Easy Money: Cryptocurrency, Casino Capitalism, and The Golden Age of Fraud by Ben McKenzie with Jacob Silverman
I’ve learned a lot about crypto over the past few years, from various articles, tweets, and podcasts, but this is the first book I’ve read on the subject (no, Bitcoin Widow doesn’t count.) Ben McKenzie (yes, that Ben McKenzie) proves a pretty apt narrator. He’s skeptical by nature, educated in finance, at loose ends due to the pandemic, and just enough of a “name” that he can randomly reach out to an established tech reporter (Jacob Silverman) and convince him to embark on a years-long project. Easy Money is full of insider access (notably, an interview with a pre-indictment Sam Bankman-Fried) with an outsiders’ point of view – but I didn’t learn a lot about crypto itself that I didn’t already know.
That’s not McKenzie’s fault. If you’ve heard one crypto story, you’ve heard them all – they’re all Ponzi schemes, and they always collapse – then the founders disappear (or die?), or get arrested, or move on to the next scam. Like gambling, the key is knowing when to walk away.
More interesting, to me, were the insinuations made in this Bookforum review – the gossipy one, that perhaps McKenzie and Silverman had a falling out (a bit tenuous, based on this tweet), and the observation that this book was probably meant to serve as an eventual film project.
Silverman does list the book in his Twitter bio, but he doesn’t tweet about it much. He seems to have moved on, specializing in all things Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), writing about the trial, and making a new podcast (the title of which is reminiscent of a chapter title in Easy Money.)
McKenzie talks about the book a lot. A quick YouTube search turns up all sorts of five-minute clips on the publicity circuit, while Silverman’s name only returns a few hits, mostly longer interviews, including this very entertaining rundown of the bad boys of crypto.
Watching these clips, I noticed that Silverman sounds a lot more confident speaking on the subject. But the book, for all that it’s co-written, is exclusively in McKenzie’s voice and point of view. Jacob is mentioned, but he doesn’t speak, and we learn little about him, apart from his demographic similarities to Ben (Brooklynite, father of young kids). We probably learn more about the various camera operators who keep turning up – bringing us to the other Bookforum revelation.
We are told about the logistics of making room for a cameraman while interviewing SBF – and we do get a tiny black-and-white photo of Ben and Sam in the book, but the footage isn’t anywhere online. We’re later told that McKenzie and Silverman hired a whole crew in El Salvador, the site of various government-backed crypto schemes: a camera operator, a photographer, and a sound engineer. But again, nothing turns up on YouTube. It sounds very much like this story was meant to be seen and heard, not read. In early 2022, it seems McKenzie had ideas about a movie or even a kind of crypto-themed O.C. reboot.
McKenzie often makes asides in the narrative, to the effect that “it doesn’t really matter how crypto works, just know it’s a scam.” It’s fine that things are a little surface-level when it comes to those technicalities, but I would’ve appreciated a little more depth on the human and business side – are Ben and Jacob still friends? What happened to all that video footage?
Bookforum also points out that Easy Money would’ve had more impact if crypto hadn’t crashed so spectacularly in late 2022. McKenzie compares the crypto bubble to the subprime mortgage crisis, and speculates that the crypto crisis could be bigger – could take in more people, and make more money disappear.
By the time the book launched in July 2023, it seemed clear that crypto had collapsed. SBF is on trial and it’s not looking good, and you don’t see Matt Damon doing Crypto.com commercials anymore. But it’s also clear that the collapse isn’t kicking off a global recession. McKenzie was right about the inevitable end, but wrong about the magnitude.
As someone who was going to read this book regardless, I think the timing is great. It’s quite satisfying to read about the early stages of SBF’s downfall, and then flip over to Jacob’s twitter feed to see how the trial’s going. Or to read about all the other, less-famous crypto bros going broke in late 2022, only to see them crop up in Bloomberg’s newsletter Money Stuff the next day, found hiding in Singapore or Montenegro or something.
We all knew how this story was going to end. Every new coin, and every new exchange, goes through the same cycle of hype, exponential (but not “infinite”) growth, hubris, and collapse. Now I’m wondering, is this a one-off for McKenzie? He’s whoever we want him to be, but does he want to keep uncovering the absurdity of tech and financial fraud? Perhaps on camera this time?
Not in an O.C. reboot though. Some things are sacred.
Reading in Bed 
I can’t pretend to understand crypto (or anything economics-related, really), but I recently read a bunch of reviews of Going Infinite by Michael Lewis for the Bookmarks magazine roundup of it, and it sounds like it was super-biased: he decided SBF was a misunderstood genius and wrote the book as such. Not a good look as the trial proceeds.
yes I’ve been reading the reviews, he (and others) also seem intent on infantalizing SBF, calling him a boy or a kid… he’s in his 30s!
reading in bed
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