Ben McKenzie, from ‘The OC’, becomes critic of cryptocurrencies and even plans to book

The New York Times

Ben McKenzie, 43, was behind the wheel of his father’s silver Subaru, driving through a Texas farmland and talking vehemently about money: who has it, who needs it, what makes it real or fake. He detailed the dangers of cryptocurrency exchanges, of online exchanges that sell bitcoin and ether to speculators, and ended with a heartfelt tribute to French economist Thomas Piketty’s “Capital in the 21st Century,” a 700-page tome on income inequality and the power of rich capitalists.

“If they can make money from something, they will,” McKenzie said, speeding on his way to Whinstone US, a cryptocurrency mining operation about an hour away from Austin; there, rows upon rows of energy-guzzling machines generate new bitcoins. In the past six months, many top celebrities have touted digital currencies and NFTs, and McKenzie, the TV actor best known for his hit series “The OC,” has become an outspoken skeptic about it all.

He wrote critically about Kim Kardashian’s little-known coin disclosure on her Instagram, and urged Reese Witherspoon to stop promoting the metaverse, admitting as he did all this that he’s no financial expert.

“I’m just a former teen idol who is (alone?) here asking people to consider the risks of these investments and the possibility of fraud,” he said. tweeted in february.

McKenzie rose to fame in the early 2000s playing Ryan Atwood, a hulking, muscular teenager from the poor side of town who ends up living with a wealthy family in Newport Beach, California. After “The OC” ended, he starred in two other television dramas, “Southland” and “Gotham” each of which ran for five seasons.

But acting jobs were in short supply during the pandemic, and like many people, McKenzie soon found himself drawn into the cryptocurrency labyrinth. After friends encouraged him to invest, he took a 24-module course on cryptocurrencies with Gary Gensler, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the federal agency that regulates U.S. securities markets. (Whom the actor affectionately calls “Gary”; the two have never met in person.)

The cryptocurrency market appears to have been tailor-made for scams, McKenzie said. He was convinced that the soaring value of the most popular currencies was fueled by irresponsible speculation rather than any practical application of technology. “They don’t do what coins do,” he said. “They are not a reliable way to store value, a unit of count, or a medium of exchange.”

In August, he sent a direct message on Twitter to Jacob Silverman, a tech journalist at the New Republic magazine who had just published an article titled “Even Donald Trump Knows Bitcoin Is A Scam.” The actor wrote that “I would love to talk to you. But you can disregard the message if you find it too strange”.

Silverman, who was watching “The OC,” was intrigued. He and McKenzie live in the Brooklyn borough of New York, and they met for beer and sandwiches at Henry Public. McKenzie proposed that they collaborate on a book; Silverman accepted right away. “I also began to understand Ben’s sense of outrage at what he saw, and at the possibility that people would have their savings stolen,” Silverman said. Abrams Press plans to publish their book, “Easy Money”, in 2023.

McKenzie said his newfound crush was treated with “support but some confusion” by his friends, while his wife, actress Morena Baccarin, another “Gotham” star, seems “to be tired of hearing me talk about it.” McKenzie earned a degree in economics from the University of Virginia and over the years has spoken many times about the intersection of law and finance with his father, Pete Schenkkan, a regulatory attorney in Austin. But Schenkkan himself declared himself “astonished” at his son’s fixation on cryptocurrencies. “It was a leap into a subject far removed from the rest of his life.”

The project also represents a departure from the approach of other celebrities to cryptocurrencies. Matt Damon starred in a now-infamous commercial for the trading platform Crypto.com; Paris Hilton has been publicizing NFTs. In an October essay for “Slate” magazine, Silverman and McKenzie wrote that celebrity endorsements expose ordinary consumers to known scams, for example “pull-out” schemes, in which an anonymous developer solicits funds from investors and then disappears with the money. They wrote that “Hollywood’s adoption of cryptocurrencies is a moral disaster.”

McKenzie has become part of the growing group of crypto skeptics and critics known as “no-coiners”. In February, he was interviewed on “Crypto Critics’ Corner,” a podcast hosted by Bennett Tomlin and Cas Piancey, who do two episodes a week on the risks of decentralized finance and other cryptocurrency ventures.

“No-coiners” are often the target of abuse online, yet attacks can go both ways. “I’ve bought a lot of fights,” Tomlin said. “And many times it was me who was trying to start the fight, by telling someone that ‘you once said that and now you’re saying that’.”

The “no-coiners” share to some extent the same idiosyncratic obsession that drives the “crypto bros”; and, how their antagonists get together on Discord and Twitter to exchange tips and memes, and are all fluent in acronym-filled jargon.

McKenzie acknowledges that he is an unusual recruit to those ranks, which consist primarily of journalists, software engineers and academics. “I’m an actor,” he said. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”

McKenzie’s training also offers him some advantages. Many of the “crypto bros” try to silence their opponents with an emphatic statement: “Have fun being poor.” But McKenzie said that “they don’t use that argument much, with me. Anyone want to compare real bank accounts?”

But in the noisy world of cryptocurrencies, television fame doesn’t necessarily translate to influence. Before departing on his trip to the cryptocurrency mining hub, McKenzie hosted a roundtable called “Trust Me I’m Famous” at the South By Southwest convention. The session took place in an auditorium where there were many rows of unoccupied seats. A group of young fans cheered when McKenzie introduced himself as Ryan from “The OC,” but they spent the rest of the night glued to their smartphones as he talked about the dangers of unregulated cryptocurrency transactions. (His daughter Frances, 6, was asleep in the chair at the end of the event. “I know it was boring,” he said. “Are you mad at me?”)

And McKenzie’s celebrity didn’t open doors for him at Whinstone, where he and Silverman had hoped to be able to do research for their book. When McKenzie arrived at the parking lot, a worried-looking security guard asked him to identify himself. “I’m an actor,” McKenzie said. The security guard had already watched “The OC?” Not. And “Gotham”? Not. “Ask your daughter about ‘The OC,'” McKenzie replied, smiling. A second security guard said he was watching “The OC” but did not recognize McKenzie.

After a few more minutes of confusion (one of the security guards referred to the visitor as “Mr. Bill McKlensley”), the security team allowed McKenzie, Silverman and a cameraman who was documenting the trip to speak with Chad Harris, a former tree salesman. de Natal that now manages the Whinstone operation, acquired last year by Riot Blockchain, a publicly traded company operating in the bitcoin mining market.

Harris looked as comfortable on camera as the actor-turned-critic who had come to confront him; he said he had already taken visitors on 1,000 guided tours of the facility. When photographers arrive at the scene, he said, “I know which way to turn my shoulder.”

Harris said he was confident in his ability to debate any skeptic; he boasted that he taught a lesson to some Vice News crypto skeptics. “No one should criticize something without knowing all the facts,” he said. At one point, he audaciously predicted that he would change McKenzie’s mind about cryptocurrencies with just one sentence. And then he started talking for several minutes straight about the economic benefits of mining cryptocurrencies.

Harris showed McKenzie and Silverman a vast warehouse crammed with machines, hundreds of them, that hummed nonstop. The cameraman captured footage of McKenzie wearing a hard hat and shaking his head at Harris’ explanation of the complications of the chemical cooling system that keeps the machines from overheating. In “The OC”, Ryan is a machine of repressed emotions, and rarely lets a glimpse of what he’s thinking. McKenzie loves to chatter. He interrogated Harris for two hours about the energy costs of mining cryptocurrencies and the practical utility of digital currencies, all on camera.

McKenzie and Silverman considered turning their book, not yet written, into some form of Hollywood production. The inspiration is “The Big Short”, based on Michael Lewis’ book about savvy investors who predicted the housing market crash in 2008. The film adaptation shows Margot Robbie drinking champagne in a bathtub and explaining the subprime crisis.

“Me and Jacob in thongs,” McKenzie said. “A good way to turn the audience away.” Silverman laughed. “I promise to work out at the gym for a month,” he said.

If that doesn’t work out, there’s always TV. McKenzie said he proposed to Josh Schwartz, the creator of “The OC”, a revamped version of the series, in which a cryptocurrency billionaire, perhaps the son of Luke Ward, whose trajectory in the series transforms him from villain to coveted sex symbol, returns. Newport Beach and takes control of the local real estate market.

Schwartz “laughed politely,” McKenzie said. (In an interview, Schwartz suggested an alternative cryptocurrency-themed sequel, involving complex political machinations run by Luke’s younger brothers. He added that Seth Cohen, Ryan’s geeky best friend, played by Adam Brody, “would be trying to sell NFTs.” Brody, contacted by text message, said he agreed. “Or he would be selling ‘bongs’ from a van. I don’t know which one,” he added.

After the visit, Harris took McKenzie and Silverman to a building that company personnel call the “White House”—the site of the company’s executive offices. Standing at the door, McKenzie pressed Harris about his commitments to the cryptocurrency. Wasn’t she just another form of gambling? A game of poker, with a lot of money on the table and without any social value?

Harris shrugged. He said he was willing to take financial risks. “Think of it in parallel with your life,” he said. McKenzie took a break from acting work and staked his reputation on writing a book that argues that the country’s tech elite is promoting a thinly disguised pyramid scheme. “Everything in life is a gamble,” said Harris

For a split second, McKenzie reverted to Ryan Atwood, once more thoughtful and unfriendly. “It’s true,” he said. “That is true”.