Ben McKenzie (on cryptocurrency)

22:08You know what I mean? Oh, fuck yeah. Like, at least get your hands up so he 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 them. Well, that's interesting. You hear me a lot, but you don't see me a ton. You don't see me deliver the line. You see them reacting to me deliver the line. Okay, so I guess Gotham is the last series you run for an extended period of time. And what I admire and relate to is, I guess, season three, you direct an episode. And then season four, this is even better, you write an episode. It's fucking great.

22:37Every 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 Schenken, is a playwright and a screenwriter. Pulitzer Prize winner. Pulitzer 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 hundred hours of TV, that I was like, I got to try a new thing. You got to give me more stuff to do. Basically, I just kept asking them. You know, I got to go to the writer's room after the first year and sit with them and hang with them.

23:09I 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 let you try it. It went bad for me. I spec wrote an episode of Parenthood. I'm like, I'm going to write an episode of this show. That's so ballsy. I've already sold screenplays. I'm already like a writer. I should have just asked, can I write? But instead I'm like, I'm going to just spec 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 episodic. You could just write a random spec episode.

23:40I 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. Oh, really? 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 we just drop episodes into this? 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.

24:09You've been in the room at least a little bit. I do remember doing a pass and like, there was a lot of red. There was a lot of suggestions. Yeah, there was suggestions slash we're just 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. There's a lot of stuff where I was like, okay, he needs to go up and then he 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.

24:38It 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 Doc? What's the order of events? So Gotham ends 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. Got shut down immediately. So it didn't actually. It actually was a limited run that closed on its own.

25:10Oh. March 2nd of 2020. Okay. I had gotten a pilot. I was like about to go shoot this pilot. And the next week, New York shut down. Oh, because of COVID. I was wondering because it got nominated for a Tony. What play was it? Grand Horizons, written by Bess Wohl, who I had known for like 20 years. We'd done summer stock theater together. It was a really cool. That is cool. Moment. But yeah, then pandemic hits. I don't know about you, but I was freaking out. Well, you were in New York too, right? We were in New York, yeah. And my wife has chronic asthma. And so given what we didn't know at the time, we were freaking out.

25:42And so we moved out of the city. Did you have new babies yet or not? Yeah, we did. Young kids. We didn't have our third kid yet, but we had our first two. Yeah, it's a lot. It's a lot. So we ended up renting a place in western Connecticut. Beautiful area. It's northwestern Connecticut. And it was so tranquil and lovely. There was some land. There was a pond on the land. I remember my stepson going out and like catching frogs every day. and my second kid was singing, The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow. Annie. On repeat. On repeat. At that moment, tears. In those tears, right? Because you're feeling at that moment.

26:14Is it? Right. Is it? You know, I really hope it comes out tomorrow. It's like ominous. Fingers crossed. Yeah, so a lot of emotions. But I was like looking for the next thing. And 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 with my money. Real estate, index funds. I know enough that I don't know that much. My buddy Dave comes to me. and I've known Dave since UVA, but Dave had been one exception to my conservative investing because he had come to me and said, in the mid-aughts, he was like living in my guest house as I was shooting the OC.

26:43He was like, dude, you got to buy stock in this company. This like obscure company that I had never heard of. He had found out from a dude at a wedding. From dude at a wedding. It's always that way. 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 wasn't like a ton of money, but it was like 10 grand or something. And he put far less, but a little.

27:09And 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 to have. It wasn't what's her name. Theranos. Theranos. It sounds like that. Like a precursor to that, right? So anyway, Dave came back to me in 2020. He's like, dude, you got to hit Bitcoin. He's horny for Bitcoin. It's 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 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.

27:39They'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 nose dive really, really fast. Yeah. So in the macro, they did the right thing in terms of keeping the economy from crashing. But the result, 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 in their apartments with their phones and they have nothing else to do. So why not gamble on crypto?

28:10And so crypto just goes nuts. And so Dave says, I'm going to buy Bitcoin. I'm like, Dave, I'm not going to do that. But what is it? And he's like, it's a cryptocurrency. This is in the doc. How was that recorded or was that reenacted? The movie's called Everyone is Lying for Money. Okay, okay, 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 docudrama element that you're gonna have to tell a story. Yes. A personal story, not just a story of crypto. Exactly. So we did. We created it. I was just like, how did he have the foresight?

28:38I know. Okay. Not that smart. Okay. I asked Dave, like, what is it? I'm not that tech savvy. 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'm like, 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? this, Dave? And Dave is like, uh, 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.

29:05And he's like, well, it's kind of both. I'm like, I'm not sure. Because you can't invest in currency other than trying to trade on the margin of the value of the U.S. dollar versus the Swiss mark. Exactly. You can't just buy a currency and the currency goes through the roof because that's just inflation. Exactly. You're holding something that has the exact same value, even though the numbers went And if the inflation was as steep as it is in crypto. It would be World War III. Yeah, it would be insane, right? It would be the apocalypse. Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare. We are supported by Allstate.

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31:26So I started looking into it and I couldn't stop. Well, I think what would be helpful, too, 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 08 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.

31:58By nature, I'm very, very skeptical. And I could spin a story from my childhood of why I'm skeptical, but I don't know. But is it fair to say, are you skeptical? You've 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, and one of us has to pick a new instrument, because that's my role, too. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not always good when two meet, because then it's... Yeah, yeah, yeah.

32:26And I also have a hard time, like, I just go deep. I'm not really good at multitasking. I'm good at, I'm going to do this right now. Do you have an explanation for this? Do you 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 projects. There's no competing projects.

32:55Yeah, but the irony is that's what they were doing, too. Exactly. I was doing the same thing they were. Yeah. Right? Or effectively, like a mirror image of what 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, this shit really doesn't feel right. If it's not actually being used as currency, which it wasn't then, it isn't now really, Bitcoin in particular. I couldn't go to my neighborhood deli in Brooklyn and buy a bagel with 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.

33:24But whatever the reasons were, it wasn't being used that way. It was being used as an investment. And the retail public, the regular public, was being sold on this idea that everyone could get rich instantaneously for free off of this thing that very few people understood. Or used. And then the celebrities got in. And I was pretty sure the celebrities didn't know what they were talking about either. I don't want to talk trash about any one specific person. They're all lovely. Almost everyone that got ensnared in it, I like. Totally. And I don't want to be a jerk. What I did know or what I felt pretty confident about was having been in Hollywood and having been in show business, like I could have imagined how this went.

33:58which is like all of a sudden the crypto exchanges where all these cryptos are actually traded. And again, they're traded. You're going on these weird places to like 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 a ton of money and they want to keep marketing it. And so I just imagined a scenario where insert crypto exchange, they go, they have$100 million marketing budget and they're going to the three agencies that are left or whatever it is. And they're like, hey. We have 10 million bucks.

34:27Of a certain caliber actor, we will pay them$10 million. For a one-day shoot. So I get it. It's perfect confluence of opportunity. And there's nothing wrong with celebrities hawking consumer goods, hawk soap or cars or whatever. You call out your wife. She's in a commercial. Yeah, in front of Miranda because she did like a hair commercial. There's nothing wrong with that. I mean, the reason celebrities are hired is because they have a relationship to 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 Miranda Baccarat in it.

34:54So, you know, buy it. It's totally legitimate and fine. but this was a financial product. This was an investment of some kind in something. I didn't know this until the doc. So as you point out in the doc, 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 you'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.

35:23Yeah. 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 her followers and then it crashed fantastically. And the guy that I wrote the book with, Jacob Silverman, we wrote an article, our first article was like criticizing celebrities and using this as an example. And she ultimately had to pay a fine to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

35:54Oh, wow. 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? Am I a 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 distasteful and dangerous. Dangerous for the public, of course, but also even for the celebrities themselves. Also, look, 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.

36:30I 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 blame to spread around, probably. Oh, definitely. Yeah, yeah. I mean, that was my kind of sarcastic advice to the celebrities after the thing crashed and all these celebrities got a lot of egg on their face. I'm like, blame your agent. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, you got it right there. That's what they're there for. Yes. They're there to give you the advice, and then they give you the bad advice, and you just blame it.

36:56That's what you've been giving them this money for. Exactly. No, I love agents. All good. I think we should do five minutes. I just want to first start by saying, and I only learned this through, I'm kind of obsessed with biographies from the end of the 1800s. So if you're reading the Cornelius 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. Regulation stopped that pandemic of bank collapses, which were happening all the time in like dominoes.

37:36Also the creation of the central bank or the Fed. That was really the thing that 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 this point. And so the idea was a bank was allowed to issue its own notes, its own currency. If it held a certain amount of state bonds, you were allowed one chapter of your bank, one physical location.

38:11And so sometimes people would set them up as far away from their depositors as they could where the wildcats 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 gonna deposit your money and I'm gonna get, let's say, I have$100 million of people's money they've deposited. And now I'm gonna make loans with that money that you've entrusted me with. And I'm gonna charge a percentage on that. And that's how I'm gonna make money.

38:41And part of the regulations that was like, well, how much money should they hold? Let's have a minimum amount percentage that the bank still has to withhold in case people want to 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 08. And it's pretty darn stable as far as world banking goes. The U.S. has done a good job. Yeah, since the Great Depression, that's where securities laws come from. Because there really weren't securities laws at the federal level prior to the 1930s.

39:11and 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 under 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 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 even illegal.

39:40No, it wasn't legal. So 08, we get a new kind of version of it, right? So in 08, it's all blamed on the subprime mortgage crisis. And if people remember, they were encouraging people to remortgage their house. They were encouraging people to take these no interest loans. And that was blamed on that. But that's not the real story of the 08 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 collapse is on top of the$68 billion, they built products that were anchored in those products that amounted to$1.2 trillion.

40:17So we have these things, credit default swaps. So I don't own this stock, but I can insure it. So I'm going to insure Lehman Brothers. Say I have$10 million of value in there. I'm going to pay this little fee to insure that in case it collapses, I'll get paid out$10 million on 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.

40:49When they were testifying, they're like, explain this. And like one person at the firm understands this product they invented, but they sold to a bazillion people. So again, we're in a situation in 08 where the entire financial industry is 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. 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.

41:20Also, no one went to jail. One guy went to jail. And people got huge bonuses in the same year. 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 just lays out the sort of intellectual foundation of Bitcoin. Both the cryptography, but also the goals. What are we trying to do here? So it's the height of the subprime crisis.

41:53people are so angry at the banks, like even more than usual. And what the white paper proposes, wouldn't it be cool if we could avoid these fuckers who have 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 it sounds like a good idea. And it's built on this new technology, blockchain. Well, that's what's interesting is it's new-ish, but it's not really that new. Like blockchain goes back to 1991. There were these guys, we're going to get real dorky here. We can do this, right? Let's go dorky. So blockchain, I would say, started with Stuart Haver and Scott Stornetta at Bell Labs, building off the work of cryptographers like David Chom, who I interviewed for the book.

42:31There had been this idea of trying to do encrypted money, money that would ultimately be very useful to be able to transact online. And so they were 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 encryption is actually vital to our modern economy. But blockchain had been around since 1991, and the Bitcoin white paper didn't come out until 2008.

43:03So 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 an obscure mailing list, very, very few people. These are like really hardcore. Cryptographers? Nerdy cryptographers, or whatever. I guess all cryptographers are probably nerds in some way. I'd say that with love. 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.

43:32But 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 it's worth$9 billion. 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. And anyway, it got shut down by the feds. But crypto proved, because what a blockchain is, is just a ledger of transactions.

44:03It's just a record. They call them wallets. This wallet sent something of value to this other wallet. But it's synonymous. It 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 pseudonymous, 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 being pitched as completely anonymous. It was pitched as anonymous, but to me, the crypto story is quite simple in the sort of the broadest sense.

44:36It's two parts. The first is, do you hate our current system? Right. Every single person raises their hands, right? Right. We all have 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 sort of articulate different reasons why they believe in it. But that really is the essence of it to me. It's essential 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.

45:07And so just to be perfectly clear, I love marijuana. Like I have a medical card. I'm not knocking drugs. You were also buying much harder drugs and doing stuff that was much worse than that, including child sexual abuse material and all sorts of really gnarly 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 SoCo had 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.

45:44Yes, there are people behind this like supposedly computerized future. There's always people. And he was secretly funding it through a thing called the 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 of 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 and state tax, and they decide, I don't know why I have to pay another 50 % tax to give this to my children.

46:25I'd like to get this money somewhere else without the U.S. government. Sure. This could be a system by which I could do that and no one can see it or 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 it can send something of value instantaneously anywhere in the world and avoid the regulated system, including the banks. And so I was hearing a story of a woman in 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.

46:55I don't personally know this person, so this was secondhand, but I have heard similar stories. Yeah, yeah. So we can all agree that's a good thing. We like that. Later, we can critique, are those arguments true? And Bitcoin's so volatile that it's not stable, so does it 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.

47:32We just don't like those laws because we're in another country. We have different values. Right. But to accept that that is good, we also have to accept the bad. If we're being intellectually honest, we can't just hand wave away. I mean, to give you a sense of the amount of crime in crypto, So last year, a crypto company estimated$154 billion of criminal activity was facilitated via crypto. $154 billion is a lot of money. It's a massive amount 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.

48:05You know, it's a massive amount of crime. And to give you a sense of the kinds of crime, it's like Russian oligarchs selling sanctioned oil to the Chinese in exchange for drones that they send to Ukraine. Right. It's like global criminal cartels. There's a Southeast Asian system of credit called Hawala, I think is 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 have sent this to you.

48:38And 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 DAX a dollar. You take it from me not because you trust me. You trust that you can use it. U.S. government and that someone else will accept it. 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 its 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.

49:14It was so volatile that it really wasn't an effective unit of account and store of value. Now, all currencies are fallible, just like all social constructs, all humans. So none of these are perfect. Imagine a bagel costs$1 and then$10 and then$0.10. 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 recession, which is actually, well, whatever. We're getting a little far afield, but it's actually what contributed to the Great Depression. 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.

49:53Like 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. Real, right? Yeah, 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 countries 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.

50:22It 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 Lilaquah Ahmed that talks about the central bankers of the 1930s and their adherence 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 at the time, they could have staved off the worst of it. And that was really one of the takeaways from economists like John Maynard Keynes. Why are we sticking to this thing? So Keynes 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.

51:01Why 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 a playful sequence at the beginning of the film, this graphic sequence, just showing you very quickly all of the different things that have been used as money over the years. You know, feathers and different coins, things like that. Okay, now we have to go back to where we were before.

51:32So 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, the 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 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 the stock's going up.

52:11But 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 and 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 is going to determine its performance is going to determine the value of that stock. It's important to understand that.

52:44And 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 Google's search. Yeah, because they're selling advertising on the back. Exactly, right? 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 it's used for.

53:14And 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 fool theory. Greater fool theory is when a speculative asset rises so far beyond any real world use it could have, any real world value, that really its price is determined by your ability to buy it and sell it to a fool greater than yourself. Right. Which is a really fun game until it tops out and you're the biggest idiot holding the bag. If it's an investment, but there's no product really. Or service. I don't even get how it works even in crime.

53:49Why would I? I don't get it. Well, because I'm a cartel boss in Colombia. 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 this, Dex. This is exactly right. Why would the apartment guy want it when he then can't use it to buy anything in the world? Yes, it does have to cash shot on the other end. Usually, although if you follow that Southeast Asian Hawala example, he could then send it somewhere else and get something else that he wants.

54:30Drugs. At some point someone's like, I want money. That's the best part. The thing that it promised to do, it actually doesn't even do. Exactly. Did you watch that thing on Netflix? It was called the biggest heist of all time. It was 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 it to that thing.

55:05So they were sitting there with$8 billion. It was completely fucking useless. Totally. They were not living like billionaires. No. So it's not even the thing that was promised to be. Yeah, she was like financing the world's shittiest rap videos. Right, wasn't she? She was wild. What was their rap name? I forget. Something with a cat, maybe? She was a cat. Something so weird. It was so fantastic. Yeah, they were both 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.

55:36It's really this lawless system of, like, black market money that's circulating all over the globe, right? Corrupt governments, corrupt politicians. Sure, sure. 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 it didn't occur to me. It's kind of funny in retrospect, 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 had taken an edible and I was like, oh, I'm going to write a book.

56:05There's a lot of people who have this experience. And I woke up the next morning. I was like, fuck, I don't know how to write a book. You know, I took another edible. I was like, oh, just like find someone else who knows how to write it together. A journalist, Jacob Silverman, had written an article for Slate that the headline is, even Donald Trump knows Bitcoin is a scam. Because Donald Trump, as recently as 2021, was calling Bitcoin a scam, which is interesting now. We can talk about that later. But I thought that was funny. He was a tech sort of critic for Slate and other places. And I just had a good way about him, online anyway.

56:31Followed him on 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 hit him 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 and Slate. And we wrote different articles for different places like the Washington Post and Intercept and places like that.

56:58And 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 into IRL. and we were going to South by Southwest in Austin to give like a talk. And I was like, I should just turn the 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.

57:35We'll give you this return on your crypto. It's really high rate of return. It's like 15 % or something. that's like literally the definition of a Ponzi scheme or one of the definitions of a Ponzi scheme or one of the tells of a Ponzi scheme. And yet they were operating, they were being sued by the Texas securities regulator at that time, but it hadn't been adjudicated yet. So they still could technically sell their customers on it. And I look at the booth and I'm just like, and then I look over the other side of the room and there's the CEO, just like sitting. What's his name? Alex Mashensky.

58:02He's sitting with these other guys. And then I'm like, well, I got to do this, right? These guys are just hanging on a couch in this convention. The whole thing looks like you've walked into a Boost mobile store here in East L.A. You have the largest Boost mobile store ever. Yes. So Celsius was presenting itself as a bank, even though it said explicitly on their website they were not a bank. Very small font. Yeah, give us your money like a bank, and we're going to give you a 15 % return. Which, again, and you point blank asked the guy, so how are you making money? And he can't answer me. Because he's like, we're the opposite of bank.

58:33We're about the community. He's a Ukrainian. I can't want to do his accent. But he's like, we're about the— I am going to do it. Apologies to any Ukrainian friends. I'm a big pro-Ukrainian. Yeah, I do, we do. 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. That was our first day of filming. Like, he said stuff like, the camera cut out, but we had the audio, it's in the movie. I asked him, like, how much real money is in crypto?

59:02He's like, 10, 15%. The rest is 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$125 to one leverage. So they would give you like$125 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 call.

59:41Margin call is 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 more money in because 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 hardcore crypto people or a segment of them call themselves DGENs, which stands for degenerate gamblers. They're owning it. They're owning it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. is right too, by the way. But I kind of admire it more. I guess. It's a very male thing, I will say.

1:00:10I'm a DJ. And you're like, okay. Sounds like it's a little bit. Yeah, a little bit. A little adjacent. Sounds like there might be some crossover. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. He said some crazy stuff. Like, he said things like, I asked him about all the fraud in crypto. And he goes, you leave 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 investor's fault for like just not, it's like, well. The marketing guy's like on the other side, and he's like, no, no, no, no, no, don't say that. You're also asking if he's being investigated for any criminal activity or if there's any kind of legal cases.

1:00:42Legal proceedings. Yeah, and he claims zero. And there were multiple at that time. In fact, I think they'd already been shut out of New Jersey. I think the New Jersey Securities Regulatory had already shut them down. Anyway, yeah, it was just nonsense. And so that's the first day. I'm like, well, I got to keep going. Yeah. And it got weirder from there, actually. Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert. if you dare.

1:01:12So the part that was a revelation to me, you interview 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 worth of crypto. They buy it for themselves for$200, which they didn't lose any money because they gave themselves the$200.

1:01:50Now it has the appearance of being worth$200, and then they sell it for$400. That blew my mind, that 95 % of the trades are these bullshit trades. I don't know if the percentage— That's his claim. I'm not making that claim. But just a note, 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. Okay. 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 and banked.

1:02:23And they told you you had X amount of Bitcoin. Right. The 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. Remember in the mid-aughts, all of a sudden you could gamble with real money online. Yeah, right, right. It was like full tilt and ultimate bet and things like that. And Dave was really into this. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, shocking.

1:02:52And I loved poker. I was living up in Nichols Canyon. I was single. I had an actual poker table in my house. It was that guy. But like I loved it. It was fun. and we'd hang out with buddies and drink a beer and take each other's money. But I never messed with online poker. And I remember asking Dave, so you're gambling with real money. Where are you sending the money? And he goes, it's the same places. They were based in the same Caribbean countries that the crypto guys were running their companies out of, which is such a vivid illustration of what we're talking about to the retail public. This is gambling.

1:03:17Sports betting now, too. 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 players could. That's starting to happen. Well, that's one of the problems with making this gambling so ubiquitous. It's like it just compromises everybody, including the leagues. I would say the leagues are in on it now. Yeah, it's a mess. It's all sponsored by... Yeah, we have Michael Lewis on to talk about his podcast on this. Oh, interesting. This is another terrible... And again, this is where I get pretty sympathetic to these people.

1:03:46It's preying on a lot of young men that are increasingly not going to college. There's a 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 or I'm going to get rich on crypto. It'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, have traded crypto. 42%, almost half. That's a lot of young dudes, right? And look, most guys are just messing around. They're just messing around with a little bit of money.

1:04:19And I never got off for 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. The thing I asked is like, just imagine you lost whatever you put in, like all of it, instantaneously. Would it 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. I'm more mad at the Wall Street dudes who have drank the Kool-Aid, the institutional banks that have drank it.

1:04:50Me 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 now 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 crowing 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 rake, taking a tiny piece of the volume.

1:05:21There's a thing called ETS, exchange traded funds. They're sort of like mutual funds where 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, this crypto exchange. And they're 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 Bankman? And I think it was Peter Thiel. 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.

1:05:54I was an investor and I'd do it again because the model of VC is like, yeah, I'm going to lose on a bunch of these, but the payoff is going to be so big. And his thing was so compelling. And 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. It'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 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 win and how many people lose.

1:06:29So economically, if these things are more just gambling devices than actual investments and things that exist in the real world, what are they? They're zero-sum games, which is like poker, right? Like let's say we all sit at a table in 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 rake. The house takes a tiny bit of money to allow the game to go so they can pay the dealer.

1:06:58And so can you win in Vegas? Of course. But if you play long enough in Vegas, on average, you're losing. Yes. Because how else do they keep the lights on in 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, unregulated casino. Or maybe if it's an American exchange, maybe I guess it's loosely or somewhat regulated. But you can also do this thing where you win all these poker chips and you go to the teller to cash out.

1:07:27And the teller window's closed. They're not going to cash you out. 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 you lost big time. There's another part I'll just add of my sympathy to it. is like there's not only the lack of opportunity and just kind of this really troubled group of young men right now. Also, you're not acknowledging that it's an instant community for a lot of guys. Yeah. Because once you get into Bitcoin, you talk about it all the time and you go to chat rooms and you watch the videos of the people that are super on those.

1:07:56It 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 bond 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 Vicente kept talking about.

1:08:29Do it for the community, do it for the community. But I asked them after they lost all this money. So Celsius collapsed, Alex Vicente went to jail. He had made tens of millions of dollars off of these people. I asked him, now, do you think the Celsius community was like a real thing? They were all like, no. Oh, God. It was a lie. They still believed in crypto, interestingly enough. Yeah? When you're running a con, when you're running a fraud, it's way easier to do that online than it is in real life. It's hard to lie to people's faces. Well, you can't fake buildings and actual people. The difference between, had I gone to Celsius's website back then and looked up professional, it looked and smart, versus when I saw you talking to that guy, my first thought was like you wouldn't trust this guy to sell you a fucking watch.

1:09:07He's so obviously a fucking crook. Exactly. It's a used car salesman all over the place. And I asked one of the guys who had lost money in it. He made that point. He's 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 produced videos, talking about how everyone's going to make money. And they were so great. And they came about the community. So that's just an observation about how frauds work, which I think is really fascinating and kind of dark. Yeah, just preying on the vulnerable. Yeah. I want you to talk about going to El Salvador.

1:09:35Just tell quickly the story of El Salvador because I think it's really heartbreaking. If you don't feel bad for tech bros, which I can understand. Exactly. We went to El Salvador. 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 don't want to say stunt, but it was really. A national experiment in like, can Bitcoin work as money? Almost as their national currency. Yeah. That's where it was going to be heading. Parallel to the dollar.

1:10:03They were already dollarized. El Salvador is a very poor country. The average Salvadoran 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 Salvadoran descent who live here send home to their friends and family. That's really how the economy works. And so they would use things like Western Union and MoneyGram in order to send money home. The pitch from this guy Bukele, who now American audiences are familiar with for a different reason. But this guy Bukele came in. He was a former marketing guy.

1:10:33And he had the idea that, well, 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 MoneyGram charge, because it could be like, you know, 5 or 10 percent or something like that. And we just take a tiny piece, like we take a much smaller percentage. to facilitate it, then it's a win-win. Do people win? We win. Government raises a little money. So they did this big system. And you got a wacky president in the mix. That's important. You're charismatic, bizarre. A little Trumpy. Son of a rich guy.

1:11:03Tweeting all the time and saying, like, not what you would think of as a leader of a country. Tweets. Bragging about buying Bitcoin while seated on the toilet. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, very. Videos of himself looking cool. Yeah, refer to himself at one point on his Twitter handle as the world's coolest dictator. That's who you want as your president? Yeah, yeah. It was very weird. So anyway, with much fanfare, they announced that Bitcoin was going to be currency. They had this system called Chivo. Chivo means cool, which to me is so lame that they named their system. You can't call something cool.

1:11:30Don't call something cool. Such a rookie government move. Bad move on a marketing guy. Anyway, they gave everybody like 30 bucks of Bitcoin. Every Salvadoran 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 was 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 a few minutes or a few hours or something like that, which is really interesting because if you think of the whole thing as a lot of insider trading, that might be front-running.

1:12:07You 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 a ton of money. Anyway, I have no evidence that that's true, but it is weird that it crashed so quickly. That failed, but Bukele was undeterred. He was like, we're going to build a Bitcoin city in eastern El Salvador. We're going to mine Bitcoin from a volcano, and we're going to build a city off of the proceeds. And there was like a model of this golden city, very Gaddafi-esque. And I'm like, okay, I got to go check it out.

1:12:41So we drove 100 miles east, tiny little fishing village, super remote. San Salvador is a somewhat big city, but it's a very small country. They are also a net importer of electricity. Like, they don't produce enough electricity for their own country already. Yeah. So this was not financially feasible, but it was a marketing ploy. They're going to build a city. They're going to build an airport to service the city. So I go out there. There's nothing 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 going to exist.

1:13:09It still doesn't exist to this day in any form. But they wanted to build an airport, which I don't know what that's about exactly, because I already have an international airport 100 miles away. I will say, I don't know if this is related, but there's a lot of drug smuggling and money laundering in Central and South America. Anyway, they displaced this whole community. So I'm talking to this fisherman named Wilfredo, who doesn't know Bitcoin. Like, the guy fishes for a living. And he's like, what is going on in this world? The government, like, bought up their land for a fraction of what it was worth.

1:13:35Bukele controls the judiciary, so there wasn't any real ability to appeal 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. Yeah. You're going to all these different vendors. That's the other thing. That's really telling. You're like, 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 that. No, which is the biggest market in San Salvador, the capital. And it's funny. I'm just going through the market asking to pay for things in Bitcoin.

1:14:09Everything is cash there. Everything is cash dollars. And they're just looking at me like, I'm the stupidest gringo that ever 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 that point. Bitcoin convention. You can't buy anything at the convention with Bitcoin. Yeah. I'm trying to buy a beer of Bitcoin. And then they all know how to work. They got to process it. And he's like, how long? He's like, 20 minutes. So think of a currency where you got to wait 20 minutes to get a beer. It's not a currency. No, it really isn't.

1:14:38And 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 has actually abandoned the whole crypto project. To get a loan from the IMF, they basically had to say, like, no, we're not actually even doing the Bitcoin thing anymore. The takeaway for me is, A, it's very sad that this 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 white dude from Illinois who works construction.

1:15:07construction just moved down there. Want to be the first citizen of? Bitcoin City. This imaginary city living in a cinderblock 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? Build a house that isn't made out of cinderblocks or buy a motorcycle or I don't know. And it was very clear he was never going to sell this.

1:15:31Yeah, it takes on a religious quality to it. Exactly. So that really illustrated a lot. It was like both the cult of it, the marketing of it, the lack of substance of it in basically every level. So yeah, El Salvador is really important to the story. What's wild about it is it was always going to be a part of the movie because 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 in crypto. It's like, well, this is a tangible thing that's happened. But I was like, no one's ever going to care about El Salvador. I couldn't have found it on a map beforehand.

1:15:59And 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-Fried. I think he thinks he's coming to meet the dude from the aforementioned show. You start hitting him with some pretty hard questions. It's funny, this was the point where my 13-year-old, because he's so nervous and he's so autistic, that she's feeling bad for him. I could see her feeling more and more bad for this guy. And I said, oh, honey, he stole billions from people. You don't need to feel bad for this guy.

1:16:34Even 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 J.P. Morgan of crypto, which is a reference to like when J.P. Morgan had to bail out all of these banks, get his rich friends to keep the economy from crashing prior to when we had a central bank. Anyway, he was like the king of the world.

1:16:59And then you sat with him and 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, remittances. And I just bend to my side with him. I'm like, bullshit. And then he goes, well, it's not working now, but in the future. And you go, and it doesn't function as a currency. And he's like, yeah, well, now it doesn't. It will in the future. 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.

1:17:28whereas Visa can do 24 ,000. So it just can't scale as a payments method. Other blockchains are faster, but they're not limited in supply, right? Like Bitcoin is, the 21 million Bitcoin that ever can 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, I asked Sam, like, can Bitcoin ever work as a payments method? He's like, no. So I think that argument that Bitcoin even is a money in any scalable global way is kind of falling away. You don't see people arguing for that anymore. But I just thought that's worth mentioning because it's really important to understand the tech sucks.

1:18:04I 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 and 100x. That's the person screaming from the rooftops about it, of course. Totally. What's the real fallout of it? Are they like MLMs? Like what percentage makes 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 percent of the people lose because it's really just about getting something for free or very cheap and then selling it to someone for more.

1:18:43And it relies on new recruits. The second there's no more new recruits, the money can't flow up and the entire thing collapses. Exactly. And so one of the strongest psychological arguments that Bitcoiners have is you'll say like all these facts that we've been talking about and they go, I bet you wish you were you had bought 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 retort is, well, if you bought in early. If you're at the top of it. It's like, dude, that's literally how Ponzi schemes and multi-level marketing schemes work.

1:19:12That's not a refutation of my argument. That's just a psychological trick trying to give you FOMO, right? Trying to make you wish that you had bought in early. And yes, I can wish I had that money. It doesn't mean I think the thing is real. Right, exactly. Or good for the world. Or good for the world. Yes, 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 talk to people in Celsius who were definitely affected materially by that loss.

1:19:42Yeah, I feel terrible for that guy in the dock. Me too, man. His wife's, like, disappointed in him. His daughter. You know, I'm a dad, and he feels like he let her down. I'm like, ugh. 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 we have 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 sell off this crypto? They can't. There's too many sellers and not enough buyers. And it crashes and it also infects the banking system, which it almost did.

1:20:21In 2023, just months after I testified to the Senate, and I'm telling them, like, if we get this into our banks, it's going to be bad. Three months later, three banks fail. And they're all tied to crypto. And then the U.S. government had to bail them out. And the whole point was to fuck you to the U.S. government to 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 U.S. dollar was. Right. And so it defeats the entire premise initially pitched. Three banks collapse. Yeah. That's terrifying.

1:20:51And yeah, so if the subprime mortgage collapse was on the back of$78 billion or 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. Trillion? 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 real U.S. 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.

1:21:22It's always whatever the U.S. 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. 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 stay stable. Most of that$154 billion that I'm talking about, most of that of criminal activity last year was stable coins. I want to say for anyone listening who's like, it might sound too technical.

1:21:55The 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 treaded 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 who's been on the unnamed show before yeah yeah like what what has been the fallout of you going on many many very big shows and sounding the alarm on this what kind of reaction have you received I mean 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.

1:22:37I loved Twitter. I met Jacob Silverman on Twitter. It's such a good thing for a journalist and you got all this news. But then Elon took it over and all of a sudden I got hacked on Twitter and I can't get into my accounts. My account sits there, but I haven't posted in years. I kept getting hacked into from places like Russia, which is interesting. Okay. This is after I was outspoken in crypto. 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 medias or at least some of them and it's a way better experience.

1:23:07So 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 what you 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 dollars in holding in this quote asset and i can point to a guy who made that asset depreciate right like a rock although i haven't exactly succeeded in that so uh you know hopefully i'm not singled out 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 is my hope so you're not too scared it's a ballsy doc let's just say that there's any number of docs you could have and to me this one does seem pretty risk heavy.

1:24:03Definitely. 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. With status in public from television. 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 it are doing anything wrong. I just feel like I have a responsibility. Yeah. If you feel the pull, then you should do it.

1:24:38And I feel like, weirdly, I'm way qualified for this. Yeah. Like, it's strange. It's a weird thing to say, especially for people that only know me from the OC. 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 legit question. Like, why do you 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 hoodwinked. Like I don't love that these dudes are getting sold a bill of goods.

1:25:10And 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.

1:25:47They 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 Commodities Future Trading Commission, which is the weaker, smaller regulatory agency. And they've long wanted this, and they may get it. Sam Bingman-Fried wanted this, too. That's why he was on Capitol Hill. And so it's like, they're the ones that are screwing you guys. I don't know if you can see it or not, whether you want to admit it, but I'm on your side.

1:26:17The retail customer has not got two accounts in driving up the price of it. No. Who benefits in crypto is the insiders, right? Always. It's always the exchange owners or 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 that Bitcoin was so cheap initially. The people at this top of this pyramid, the people that bought in 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.

1:26:46And 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's out right now in New York and L.A. 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 for you to grab. 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 L.A., AMC Burbank and Lindley Royal, New York, IFC Center, and Alamut Drafthouse Brooklyn.

1:27:27And, you know, this is a true indie. I financed it. Uh-oh. Yep. Weren't you an econ major? Did Dave tell you to finance it? I financed it. This is in my book. I financed it partially off of a short bet that I made. Oh, really? I bet that crypto was going to crash. And I was betting against a bunch of frauds. So this film is partially financed by me putting my money where my mouth is. Oh, interesting. It's in the book. You already have a streamer deal or you'll have a streamer deal? No, that's been weird. I don't know. I think we'll get there. Yeah, you will. It's so good. It's a weird environment, you know what I mean?

1:28:02But 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 any. They always say the same thing when I ask them. I'm like, 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. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah, your intuition. Yeah, trust yourself. It's not you. It's them. There's no they're there.

1:28:29Yeah, and so go and have an hour and a half experience and have a few laughs. And then if you want a deep dive, you can read the book. But yeah, audiences are loving it. Easy Money is the book. Easy Money. New York Times bestseller, so also look into that. Ben, this has been a blast. You're so bright. It's very. So are you, man. Very attractive. Impressive. And I really appreciate that. All right. You didn't reference that show.

1:28:53Hi there. This is Hermi and Permi. And if you like that, you're going to love the fact check with Miss Monica. Bless your heart. Thank you. Allergies? I don't know. You don't know. If I'm getting another bug, I might as well just call it a day. What's the name of the new virus? Hantavirus or something. I know. I'm so worried I have it. It sounds gross. It is. I guess all of them sound gross, but hantavirus? It sounds like hannas. 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 on the ship? Yeah. And there's like a whole thing happening.

1:29:28There's vermin everywhere. Oh, yeah. They've shut down a couple of institutions here in Beverly Hills. They shut down the Peninsula's restaurant. God. I shouldn't say that. I don't want to get sued. But I saw that they had violations, rodent violations. Yes. And it happened at San Vicente Bungalows, too. And Dantana's. Oh, no. When I saw that, I immediately sent my friends who I go to Dantana's with. And I'm like, I'd go right now. I'd go tonight. I want to go now. More rats, the better. The more rats Lafayette Coney Island had in Detroit, the better the dogs were. Why are they everywhere right now?

1:29:58Look, if you don't have rats at your restaurant, your food sucks. Because they'd be there. Think about it. I guess maybe it was a really fun cruise. And that's why the rats wanted to be on it. Yeah, I mean, rats on a boat, boy. Horrifying. But, like, there are rats places. There are rats places? Yeah. Like, there are rats places and Hantavirus hasn't been a thing until now. Well, it's all about what 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. Didn't you have a mouse in your house?

1:30:32Well, we decided to call it a mouse because I couldn't handle the thought of it being a rat. But it had to. Is there technically a rat? I know we've already beat this into the ground, but is there any technical difference between a mouse and a rat? Yeah. Their tails, their size. Actually, their poops are different. That's how you can tell. Oh. Holy smokes. You just brought back an immediate flashback of my dream last night. Oh. Yeah. I was dealing with so much like it was a deer poop. It was the pellet kind of poop. Ew. I picked up some crate and just the poop started falling out of the bottom because there's a cute animal in there.

1:31:10But I was like, even though it's cute, there's too many poops. And then I was realizing there's fucking poops everywhere. I wonder why that happened. Ew, yeah, that's weird. I didn't step in poop yesterday. Sometimes there's poop in your yard because dogs. Yeah, there are. Pretty often there's poop. Or maybe you read about this hantavirus. Something infected my sleep and it was just full of poop. And those pellets. Ew. It was a deer. You mean like rabbit ones? Yeah, yeah. Ew. I realized I had 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.

1:31:47I like when I have like a, I think I know how I feel about something. Then I find out I didn't. I kind of like that. Okay. Counterintuitive things, you know. So I hate coyotes. They eat everyone's pets. They howl like crazy. We know how I feel about them. I'm very scared. and I've bought a lot of deterrents. Yeah. So anyways, I'm riding 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. Ew, what is this? Fact check. I hated it. This fact check is horrible. I hated it. I felt really bad for the coyote. And then I was like, they are cute.

1:32:24Oh, well. And vulnerable. They're so good at dodging traffic because they're running back and forth in traffic all the time. You never see them hit. This one might have been drinking or something. But also Carly just told me a story that a coyote was hit. Oh, I bet. One or the same one. What did she say? No, this was in she got involved and like it was a story. Did she rescue a coyote? Like kind of. Of course she did. Or she helped. She helped. But I don't know if it died. I think it died. It did die. It did, right? What's the story, Rob? It was like in the middle of the road and they had to stop.

1:32:55Well, I just asked you and you said I don't know. Oh, God. Right? Well, no. I was just saying, okay, go on, Rob, go on. It was in the middle of Los Feliz Boulevard, and they had to stop traffic because it was dying. It was hit, and then it had crawled into the front lawn area. Of her house. And then died, and then they wouldn't come get it. She said she helped get it out of the road. Yeah, and then she had to put it in a garbage bin. Oh, I guess I do know. This was a bit ago. There was a few weeks ago. A couple weeks ago, yeah, so it wasn't the same one. Different one. Yeah, I do have, I'm worried.

1:33:30About? Because, you know, sometimes I have magical powers I can't control. That's right. And I've talked about it on here. Like, how I— Could you give me an example? You have one? Yeah. Of the dogs in the yard? No. Like, sometimes I have thoughts and then things happen. Okay. And I don't mean—I don't want that to be the case. I just don't have control over my powers yet. Yeah. 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 fires. She just didn't know. She's just a baby. Yeah, like me. Yeah. Like little old me.

1:34:07So, you know, I tell this whole thing on here about the coyotes and then. Oh, 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? Were you on Los Feliz Boulevard? Obviously, I wouldn't be killing them because I can't get close. Well, this was killed with, both were killed with a car. I'm going to inspect your Mercedes and see if there's a lot of fur everywhere. 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 though.

1:34:46I wonder what's going on. I've lived in Los Feliz for 20 years. I've only seen a few dead coyotes in the road. I know. And now we're talking about two in the matter of a month. CTE. Do you think they have CTE? What's going on? I think. M. Night Shyamalan would make a whole movie about this. What if they have hantavirus and it's slowing them down? Or just making their vision blurry or something. Anyways, I found myself feeling very compassionate. Yeah, of course. That's sad. No one wants to see dead animals. I'm glad that happened to me in that I was like, look, they're just little guys too, man.

1:35:24They're trying to make it work. They do scare people. They do kill everyone's pets. Yeah, they eat people's pets and they like say hi and then you turn around and 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, one of the big issues I think with bear. I don't want them either. Bears in the wild is they congregate around trash dumps, you know? I know. And that's supposed to be real bad for them. Oh. And then they get accustomed to being around people.

1:35:57It's like a big thing. But I am feeling like there's so much food in L.A. 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 terrestrial, which I love. Yeah. We also have two ducks that live in the pool now. Yeah, you have a whole thing going. I have like a bird sanctuary happening. Yeah. And I love it. I've got hummingbirds. I mean, I'm really, I should get binoculars and really start studying these birds. I hope you get an owl. We have occasionally an owl that sits on this garage.

1:36:29Oh. I love when the owl's here. That's cool, yeah. Fuck, I love owls. I love owls, too. Do I love them more than? Man, they're great. I don't know how smart they are. They gotta be smart for me to really fall in love with them. They always have little spectacles on. That's true. Well, they're wise. Yeah, that's the same. Okay, so what was I saying? The crow. I remember the crow. Coyote, funny food. Coyote. Oh, no, bears. Oh, yeah, yeah. The reason that the crows aren't like when you feed a crow elsewhere in New York City, like, yeah, they need the food. What the fuck are they going to eat? But here there's fruit trees everywhere.

1:37:08Every single yard has fruit trees in it, fig trees. Like they live in a salad bowl. Ding, ding, ding. Gorillas. Oh. Yeah, previous guests. so I don't know why the coyotes coyotes gotta eat all the pets isn't there enough leftovers no they're not vegetarians I guess my point is should people throw their leftovers in an agreed upon spot 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 Carly witnesses something and that's the reason the coyotes are there and that's the reason I got hit.

1:37:47And she yelled at her and said, this is your fault. Okay. Well, that sounds par for the course. I think that we're not supposed to be doing that, according to Carly. Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

1:38:10But if we're dumping it, like we cordon off a little area in Griffith Park, And it's just like, hey, when you get carryout and on the way home, you're like, I bet we're 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 and hawks? It's just the coyotes. Well, the bears are going to come. It's also close to the zoo. Yeah. They're going to break out of the zoo. There's a fucking prison break at the zoo. They go, it's yummy. There's such good leftovers here in L.A. Like, there's so many good restaurants. Oh, so many good restaurants.

1:38:37They'd be like fine cuisine. It's unlike these trash dumps in Yellowstone. it's like they're eating fucking two week old hot dog buns that campers threw out this is premium well don't tell them then they'll really start coming around coming around here heading south 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 when i live in the apartment i didn't have to do that i didn't have my own bin so i had to always walk around and go throw it in the big dumpster, but I didn't deal with getting the dumpster.

1:39:12Then your super would yell at you about not breaking down the boxes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, 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, this trash can is 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 of them. I'm so scared. We got a couple of those outbreaks.

1:39:51I 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. When you get a trash can. No, I don't want that to happen to me. Taking over. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Remember there was a maggot armchair anonymous story that I'm forgetting, but I remember, I now remember the feeling. It was like in the, in the vent above the oven or something. Oh yeah, they were cooking. They were cooking. Yep. Good, good memory. Oh, and it fell into the food. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We've also had people who's, the wounds, we've had some nurses, I think, talk about that.

1:40:30Ooh. God. Okay, so are you guys going to name the crow? Well, before I talk about the crow, I want to talk about the monogamous 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 on 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, but more often in the pool. Oh, okay. And then they have to flap their wings to get back up on the thing.

1:41:07And he waits for her to do everything, and then he kind of follows her. Is he a mallard? Yeah, he's a mallard. He's beautiful. She's ugly. No, I'm just kidding. But they don't have any color. 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. I thought, how come ducks, why do we teach kids that ducks are yellow? You know what I mean? Yeah, like the cartoon version of a duck is always, or the peeps version. I know. Maybe it all stems from peeps. Well, their babies are yellow. The babies are yellow. But are they?

1:41:44Yeah, they are. They're golden. The little chicks? They're golden. This is a white duck on the internet. This is an American Pekin. It's white. Yeah. Okay, but yours is brown. Quack duck, that white one you just showed me. I can hear the quack. Me too. Anyways, he's caring for her and looking out for her to the degree. I was like, we're going to have chicks in the backyard here. Like this all looks. But they could be grampy and grandma. She could be in menopause. I don't think that's how their life cycle works. But 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 ducks.

1:42:20How do you know they're monogamous? Because ducks are monogamous. Well, so are people. Yeah. Okay. Point taken. What are you going to do if you see the mallard with the new lady in the pool? Well, the good news for him, I probably won't be able to discern the difference between his side piece and his main. You will because the side piece is white and pretty. What would be more exciting is if I looked out the window and there was two mallards on the scene and she had a thing going. They're in a poly. Yeah, in a poly situation. But anyways, this crow is, I really think it's heading towards friendship.

1:42:56Okay. I hope so. Because we have lots of crows in the area. That's how I became obsessed with them. They live in a lot of our trees. Yeah. But they never walk around the yard. That's not what crows do. They're not terrestrial bipeds, but this one is. He's constantly strolling in the backyard. Yeah. And landing in different spots that he knows are very sacred to me. So he's been hanging out on the railing leading into the attic. And I'm like, if you want to get interviewed, just say the word. Just email us at armchairexpertbooking.com. Just stay on the railing when I go up the stairs and I'll know to let you in and get it going.

1:43:37And then he landed on the railing of my balcony this morning while I was journaling. And I was like, oh, fuck. And then I was scrambling to get my camera out. And I didn't succeed. He flew away. 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, I'm allowing myself, it's like I'm putting myself back out there. You know, I had the whole, for people who don't remember, I tried my hardest to become friends. I was trying to feed, I was putting up food out everywhere. I learned their calls. That you did, yeah. I was doing everything. And then finally I was like, yeah, they're not going to be friends with me.

1:44:09You gave up. 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 them. And do you think maybe he's like an outcast? And so he's like, I'm going to go explore. Like he's not in a murder. Exactly. Yeah. Probably because he prefers to walk. He loves walking, Monica. And the murderers like to fly. This little fellow is walking all over the yard. Yeah. Yeah, so cute. Oh, my God. What happened? I'm just like maybe I'm just like not worried about him and coyotes. Can you even for real though, imagine this evolved to a point.

1:44:50Where we were such good friends. That during interviews, the crow just sat right here. Next to. In between us on that little stand. Or hung right here on the bookshelf. Okay. That would be. People would tune in even if they hated us just to see this crow. Maybe. I think it might be considered. Well, we'd have to just show that the door was always open and that he could leave. We get letters from PETA no matter what. I don't think you're not 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.

1:45:28You missed it. Yeah, I was inside eating oatmeal and I saw outside. I saw him come in 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, he's not an attacker. He's like a guy. So, see, you made a lot of a. . . He's just a fun guy. Okay. Yeah, I'm a fun crow guy. 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, it's the opposite. No, we don't know. A crow cannot kill me. It could, like, pluck one of our eyes out or something while we're sleeping.

1:46:03If you were anesthetized and you went into a coma with your eyes wide open, perhaps it could do that. You're the one saying how smart they are. If they're that smart, they can kill. Okay. Okay? Okay. And... And ground pump. Now this isn't a M. Night Shyamalan movie. The crows, like, you know, they become your friends. And then they start, like, killing people. But in weird ways. Like, you know, they somehow get, like, big boulders. And then they're flying. And they drop on your head, you know. But they're smart. You're the one who's like, they're so smart. They would definitely have to use tools, I think.

1:46:39But they know how to use tools, don't they? 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 they're going to need a come-along. I don't know if you know what that device is. I don't, 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. 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.

1:47:16I'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 different situation, which is some birds made a nest by the front of the house, and they have fucking painted my house and shit. Oh, no. The fucking, the driveway's covered in shit. All the fence railings covered in shit. The camera to the house was slathered and shit. So I had to get out there with the power washer this weekend.

1:47:52You know I love the power washer. Yeah, why are you complaining? You love it. I mean, I hated, what I hated is, it was one of those things I was like, I gotta power wash all 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, now there's shit all over the trash can. Ew, yeah. Anyways, I finally got around to doing it. And why I love it is it's very instantly gratifying. You can clean up bird shit quite quick with a power washer. I have a sense the crows are going to—the crows are working in cahoots with them, okay? Because they're pooping all over the cameras and stuff.

1:48:30That sounds so suspicious. Sounds very Ocean's Eleven. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. They're doing a heist murder 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 value listening. Well, I don't think they want to steal it. I think they're more, I think. Want to live there? No, I think they want to kill. Oh, they have a taste for. Okay. They taste for blood. They're homicidal. Yeah. Okay. Exactly. Taste for human blood. All right. Well, let's do some facts.

1:49:02Let's do some facts. I want to say, for the record, I feel obligated to say it. I think Ben's the smartest 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, he knows. He just is very fucking bright. I enjoyed talking to him so much. I think I told 10 different people how much I loved. to the point where I 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.

1:49:38Like the amount of chit-chat 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 for him. They really speak very highly of him. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's awesome. Straight up good guy. I know. Austin, Texas. What else would you expect? That's true. 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 that's not what we're here to talk about also if you saw the doc and you see what he goes through I just couldn't do it to him yeah it's every single fucking interview the guy's been on two other hit shows it's hard sometimes that happens I know and I know but I'm like I'm not doing that yeah that makes sense but uh yeah people will be mad but that's okay well whatever Okay, I want to do some facts.

1:50:32How long did each of his shows run for? The OC, 03 to 07, four seasons, 92 episodes. Whoa, that's a lot for four seasons. That's five seasons, isn't it? It said four seasons. Four, five, six, seven. Okay. Southland, 2009 to 2013, five seasons, 43 episodes. Gotham, 2014 to 2019, five seasons, 100 episodes. So they were making a lot of episodes per 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.

1:51:18She received$250 ,000 for advertising it. Other people who misleadingly promoted it were Floyd Mayweather Jr. and basketball player Paul Pierce. How much is the Bitcoin worth that the guy who bought pizza using Bitcoin? In 2010, Laszlo Haneus 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 just sitting around going like, I could be a billionaire right now.

1:52:03But not really. Well, he could cash out right now. Well, see, this is the thing 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 it's at. That's what I mean. So 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. 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.

1:52:38Now 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. His fake name. No, no, no. The creator of Bitcoin who has been anonymous for however many years and gave himself a Japanese name. But he's an English cryptographer, they think. Ooh. It's creepy. You got to wonder how much that guy's got. He invented Bitcoin. Well, he has infinite, I guess. I'm sure he has a lot of it. Okay. What is the Southeast Asian currency? Owala? Hawala. It's not a physical currency, but an ancient informal method of money transfer in Southeast Asia.

1:53:27A trust-based network of brokers known as Hawaliders are used. It is primarily used for remittances. Many countries like the U.S. and India have laws against Hawala due to regulatory and anti-money laundering concerns. Did Peter Thiel invest in FTX? Yes. His family trust and venture capital held shares in FTX as well as through his investment in crypto lender BlockFi. And he said he would do it again. Cool. That's that. Those are the facts. Those be the facts. Okay. Yeah, we trust Ben with many of those facts. Yeah, he was knowledgeable. All right. Love you. Love you.

1:54:19Galileo