Ben McKenzie Says Crypto Has a Secret Ingredient: Male Loneliness | EUROtoday

Ben McKenzie had a query: “When did WIRED die?” Specifically, the actor-director wished to know when did WIRED “‘DIE,’ all caps.”

McKenzie wasn’t asking for himself; he was partaking within the time-honored superstar custom of studying imply tweets. Although, on this case, the thing wasn’t himself a lot because the publication internet hosting the occasion. McKenzie, who famously performed Ryan on The O.C. earlier than turning into a number one voice of crypto skepticism, was sharing the stage with WIRED senior correspondent Andy Greenberg for the primary of what’s going to hopefully be a collection of smaller occasions that we’re calling WIRED@Night.

On April 16, about 100 individuals gathered at occasion accomplice Ace Hotel Brooklyn to sip drinks from Aplos, Faccia Brutto, The Sorting Table, and Manojo and ponder the way forward for cryptocurrency.

McKenzie, coauthor of Easy Money: Cryptocurrency, Casino Capitalism, and the Golden Age of Fraudhas a brand new impartial documentary in theaters referred to as Everyone Is Lying to You for Money. Greenberg, who typically writes about crypto scams, talked to him about scenes from the ebook and film, wherein McKenzie traveled to locations like crypto hub El Salvador to know why the expertise nonetheless has a lot attraction regardless of its less-than-stellar fame.

One of McKenzie’s explanations? Male loneliness. “It’s the longing for community, actual community,” McKenzie stated, noting that crypto exists on-line as a sort of excessive playing, one thing that actually exploded into the mainstream in the course of the Covid-19 pandemic. Here’s to extra IRL antidotes to that sort of digital isolation.