> Crypto is really only good for gambling, betting the price of this or that crypto is going to go up or down, and, crime
Crime is a pretty broad category. Sure you can use crypto to scam people and dodge taxes, but illegal does not equal immoral. Piracy, leaking evidence of war crimes and police abuse, leaking source code to hurt controversial companies, donations to banned groups, even hosting source code for illegal tools. Not all of them benefit from crypto itself but adjacent technologies that need a blockchain like Arweave and ENS.
Then there are things like drug dealing and prostitution that have real world harms but not everyone agrees they should be criminal. It's great to have a bunch of different payment methods that can be as anonymous as cash (Monero) or fully programmable with smart wallets to protect you from scams, all without any corporate cartel that could block you.
Cyberleek is a great example for both sides of the debate. They used Solana programs and Arweave to make their site uncensorable, but also created a token donation system and market cap goals to make thousands of dollars in the process (a lot for someone probably based in Russia). Is it all morally wrong, or all right, or only wrong for the money side?
Listen that's all great in theory, but the vast majority of the actual use is extortions, drug dealing[1], terrorist financing, money laudring and authoritarian regimes evading sanctions.
The only value is that it does not go through banks.
[1] The moral problem with drug dealing is not the drugs, but the fact the people selling them are using that money to perpuate an incredible circle of violence.
Would be nice to hear where you are basing the claim 'vast majority', when different chain analysis companies have been pretty consistent in reporting illicit activity to be closer to 1% of total transaction volume [1][2]
1. excludes proceeds from crime that originate in fiat and later transfer into crypto
2. exclude transfers to blockchain addresses that have not been attributed to illicit activity
3. excludes laundering of illicit crypto proceeds
While this seems reasonable to create a metric to compare YoY, I think it's very flawed to generate an absolute figure of illicit activity (or percentage of transaction volume).
Crypto is like AR/VR - in theory the technology is sound. In practice it's only used by bad actors and eshewed by the majority public due to how many ways it's easily exploited for illegal acts.
EU:
Someone in this "business" told me lately that "his girls" in "his houses" are happily switching to SEPA instant payment, so they do not have take care of the cash and it reduces the risk of wierd clients becoming violent to get their cash back.
The argument that private transactions are only for people with something to hide is one that we should be very careful with.
The same could be said about projects like Tor, which we know for certain is used for all sorts of illegal activities, and really just about any use of cryptography use outside of big tech and systems with law enforcement access. It is exactly the same as the argument that all chat and email providers that cannot intercept and store plaintext data should be outlawed.
Private chats and private value transfers are used by criminals, there's no question about it. We should think of the children. But the slope is slippery and the question is where to draw the line and what type of society we want to live in. To someone who valued abolishing export mode ciphers and key escrow schemes, the Overton window has really shifted on this.
You obviously weren't in high school at the time the OC was on. Everybody watched it. I don't think I've ever viewed Ben as anyone other than Ryan Atwood ever since.
I turned off when he said that Bitcoin is issued by corporations. The interviewer calls him out on it and he doubles down. That's blatantly false, and indicates poor research and / or poor understanding.
It may be true for plenty of other cryptocurrencies, but it's definitely not true for some, including Bitcoin. In fact, 99% of cryptocurrencies are scams, but that's because they can now be created in seconds with little knowledge or skill.
Feels like he's pushing an agenda, especially with the use of the term 'corporations'. Which is amusing, since it's the lack of trust of big-finance that (so the story goes) led to the creation of Bitcoin in the first place - the 2007 GFC in particular. Although electronic money was being dabbled with since the mid-late 90s, and that base formed the foundation of what Bitcoin was built on.
This is probably just advertising for his documentary, really.
The kind interpretation of his statement is that Bitcoin mining has moved to the hands of corporations.
Its not nerds in their garages running gpus, but an entire "corporate" industrial complex designing, and shipping custom chips filling out entire data centers.
> I turned off when he said that Bitcoin is issued by corporations. The interviewer calls him out on it and he doubles down. That's blatantly false, and indicates poor research and / or poor understanding.
He knows how bitcoin works. And what he said wasn't a lie, though you could argue it was a simplification, but he's not addressing the HN crowd with what he's saying and IMO his simplification is perfectly acceptable to the audience he is targeting.
The cost to mine a single BTC in 2026 is > $70k. Random individuals and hobbyists are not spending that kind of money mining bitcoin.
I'd say that's such an important oversimplification that it's tantamount to a lie. Bitcoin's issuance model is one of the several completely novel financial concepts that Bitcoin introduced, and involves mentally-modeling a relatively-complex incentive structure and some non-trivial computer science properties to understand. Saying "Bitcoin is issued by corporations" is simply not engaging with the actual substance of how Bitcoin is issued, and instead says uses the vague-but-sinister-sounding word "corporations" to imply that Bitcoin is generically bad to low-sophistication viewers.
And doesn't really solve any of the problems it claims to solve.
If it did solve any of those problems in a real and practical way, it wouldn't need an increasingly powerful lobby spending hundreds of millions of dollars so far on this year's US elections (nearly 40% of all corporate election spending in 2026).
Crypto in 2026 is just another financial engineering scam looking for ways to grab the money of pensioners, etc.
This is the same author that attempted to short bitcoin and lost most of his money. [0] Perhaps that is why he is upset about cryptocurrencies.
But the true scam is the complete debasement of the US dollar and people will slowly realize why the dollar will always be worth less than it was 40 years ago as it continues to be printed to zero and number go up with stocks and crypto.
It is also the reason why some people are crying that $1m is not enough to retire on, and they are right. Because $1m is worth less today than it was 40 years ago.
Hence why people here need >$500k and above a year to live, when in reality, it is the fiat currency becoming more worthless over time.
Where do you live where you need to make $500k and above to live in the US? Silicon Valley?
If so, that’s definitely the exception rather than the rule.
> Because $1m is worth less today than it was 40 years ago.
And? $1 is also worth less than it was 40 years ago. You also make more than the same person would doing the same thing 40 years ago, so that’s not a useful comparison. If you want to make statements about standards of living, you need to use the same measuring stick. You can use inflation adjusted values to do so.
> Where do you live where you need to make $500k and above to live in the US? Silicon Valley?
I live in reality.
> If so, that’s definitely the exception rather than the rule.
Ask anyone in a HCOL area in the US and it is hardly an "exception".
> And? $1 is also worth less than it was 40 years ago. You also make more than the same person would doing the same thing 40 years ago, so that’s not a useful comparison. If you want to make statements about standards of living, you need to use the same measuring stick. You can use inflation adjusted values to do so.
That depends on the occupation. You also didn't make any point and just casually accepted getting scammed on the debasement of your own fiat currency.
> Ask anyone in a HCOL area in the US and it is hardly an "exception".
By definition this is an exception because there are simultaneously places in the US with a low cost of living. If it had something to do with USD, wouldn’t you see the effect everywhere in the US, without exception? I think we see a lot of _disparity_ in cost of living. Again, not sure what this has to do with the value of USD.
> You also didn't make any point and just casually accepted getting scammed on the debasement of your own fiat currency.
You say this, but you don’t explain the mechanism of how this works. Maybe I’m too dumb, can you spell it out for me? What’s the scam exactly?
>>But the true scam is the complete debasement of the US dollar and people will slowly realize why the dollar will always be worth less than it was 40 years ago as it continues to be printed to zero and number go up with stocks and crypto.
Any workable currency needs inflation.
If you don't have inflation then holding currency is a free call option on the future - it's always more profitable to hold it instead of real assets as holding real assets is risky (not only that those assets lose value but that other assets gain more value).
As nothing is free in nature someone else is paying for your free call option. Things are even worse with deflationary currency. This is what Bitcoin maximalist imagine: a few kings that hold it and everyone else working for them.
If anything 2% inflation target is too low to offset that cost. I think it should be considerably higher. As it is protecting the call option of currency holders is often more important for central banks than economic development.
> But the true scam is the complete debasement of the US dollar and people will slowly realize why the dollar will always be worth less than it was 40 years ago as it continues to be printed to zero and number go up with stocks and crypto.
By contrast, there was essentially no inflation in England from 1614 to the start of WW1.
Every time an individual blanket labels the entirety of Cryptocurrency as a "Ponzi Scheme" just reveals their lack of knowledge. Plenty of them are, and plenty of them aren't in the fact that they aren't scams, or don't even fit the definition of a Ponzi. He can try to pry my Monero from my cold, dead hands.
He's written a book on the subject and testified in front of the US Senate. The fact that he acted in a popular TV show more than twenty years ago isn't particularly relevant.
He has the most basic misunderstandings on the very foundations of crypto. He is not trying to understand. He is trying to make headlines to sell his movie.
> Crypto is really only good for gambling, betting the price of this or that crypto is going to go up or down, and, crime
Crime is a pretty broad category. Sure you can use crypto to scam people and dodge taxes, but illegal does not equal immoral. Piracy, leaking evidence of war crimes and police abuse, leaking source code to hurt controversial companies, donations to banned groups, even hosting source code for illegal tools. Not all of them benefit from crypto itself but adjacent technologies that need a blockchain like Arweave and ENS.
Then there are things like drug dealing and prostitution that have real world harms but not everyone agrees they should be criminal. It's great to have a bunch of different payment methods that can be as anonymous as cash (Monero) or fully programmable with smart wallets to protect you from scams, all without any corporate cartel that could block you.
Cyberleek is a great example for both sides of the debate. They used Solana programs and Arweave to make their site uncensorable, but also created a token donation system and market cap goals to make thousands of dollars in the process (a lot for someone probably based in Russia). Is it all morally wrong, or all right, or only wrong for the money side?
Listen that's all great in theory, but the vast majority of the actual use is extortions, drug dealing[1], terrorist financing, money laudring and authoritarian regimes evading sanctions.
The only value is that it does not go through banks.
[1] The moral problem with drug dealing is not the drugs, but the fact the people selling them are using that money to perpuate an incredible circle of violence.
Would be nice to hear where you are basing the claim 'vast majority', when different chain analysis companies have been pretty consistent in reporting illicit activity to be closer to 1% of total transaction volume [1][2]
1: https://www.trmlabs.com/fr/reports-and-whitepapers/2026-cryp...
2: https://www.chainalysis.com/blog/crypto-drug-sales-darknet-m...
From the TRM methodology:
1. excludes proceeds from crime that originate in fiat and later transfer into crypto
2. exclude transfers to blockchain addresses that have not been attributed to illicit activity
3. excludes laundering of illicit crypto proceeds
While this seems reasonable to create a metric to compare YoY, I think it's very flawed to generate an absolute figure of illicit activity (or percentage of transaction volume).
Crypto is like AR/VR - in theory the technology is sound. In practice it's only used by bad actors and eshewed by the majority public due to how many ways it's easily exploited for illegal acts.
-- and prostitution --
EU: Someone in this "business" told me lately that "his girls" in "his houses" are happily switching to SEPA instant payment, so they do not have take care of the cash and it reduces the risk of wierd clients becoming violent to get their cash back.
The argument that private transactions are only for people with something to hide is one that we should be very careful with.
The same could be said about projects like Tor, which we know for certain is used for all sorts of illegal activities, and really just about any use of cryptography use outside of big tech and systems with law enforcement access. It is exactly the same as the argument that all chat and email providers that cannot intercept and store plaintext data should be outlawed.
Private chats and private value transfers are used by criminals, there's no question about it. We should think of the children. But the slope is slippery and the question is where to draw the line and what type of society we want to live in. To someone who valued abolishing export mode ciphers and key escrow schemes, the Overton window has really shifted on this.
It's Jim Gordon btw, nobody watched the OC surely.
You obviously weren't in high school at the time the OC was on. Everybody watched it. I don't think I've ever viewed Ben as anyone other than Ryan Atwood ever since.
The first two seasons were really good. So good it kinda surprised me on a rewatch. After that it went downhill though.
I can not imagine it holds up well ...
Do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do .. California here we come ... Right just where were coming from ....
i know him as from the tv show but only watched a few episodes. he has done many movies and journalism now. not everyone has to be an OC superfan.
Perphaps Ryan was scammed by Volchok
You clearly missed Southland.
Washed up actor tries for headlines on book tour, more at 7
Original ABC article, including video of interview: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-08-24/ben-mckenzie-cryptocu...
I turned off when he said that Bitcoin is issued by corporations. The interviewer calls him out on it and he doubles down. That's blatantly false, and indicates poor research and / or poor understanding.
It may be true for plenty of other cryptocurrencies, but it's definitely not true for some, including Bitcoin. In fact, 99% of cryptocurrencies are scams, but that's because they can now be created in seconds with little knowledge or skill.
Feels like he's pushing an agenda, especially with the use of the term 'corporations'. Which is amusing, since it's the lack of trust of big-finance that (so the story goes) led to the creation of Bitcoin in the first place - the 2007 GFC in particular. Although electronic money was being dabbled with since the mid-late 90s, and that base formed the foundation of what Bitcoin was built on.
This is probably just advertising for his documentary, really.
The kind interpretation of his statement is that Bitcoin mining has moved to the hands of corporations.
Its not nerds in their garages running gpus, but an entire "corporate" industrial complex designing, and shipping custom chips filling out entire data centers.
most crypto's junk. But saying Bitcoin is issued by corporations, then doubling down, just hands critics a free win. Sloppy for a guy selling a doc.
He might have meant corporate mining, which is partially true.
> I turned off when he said that Bitcoin is issued by corporations. The interviewer calls him out on it and he doubles down. That's blatantly false, and indicates poor research and / or poor understanding.
He knows how bitcoin works. And what he said wasn't a lie, though you could argue it was a simplification, but he's not addressing the HN crowd with what he's saying and IMO his simplification is perfectly acceptable to the audience he is targeting.
The cost to mine a single BTC in 2026 is > $70k. Random individuals and hobbyists are not spending that kind of money mining bitcoin.
I'd say that's such an important oversimplification that it's tantamount to a lie. Bitcoin's issuance model is one of the several completely novel financial concepts that Bitcoin introduced, and involves mentally-modeling a relatively-complex incentive structure and some non-trivial computer science properties to understand. Saying "Bitcoin is issued by corporations" is simply not engaging with the actual substance of how Bitcoin is issued, and instead says uses the vague-but-sinister-sounding word "corporations" to imply that Bitcoin is generically bad to low-sophistication viewers.
Crypto, including Bitcoin, is bad.
And doesn't really solve any of the problems it claims to solve.
If it did solve any of those problems in a real and practical way, it wouldn't need an increasingly powerful lobby spending hundreds of millions of dollars so far on this year's US elections (nearly 40% of all corporate election spending in 2026).
Crypto in 2026 is just another financial engineering scam looking for ways to grab the money of pensioners, etc.
This is the same author that attempted to short bitcoin and lost most of his money. [0] Perhaps that is why he is upset about cryptocurrencies.
But the true scam is the complete debasement of the US dollar and people will slowly realize why the dollar will always be worth less than it was 40 years ago as it continues to be printed to zero and number go up with stocks and crypto.
It is also the reason why some people are crying that $1m is not enough to retire on, and they are right. Because $1m is worth less today than it was 40 years ago.
Hence why people here need >$500k and above a year to live, when in reality, it is the fiat currency becoming more worthless over time.
Sounds like a scam in the long term.
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2023/jul/15/ben-mck...
Where do you live where you need to make $500k and above to live in the US? Silicon Valley?
If so, that’s definitely the exception rather than the rule.
> Because $1m is worth less today than it was 40 years ago.
And? $1 is also worth less than it was 40 years ago. You also make more than the same person would doing the same thing 40 years ago, so that’s not a useful comparison. If you want to make statements about standards of living, you need to use the same measuring stick. You can use inflation adjusted values to do so.
> Where do you live where you need to make $500k and above to live in the US? Silicon Valley?
I live in reality.
> If so, that’s definitely the exception rather than the rule.
Ask anyone in a HCOL area in the US and it is hardly an "exception".
> And? $1 is also worth less than it was 40 years ago. You also make more than the same person would doing the same thing 40 years ago, so that’s not a useful comparison. If you want to make statements about standards of living, you need to use the same measuring stick. You can use inflation adjusted values to do so.
That depends on the occupation. You also didn't make any point and just casually accepted getting scammed on the debasement of your own fiat currency.
> Ask anyone in a HCOL area in the US and it is hardly an "exception".
By definition this is an exception because there are simultaneously places in the US with a low cost of living. If it had something to do with USD, wouldn’t you see the effect everywhere in the US, without exception? I think we see a lot of _disparity_ in cost of living. Again, not sure what this has to do with the value of USD.
> You also didn't make any point and just casually accepted getting scammed on the debasement of your own fiat currency.
You say this, but you don’t explain the mechanism of how this works. Maybe I’m too dumb, can you spell it out for me? What’s the scam exactly?
He doubled down on his thesis. Shorted again, and made a bunch of money.
So I guess, he was right?
He did say that half the documentary funding came from shorting Bitcoin.
Which works of you time the cycles correctly, and fails terribly if you don't (see: FTX, Celsius, many others).
>>But the true scam is the complete debasement of the US dollar and people will slowly realize why the dollar will always be worth less than it was 40 years ago as it continues to be printed to zero and number go up with stocks and crypto.
Any workable currency needs inflation. If you don't have inflation then holding currency is a free call option on the future - it's always more profitable to hold it instead of real assets as holding real assets is risky (not only that those assets lose value but that other assets gain more value).
As nothing is free in nature someone else is paying for your free call option. Things are even worse with deflationary currency. This is what Bitcoin maximalist imagine: a few kings that hold it and everyone else working for them.
If anything 2% inflation target is too low to offset that cost. I think it should be considerably higher. As it is protecting the call option of currency holders is often more important for central banks than economic development.
Inflation of the USD is considerably higher than 2% and has been for a while now.
> the dollar will always be worth less than it was 40 years ago
at this point, you don't even have to go that far back.
> But the true scam is the complete debasement of the US dollar and people will slowly realize why the dollar will always be worth less than it was 40 years ago as it continues to be printed to zero and number go up with stocks and crypto.
By contrast, there was essentially no inflation in England from 1614 to the start of WW1.
By contrast, england could summon anything from their colonies.
"In fact, 99% of cryptocurrencies are scams..." Almost got it! Just one more percent and you'll have it figured out.
99% of phone calls i receive are scams. Clearly we should ban phones.
No idea what the OC is, but the guy looks familiar.
its largely a scam yes, but that doesnt mean it has no utility. Happy for it to get this sort of marketing tho.
Every time an individual blanket labels the entirety of Cryptocurrency as a "Ponzi Scheme" just reveals their lack of knowledge. Plenty of them are, and plenty of them aren't in the fact that they aren't scams, or don't even fit the definition of a Ponzi. He can try to pry my Monero from my cold, dead hands.
Don't call it that [0]
[0] - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=s78adWHXQ8U
Though I've never heard of The O.C., but I'm sure there comes yet another comedy from the actor.
[dead]
[dead]
Somebody should probably let him know about this site:
tftc.io
I'd be educational for him, I would think :)
Celebs having opinions that get amplified because they're celebs is simply embarrassing all round for everyone.
He's written a book on the subject and testified in front of the US Senate. The fact that he acted in a popular TV show more than twenty years ago isn't particularly relevant.
I am also skeptical on celebrities being activists, because some, (many? most?) don’t know what they are talking about.
But if there are signs they might be reasonable, you should adjust your opinions if you’re going to bag them out.
Dude completed under grad in foreign affairs and economics.
Might have been good student. At the very least someone with an undergrad trying to understand crypto seems reasonable.
Yes, made a doco and is trying to make money. But could still be reasonable.
He has the most basic misunderstandings on the very foundations of crypto. He is not trying to understand. He is trying to make headlines to sell his movie.
Why did they pick him to testify, out of the tens or hundreds of thousands with a similar background?