Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Kayleigh Donaldson | Celebrity | April 23, 2026
Former teen heartthrob and anti-crypto king Ben McKenzie is promoting his documentary, Everyone is Lying To You For Money. His crusade against cryptocurrency and the tech bubble that tried to force it onto our lives has been both inspiring and deeply sexy. Here's a guy who could have taken the big payday and shilled for a scam, like so many others in his field. Instead, he put his economics degree to good use and dragged these losers to hell and back. And he's still mad at them for selling out big time.
There's a very funny moment in McKenzie's book, Easy Money, where he sees the now-notorious Matt Damon ad for Crypto.com on TV. He's in a bar, having a beer, and suddenly, he feels like he's descending into hell. It's a relatable feeling. I too watched that ad, wherein Damon essentially berated audiences for not being brave enough to buy the fake currency, and wondered if I was having a stroke. We're still not sure how much Damon got paid by the company for this cringe, but The Financial Times reported that the company spent more than $100 million on that campaign, so he probably wasn't doing it for the love of the game.
McKenzie was interviewed on Hasan Minhaj's podcast, and he let the world know that he thinks celebrities who shill for this crap and don't disclose how much they get paid for it are chumps.
"No offence to Matt Damon, but he doesn't know sh*t about blockchain [...] I know the standards are low, but like, if you're hawking a financial product, and by the way, you're not disclosing how much you were paid for it, which is one of the problems, right? And then people lose money on that investment, which a lot of people did, on a lot of celeb-backed things. Like, Kim Kardashian did one and had to settle with the SEC. And there's all these different people. It's just wrong, you know? It's wrong, it's gross. You also have a lot of money. So why do you need to sell other people on this thing that you really haven't done your homework on and is shady? And, yeah... do better."
He's right, you know. Also, check out the video for a clip of him watching the Damon ad and his wife, the fabulous Morena Baccarin, ragging on him for it. Ben would like you to know he is also definitely taller than Matt.
McKenzie's kept his foot on these people's necks for years. He's called out how quickly these celebrities take the money to shill for something that they clearly don't understand and that was surrounded by red flags from the get-go. What did someone like Damon or Kim Kardashian or Reese Witherspoon hope to achieve beyond lining their own pockets? Did they seriously believe they were helping the downtrodden majority to achieve financial security by... buying links to gifs of ugly ape cartoons and buying a speculative asset that fluctuates as wildly as the weather on a Scottish Summer day? We know the answer to that, obviously, but it sucks that they all essentially got away with it and just moved onto the next scam.
