Crypto, Con Men, and the Golden Age of Fraud With Ben McKenzie

About this episode

Crypto promised money that needs no trust. Ben McKenzie thinks that promise is the con. New episode out now. Michael J. Hershman sits down with Ben McKenzie, actor turned author, known for The O.C., Southland and Gotham, and now one of crypto's best known skeptics, for a conversation about fraud, money and what happens to a country that stops trusting its own institutions. Inside this one: why an economics graduate watching crypto ads around live sport in 2021 decided he had a duty to warn people, and what it felt like to be proved right in 2022; what he learned interviewing Sam Bankman Fried and Alex Mashinsky before both went to prison, and why he thinks most frauds start with one small…