not going to be happy with Trump by 2029. Some of their lives will have been ruined.

So start there and work up. Yeah, you got to go talk to the house over site demos. So I said to them, it's the Epstein obviously cover up as their top priority. But I think figuring out the crypto money. Because the corruption inside the administration's going to be hard.

None of those folks are going to testify. Trump's going to give them all immunity. But the people that are putting money into world-led, really financial, they're not as protected. And they might be more interested in being responsive to subpoena.

So we got to look at that. All right. Well, that's pretty good. I started the film by saying this. The only thing I need to ask you about is the O.C.

Is that starting to change? Are you becoming crypto guy now? Are you still when you get seen on the street? Are people still being like, Chris McCaw? There's a lot of that still.

However, every once in a while, a guy in a fleece fest and a college shirt comes up to me. That's fucked off. No. No.

You know who else hates crypto? Finance people. A lot of got it. The majority of them because they're smart. And they're like, this is not a legitimate investment.

So the goodie too. She's finding it's guys. Oh, good. You mean non non supporting criminals, guys? Those those guys.

Yeah. The goodie too. She uses what they call them now. In this current age. What do law-biting people?

I'm sure your friends are are wonderful people.

And I would never disparage all of them.

But anyway, they come up to me. And then they're occasionally there. They're big fans of my work. You know, on the book in the movie. And they don't.

They literally are not familiar with my work as an actor. And I could kiss these guys, you know. You know, I could do it. I love that. A friend Adam Brody.

He's also had a kind of rejuvenation in his career. Is that a work rejuvenated. He's been rejuvenated as a career as hot rabbi. And so now you guys in like middle age have this, these whole new brands for yourself.

You know, you are anti-crypto. Woe you're fighting for justice. Yeah. He's hot rabbi. Yeah.

Like, do you feel like he mugged you on that one or like, Who do you feel like who's second act? Do you think is? I so I see.

First of all, we're friends.

I saw him literally this last weekend. Well, I got trouble with Chad Michael Murray. So I'm now trying to start a fat spell. Yeah. Like what the fuck did?

So he did a Q&A with me after a screening. Because of course sold out in minutes. Yeah. And we had a chance to reconnect. I am so happy for him.

He is in such a good place in his life. He is so good in that role. And he's also a Jewish American himself. And I think, you know, I don't want to put words in his mouth.

But he's a very thoughtful person.

“And I think he's recognized as he has a platform.”

So I'll be interested to see what he does with it. But he is a good one. He is a real one. I am very happy for him. I think he wouldn't.

Hot rabbi. I wouldn't. I'm sorry. Okay. It's fine.

I mean, you're doing great.

I'm really proud of you. You know, we're going through the whole list of O.C. characters and talking about how they're O.C. characters. People playing those characters. You understand these people.

Are you? Are you feeling sorry? Are you feeling sorry to be called a character? You know? I don't know.

I don't mean it like that. I'm feeling sorry. If we went through the list of all the actors.

“You know, you're saying that actors play characters, right?”

Yeah. I do. Oh, I'm fictional people. Actors are real people. Okay.

It seems to be a little squishy.

Yeah. Well, I don't see it was kind of real for me. Okay. I'm sorry. A lot of these other things are some distance.

Okay. I felt as if I was there. Yeah. Yeah. I cared a lot.

I was invested in you guys. It was the time when I was doing the most pot in my life. So it was easy to kind of. Right. You know, put yourself there in your mind.

You just imagined you were on like a bicycle, like writing behind. Like I was writing the bike. You were me Shabarden behind me. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, I mean, what?

“Misha, we'll talk about it another time.”

Okay. That's been McKenzie. He's pretty good. That's not right now. What?

I was literally about to say that's right. See, there's no difference. I can't tell. Unbelievable. He's a good guy.

He's one of the good ones. Go watch his movie. Go watch his movie. Everyone is lying to you for money. I'm not.

I'm not. But most, many people are lying to you for money. Right now. I'm putting the pleasure of the United States. I appreciate all the time, brother.

And, you know, we'll schedule around football. Yeah, next time I won't hit you up on a Saturday in the fall in New Orleans. We'll go for a Friday drink instead. Oh, my brother. We'll see you all soon.

Appreciate it. All right. Thanks so much to Sarah Matthews. So pumped to have her in the bullwork fan. And obviously, just smitten to be able to hang out with Ryan Outwood.

There's Mackenzie. We'll be back tomorrow with another one. The podcast is going to be a good one. See you all then. The board podcast is brought to you.

Thanks to the Lord of Lead Producer Katie Cooper. Associate Producer Ansley Skipper. And with video editing by Katie Lutz. And audio engineering and editing. The board podcast is brought to you.

Thanks to the Lord of Lead Producer Katie Cooper. Associate Producer Ansley Skipper. And with video editing by Katie Lutz. And audio engineering and editing. video editing by Katie Loots and audio engineering in editing by Jason Brown.