With his new book 'Easy Money,' ben_mckenzie takes aim at the dark side of the cryptocurrency craze.
“Their first thing was to go to where Jay-Z grew up [at Marcy Houses in Brooklyn] to sell this largely Black working poor neighborhood and convince them to invest in this incredibly volatile, unregulated investment,” he says, referring to Bitcoin Academy. “I was like, this is gross, dude. It's so gross.”
But celebrities, he says, aren’t the core problem. “They're just a megaphone that the Ponzi needs to spread,” he asserts. “The bigger the thing gets, the more famous people you need to spread it further.” He should know: after all, McKenzie has been in Hollywood for more than two decades. Nearly 20 years ago, the 44-year-old actor landed his big break in the leading role onwhere he played Ryan Atwood, the bad boy with a heart of gold from Chino swept up in the rich people drama of Newport Beach. “I'm very grateful for it,” he says of the role. “I think it's a complicated thing.
“I love actors and I love acting, but I also don't want to be defined by one thing,” he notes. “Honestly writing the book was helpful, because one of the things that I hated getting pigeonholed was as, Ryan Atwood or James Gordon, or my beloved character Ben Sherman on, which is actually the favorite show that I made, but the least-watched.” But his dream role is actually in a different capacity—directing.
While McKenzie never thought he’d write a book, it’s been extremely satisfying for him to combine his economics degree with what he’s learned from the last 20 years in showbiz. The fact that it blends in his passion for true crime is an added bonus. “My favorite genre of true crime is what I like to call ‘stupid crime.’ Cohen Brothers'-esque crime is my favorite thing to read about.
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