McKenzie Bypasses Streamers for Anti-Crypto Doc
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- Ben McKenzie says major streaming services avoided licensing his documentary 'Everyone Is Lying to You for Money' to avoid 'incurring the wrath of the Trump administration,' which he notes has raked in $1.4 billion in crypto-related income during Trump's first year back in office
- 'Everyone Is Lying to You for Money' holds a 100% 'fresh' Rotten Tomatoes rating and earned roughly $150,000 during its limited theatrical run distributed by The Forge, outperforming some best-documentary Oscar contenders per McKenzie
- McKenzie is bypassing Amazon and Apple to release the film on Eventive, a digital platform for indie films, on August 22, with a live Q&A featuring McKenzie, his wife Morena Baccarin, and crypto critics
- McKenzie self-financed the documentary using savings and 'about a million dollars' he made betting against crypto and other 'frauds,' giving him freedom to label crypto an unregulated, unlicensed security
- McKenzie's 2023 book 'Easy Money: Cryptocurrency, Casino Capitalism, and the Golden Age of Fraud,' co-written with journalist Jacob Silverman, grew out of his lockdown-era investigation into the Bitcoin economy
- McKenzie has publicly criticized celebrities Kim Kardashian and Matt Damon for promoting crypto investment vehicles without being licensed financial advisers
Why it matters: McKenzie's release strategy tests whether independent filmmakers can survive financially by cutting out major streamers when their content touches politically sensitive industries — he sets a '100,000 viewers in two weeks' bar for success. His explanation for the streamers' cold shoulder ties corporate risk-aversion directly to the $1.4 billion the Trump administration has earned from the very sector his film condemns.
