From Ponzi to Power: Crypto’s Quiet Transformation

Ben McKenzie, best known as Ryan Atwood from The O.C., fell into cryptocurrency during the pandemic the way many people did: a friend told him to buy Bitcoin. But unlike most celebrities who spent COVID shilling crypto, McKenzie—who holds an economics degree from the University of Virginia—started asking basic questions. When his friend couldn't explain what Bitcoin actually did, McKenzie went down a rabbit hole that led to a bestselling book, a documentary called Everyone Is Lying to You for Money, and a front-row seat to crypto's evolution from pandemic-era mania to a vehicle for political influence worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

Crypto as Pure Marketing

McKenzie’s core argument is simple: crypto has no product. "All you're buying is lines of computer code stored on ledgers called blockchains," he says. "They don't have any relationship to anything in the real world. Really all you're buying is a story. It's not that Bitcoin has no marketing department. It's that crypto is only marketing."