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. 

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