Actor and author Ben McKenzie has released Everyone Is Lying to You for Money, a 90-minute feature documentary that marks his directorial debut and that he has openly positioned as a warning to the broader public about the cryptocurrency industry's unresolved regulatory posture.
Speaking to ABC News at the film's rollout, McKenzie said he was originally drawn to the subject during the pandemic, when acting work paused and a friend repeatedly urged him to buy Bitcoin. A holder of an economics degree and a self-described true-crime enthusiast, McKenzie said the sector reminded him of what he called "stupid crime" — criminals visibly committing fraud and turning on each other — and that this pulled him into the reporting that eventually produced both his 2023 book Easy Money and the new film.
Everyone Is Lying to You for Money is built as a comedy, runs 90 minutes, and features McKenzie's wife Morena Baccarin of Deadpool as well as a Gerard Butler cameo. The emotional centre of the documentary, however, is a brief but striking segment cut from McKenzie's hour-long pre-indictment interview with former FTX chief executive Sam Bankman-Fried.
"He was pitched as, like, king of the world. He was one of the hundred wealthiest people in the world, according to Bloomberg, and he was, you know, this, like, brilliant wunderkind person. That was his public image," McKenzie told ABC. "And then I sat with him and he's, like, this young guy in a T-shirt and cargo shorts, hair all askew. That's all fine, but he can't answer simple questions. Like, what does crypto do? Like, what's a good thing that it does?"
McKenzie said Bankman-Fried's replies collapsed under follow-ups. "He gave an answer. I went back at him with evidence contradicting it. And he was like, yeah, it's not working that way now, but it will in the future. And none of the answers were satisfying. It was an hour. We cut it down to, it's only six minutes in the movie, but we got the essence of the conversation across, which is: it's unsettling."
The film's harder argument concerns the human cost of retail crypto losses, which McKenzie said the industry routinely declines to address. "The industry doesn't care about the human cost. They just are going to keep selling the story. You don't see them talking about people that have lost money in crypto. Have you ever seen a crypto company talk about that?"
McKenzie pushed the point into policy territory. "If this stuff did anything in the real world, if it was connected to any real world asset, fine. People can invest their money however they want. But crypto wants its own set of rules. It doesn't want to be regulated like what it is, which is an investment for regular people, because they don't want full information to get out, in my opinion."
He is explicit about his intended audience. The film, he said, is aimed at the "80-plus percent of the people that have never bought crypto," though he insisted he is not attempting to shame existing holders. "For the hardcore people out there who think that I'm going after them, I'm not. I'm trying to protect you."
McKenzie's warning extends beyond individual investor harm. He described the current environment as one that "could contribute to the next economic crisis" — a line that lands with particular weight given the documentary arrives the same week that regulators, central bankers and traditional exchanges have accelerated their own engagement with the sector. Deutsche Börse has taken a $200 million stake in Kraken. Payward has agreed a $550 million full-stack CFTC derivatives acquisition. The Bank for International Settlements has warned that dollar stablecoins look more like ETFs than money. And $13 billion has just exited DeFi in 48 hours after the KelpDAO exploit.
Against that backdrop, Everyone Is Lying to You for Money reads less as a retrospective on the 2022 collapses and more as a counter-case to the narrative that regulatory acceptance is settling crypto's risk profile. McKenzie's argument — that the industry still resists the treatment appropriate for a retail investment product — is precisely the tension that the current wave of traditional-finance integration has yet to resolve.