ABC News (Australia)

For many Millennials, Ben McKenzie is still best known for his role in The O.C. as Ryan Atwood, a troubled teen from the wrong side of the tracks, who's adopted by the wealthy Cohen family. Now the 47-year-old actor is on a crusade to warn the world about cryptocurrencies. Speaking to ABC News, Mr McKenzie explains how he became a crypto cynic and why he has just put out a documentary openly calling the movement "stupid". The star and director made the film as a follow to his book on cryptocurrency that he wrote with journalist Jacob Silverman. After a friend approached him about investing in the asset class in the pandemic, he decided to "short" cryptocurrency, meaning he invested money betting its price would go down. That happened in 2022 with Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies like Ethereum. Mr McKenzie says the short was so lucrative, it half funded his documentary. Now available for global viewing, Everybody Is Lying To You For Money delves further into what happened in 2022. As part of the documentary, Mr McKenzie interviews one of the most high profile faces of the 2022 collapse, FTX's founder and now imprisoned fraudster, Sam Bankman-Fried. #ABCBusiness Subscribe: http://ab.co/1svxLVE Note: In most cases, our captions are auto-generated. #ABCNEWS #ABCNEWSAustralia