When Ben McKenzie began investigating cryptocurrency during the pandemic, the former teen heartthrob from The O.C. never imagined his research would lead him straight to Jeffrey Epstein‘s private island.
But that’s exactly where the trail went.
The actor, who later starred in Southland and Gotham before pivoting to become one of crypto’s most vocal critics, recently dug through the Epstein files for his self-funded documentary “Everyone is Lying to You For Money.” What he discovered reveals a disturbing origin story for Bitcoin.
In 2011, just three years after pleading guilty to procuring a child for pr**titution, Epstein hosted the MindShift Conference on his now-infamous island. The event functioned as a TED Talk-style symposium where Epstein met former child actor and future crypto entrepreneur Brock Pierce.
Epstein quickly became fascinated by cryptocurrency. Within months, he was sending emails declaring that “the Bitcoin idea is brilliant.”
The timing is crucial to understand. This was extraordinarily early in crypto’s timeline. Bitcoin had only emerged in 2009, just two years prior. Epstein was championing Bitcoin before 99% of current supporters even knew it existed.
Why would a convicted offender whose core businesses were money laundering and blackmail become so enamored with cryptocurrency? The answer seems obvious. The ability to transfer money, or something resembling money, while obscuring your identity would prove extremely appealing for those exact enterprises.
This revelation has proven difficult for some in the crypto community to accept.
Epstein didn’t just talk about Bitcoin. He started investing in crypto companies like Blockstream and the exchange Coinbase. Pierce facilitated Epstein’s $3 million investment in Coinbase in 2014.
Email records show that Coinbase executives knew the money was coming from Epstein, a registered offender.
But the most significant revelation came from communications between Epstein and Joy Ito, the head of MIT Media Lab. In a 2015 email, Ito thanks Epstein for funding something called Bitcoin Core Development, the group of developers who maintain Bitcoin’s operating system.
This matters enormously. Back in 2015, the crypto industry was stalled. The market was much smaller and tensions between various factions threatened its future. Without funding, Bitcoin could have languished in obscurity.
Jeffrey Epstein swooped in to provide that funding. As Ito wrote to Epstein, his money “allowed us to win this round.”
In other words, Epstein’s financial intervention may have saved Bitcoin from collapse at a critical juncture.
The connections extend further into current political circles. Howard Lutnick, Trump’s commerce secretary, initially claimed he met Epstein only once and was repulsed by him. But when emails surfaced, that story fell apart. Lutnick had actually visited Epstein on his island and even went into business with him.
Lutnick also became one of the key figures introducing Donald Trump to cryptocurrency. As chairman and CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, a financial services firm, Lutnick’s company serves as broker for Tether, a massive crypto stablecoin that has become associated with money laundering, sanctions evasion, and human trafficking.
Then there’s Steve Bannon, who bought Brock Pierce’s company years ago and was behind the Let’s Go Brandon meme coin. He now faces a class action lawsuit from investors who say they were deceived.
McKenzie, now 46 and a Texas native who holds a degree in economics, has made exposing cryptocurrency his mission. His skepticism began during lockdown when he started researching the industry. By December 2022, he was testifying before the US Senate about cryptocurrency concerns. In 2023, he published “Easy Money: Cryptocurrency, Casino Capitalism, and the Golden Age of Fraud.”
His documentary, which debuted at the inaugural SXSW festival in London on June 6, features an interview with Sam Bankman-Fried conducted months before FTX collapsed in November 2022. Bankman-Fried was later sentenced to 25 years in prison for fraud.
“He doesn’t answer questions in a way that feels coherent, or true,” McKenzie said of Bankman-Fried.
McKenzie’s critique is straightforward: “Crypto can’t actually do anything in the real world, except illegal activity that you wouldn’t do otherwise. At best, you’re just transferring money, real money, between different players, and some people are going to win, some people are going to lose. The problem is, the game you’re playing is not fair. You’re playing in an unregulated, unlicensed casino, effectively.”
Part of the documentary’s budget was offset by McKenzie betting that the crypto market would decline during production. He argues that cryptocurrency exposure in banks could pose systemic risk, pointing to the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank in 2023. He also interviewed investors who lost money when crypto exchange Celsius collapsed.
“If you got in early, basically prior to 2021, then you’ve seen the value of your bitcoin rise enormously,” McKenzie acknowledged. “But that doesn’t prove anything, really.”
He believes cryptocurrency functions fundamentally as a Ponzi scheme. “A Ponzi scheme, which I still believe crypto is at its heart, can last for a very long time. Bernie Madoff ran his Ponzi scheme for decades. It can’t sustain itself forever. Eventually you just run out of new people to put money in.”
McKenzie sees Trump’s re-election and embrace of crypto as particularly concerning. “His re-election, his embrace of crypto, his dismantling of consumer protections and banking regulations… It’s worrying. My fear now is that the risk has become systemic.”
He describes cryptocurrency as “a belief system, ultimately,” and warns that “it’s really not ever going to go away, which is terrifying to me if you believe that ultimately, at best, it’s a speculative bubble, and at worst, it’s a speculative bubble predicated on fr*ud and cri**nal activity.”
The next time someone evangelizes about the supposedly decentralized, democratized future of money called cryptocurrency, McKenzie suggests asking them about Jeffrey Epstein.
