Industry News13 April 2026

Actor-Director Ben McKenzie On Confronting Crypto Bro Sam Bankfried-Fried With A Coffee Cup For His New Documentary – Miami Film Festival

Ben McKenzie suspected there was something suspicious about crypto king Sam Bankman-Fried long before anyone else did.

Actor-Director Ben McKenzie On Confronting Crypto Bro Sam Bankfried-Fried With A Coffee Cup For His New Documentary – Miami Film Festival

Ben McKenzie suspected there was something suspicious about crypto king Sam Bankman-Fried long before anyone else did.

The actor known for Gotham and The O.C., who earned a degree in economics from the University of Virginia, turned his attention to the study of cryptocurrency during the pandemic. Unlike millions of others who have evangelized for crypto, he came to view digital currency as fundamentally unsound and rife with fraud – case in point Bankman-Fried, who founded the FTX cryptocurrency exchange that at one time was valued in the billions of dollars.

McKenzie wrote a book about it – Easy Money: Cryptocurrency, Casino Capitalism, and the Golden Age of Fraud, co-authored with Jacob Silverman – and as part of his research he reached out to Bankman-Fried for an interview. Perhaps surprisingly, Bankman-Fried agreed, and without conditions. Their on-camera interview is a key part of McKenzie’s new documentary, Everyone Is Lying to You for Money, which opens in theaters in New York and Los Angeles this Friday, before expanding wider.

Source: deadline.com

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