148 Minutes With … Ben Mckenzie
New York magazine|February 28-March 13, 2022
Who knew the world needed a celebrity crypto anti-influencer influencer—and that it would be Ryan from The O.C.?
By Bridget Read. Photography by Ryan Lowry
148 Minutes With … Ben Mckenzie

The actor Ben McKenzie is sitting in the den of his Brooklyn Heights townhouse, summarizing a 24-part MIT lecture series about the blockchain by SEC chair Gary Gensler. “Gensler talks about finance being the intermediation of risk and capital,” he explains before whipping me through the reliability of state-held currencies, the dangers of speculation, and the history of encryption from the Merkle tree (an early method of computer encryption) to ethereum (the biggest cryptocurrency after bitcoin). Once he gets through the three sides of the fraud triangle and the definition of securities, he takes a sip of tea. “It’s really good that you’re here talking to me,” McKenzie says. “Now my wife can say, ‘Thank God, for one day, I don’t have to listen to this shit.’”

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