Easy Money

How can you build a financial revolution on software alone? In Easy Money, Ben McKenzie argues that the crypto boom of the 2010s and 2020s wasn't a technological breakthrough but a moral and economic mirage—casino capitalism reborn for the digital age. McKenzie, bolstered by journalist Jacob Silverman and data-driven sleuths, contends that crypto promised liberation from central banks and bureaucrats but delivered unregulated gambling, hidden leverage, and systemic harm. The so‑called trustless future turned out to rely on opaque institutions, celebrity hype, and political capture.

This book connects the dots between monetary policy, psychology, and fraud. It begins with the 2008 financial crisis and the flood of liquidity that followed—conditions that nourished speculative assets from meme stocks to Bitcoin. It then explores how narratives such as “digital gold” spread like financial viruses, infecting culture and investors through social media, influencers, and elite endorsements. Finally, McKenzie examines the collapse: Tether’s questionable stability, FTX’s misuse of customer funds, Terra’s implosion, and the contagion that exposed the entire ecosystem’s fragility.

From Easy Money to Easy Belief

When central banks expanded the money supply—around $900 billion on the Fed’s balance sheet in 2008 to over $8 trillion by 2022—speculative markets thrived. Low interest rates and abundant capital convinced millions that riskier bets like crypto might outperform traditional investments. McKenzie argues this was an easy-belief era: optimism replaced scrutiny. Bitcoin’s 2008 white paper appeared as a prophetic alternative, promising decentralized freedom at a moment of rage against bailouts and banks. What most missed was that a system free from institutions doesn’t erase human greed—it isolates it behind new screens.

Casino Capitalism Repackaged

Crypto’s structure mirrors gambling more than production. McKenzie compares tokens to casino chips—circulating in self-referential systems with no real-world output. You buy a token hoping others will buy it at a higher price. Exchanges, miners, and creators take their cut via fees and spreads, ensuring the house always wins. Robert Shiller’s concept of “economic narratives” explains how phrases like “digital gold” or “financial freedom” transformed an unproductive codebase into a viral investment theology. Crypto replaced work with story—a new myth of salvation by speculation.

The Myth of Trustlessness

The crypto gospel insists code can replace trust. McKenzie dismantles this premise by reminding you that money itself is a social contract—a shared act of belief reinforced by regulation and insurance. Historical episodes like 19th‑century free banking produced chaos and bank runs, just as “decentralized” finance did again in 2022. The FDIC’s record contrasts sharply with crypto’s lack of safety nets: in 90 years, insured depositors haven’t lost a cent. In crypto, there are no such guarantees. Algorithms enforce rigidity, not rescue.

Narratives, Victims, and Investigators

The book moves from macro to micro: from liquidity waves to individual stories. McKenzie profiles retail traders lured by celebrity ads, retirees ruined by scams, and victims like Reverend David Henson’s father—whose despair over fraudulent “investment clubs” became fatal. These tales expose crypto’s emotional machinery: constant trading, dopamine rewards, and MLM-style “community” culture. Yet McKenzie also celebrates resistance—the on‑chain sleuths like James Block and the reporters who pierced the illusion with data.

Collapse and Reckoning

Finally, the illusion collapsed. From Terra’s death spiral to FTX’s bankruptcy, dominoes fell as leverage met illiquidity. Politicians who once accepted donations from crypto billionaires distanced themselves, while regulators scrambled for jurisdiction. McKenzie ends by calling for honesty—a return to systems grounded in verifiable production and social responsibility. The promise of crypto wasn’t only financial; it was moral. Its failure reveals that “trustless” technologies still depend on human integrity—and that integrity must come first.

(Parenthetical note: Like Michael Lewis in The Big Short or John Lanchester in Whoops!, McKenzie fuses personal curiosity with social critique. The result is both exposé and cautionary tale: a reminder that innovation without accountability is not progress but a new form of illusion.)

To understand why crypto could rise so fast, you must start with the 2008 crisis. The collapse of Lehman Brothers and the housing bubble triggered massive state intervention—bailouts, guarantees, and quantitative easing. These actions flooded global markets with cheap credit. Between 2008 and 2014, the Fed’s balance sheet quadrupled, and floods of liquidity encouraged the search for high-yield alternatives. That hunt for upside created the psychological space where Bitcoin’s story caught fire.

The Birth of a Myth

Satoshi Nakamoto’s 2008 white paper proposed peer‑to‑peer electronic cash built on cryptography instead of trust. Technically, it solved a narrow problem: double spending. Socially, it solved an emotional one: disillusionment. Early adopters—often libertarian, anti-bank, or post-cypherpunk thinkers—embraced Bitcoin as rebellion against fiat power. Yet when adoption proved niche (e.g., Silk Road), the story mutated into “digital gold,” shifting from transaction tool to speculative store of value. That pivot—from cash to asset—set the trajectory for all future cryptos.

How Easy Money Fed Mania

COVID stimulus in 2020 added trillions more to the financial system. Savings soared as people stayed home and apps made trading frictionless. This was the perfect storm of liquidity and narrative contagion. McKenzie shows how “number go up” became an ideology, not a data trend. Just as meme stocks like GameStop drew collective faith, so too did Bitcoin, Ethereum, and countless altcoins. Policy and psychology merged; easy money created easy myths.

For you, this era teaches a simple lesson: when policy rewards leverage and storytelling trumps analysis, speculative bubbles become moral stories people want to believe. The crypto revolution wasn’t born of scarcity—it was born of surplus hope.

Once the myths took hold, crypto revealed itself as casino capitalism dressed in code. McKenzie likens tokens to chips at a table where the house always collects its share—through exchange fees, slippage, and validator costs. Each trade creates winners and losers but no productive output. Unlike factories, tokens don’t make goods; they circulate stories and volatility.

Zero-sum Economics

The math is unforgiving. For one investor to profit, another must lose. Exchanges like Binance and Coinbase profit either way, raking transaction fees. Bitcoin’s throughput—around seven transactions per second—contrasts starkly with Visa’s 24,000, and its enormous energy consumption underscores inefficiency. McKenzie calls this system “a speculative treadmill”: high costs, low utility, perpetual motion aimed at price, not progress.

Narratives as Engines

Why do people keep playing? Because stories sell better than data. “Digital gold” evokes immortality; “freedom from banks” flatters independence. Sociologist Robert Shiller’s framework of narrative economics explains these contagions—the same logic that inflated tulip mania centuries ago now spreads online. Memes become investment theses; hashtags replace balance sheets. Stablecoins like Tether act as casino chips, enabling constant movement without cashing out, prolonging the game.

For you, the takeaway is clear: approaches that seem innovative may just repurpose old gambling logic under new terms. You can admire the architecture, but never forget the odds.

The promise of “trustless money” collapses once you examine the foundations. Cryptocurrencies depend on belief just as fiat currency does—but without legal backstops. McKenzie illustrates this fragility through the story of Tether, the largest stablecoin whose purported dollar backing has never been fully audited.

The Shadow Central Bank

Tether functions like a private money printer. Traders use USDT to buy, sell, and leverage crypto without touching real dollars. But opaque reserves and offshore ties make it a systemic risk. Regulators fined Tether for false claims and concealment; papers by Griffin and Shams found that Tether issuance correlated with Bitcoin price spikes—evidence of market manipulation. McKenzie calls this “a central bank without a country”—and without accountability.

Trustless, Yet Dependent

Bitcoiners claim money can exist without trust, but history says otherwise. Private currencies of the 19th century—the wildcat banknotes—collapsed under fraud and distance. Today’s stablecoins replay that lesson. Users trust Tether because markets need liquidity, not because they have proof. The irony: the crypto economy’s most essential asset is the one that most resembles the fiat system it wanted to replace.

For you as an investor or observer, this portion offers a litmus test: if a "trustless" system depends on an unverified private issuer for stability, it’s not decentralized—it’s faith wrapped in code.

When crypto entered its decentralized-finance (DeFi) phase, complexity multiplied risk. McKenzie distills this fragility into three words: leverage, rigidity, complexity. These forces turned speculative enthusiasm into systemic collapse.

Leverage and Phantom Collateral

In DeFi, anyone can mint tokens and use them as collateral. Firms like FTX and Alameda borrowed against their own creations—FTT—to fund operations. Prices inflated through insider trading and wash trades. When sentiment shifted or regulators intervened, the fake collateral collapsed, creating bank‑run dynamics without banks. Hilary Allen compares it to shadow banking on steroids.

Rigidity and Irreversibility

Smart contracts execute immediately, leaving no room for human judgment. In crises, that rigidity accelerates liquidations instead of pauses. McKenzie notes that centralized finance survives because courts and central banks can delay damage; blockchains cannot. Automation masquerades as safety until it’s tested by volatility.

Complexity as Camouflage

Crypto marketing buried simple risks under jargon—yield farms, DAOs, liquidity pools. These terms obscure basic economics: most products recycle existing capital, not create new value. The complexity kept regulators and journalists confused long enough for insiders to profit. When the music stopped in 2022, the collateralized illusions—Terra, Celsius, 3AC—evaporated in weeks.

For you, this part of the story reveals that innovation without comprehension becomes deception. A system too complex for public oversight invites collapse.

Sam Bankman‑Fried (SBF) embodied crypto’s self-made myth—an MIT prodigy who framed greed as altruism. McKenzie’s interview with Sam shows charm used as camouflage. Dressed like a college student, fidget spinner in hand, he described himself as an ethical capitalist using FTX returns to fund “effective altruism.” Reality proved otherwise.

Conflict at the Core

SBF controlled both FTX (exchange) and Alameda Research (trading firm). Their finances intertwined: Alameda held FTT, a token FTX itself issued and supported. Public audits never materialized; internal documents were kept on QuickBooks. Political influence expanded—tens of millions donated to both major parties, lobbying for favorable CFTC oversight.

Collapse and Consequence

The November 2022 leak of Alameda’s balance sheet triggered panic. Binance’s decision to sell FTT became digital contagion. When withdrawals surged, FTX froze accounts and filed bankruptcy within days. Court filings revealed billions misused, loans to insiders, and absent controls. McKenzie recalls John J. Ray III’s observation: “Never have I seen such a complete failure of corporate controls.”

For you, Sam’s arc is proof that image can substitute for due diligence—until it can’t. Separation of duties, independent audits, and transparency remain non-negotiable guardrails, no matter how charismatic the founder.

One reason crypto’s excesses lasted so long was regulatory capture. McKenzie shows how lobbying, donations, and revolving-door hiring diluted enforcement, especially between the SEC and CFTC. Crypto advocates sought lighter oversight—positioning their assets as commodities, not securities—to escape investor-protection rules.

Jurisdiction Games

SBF pushed the Digital Commodities Consumer Protection Act (“Sam’s Bill”) to anchor regulation in the CFTC. Commissioners met him repeatedly, signaling openness. Rostin Behnam even suggested a CFTC market might help Bitcoin’s price. Smaller budgets and friendly optics made the CFTC ideal turf. Meanwhile, former regulators joined crypto firms, blurring boundaries between watchdog and industry.

Money Buys Narrative

Crypto donated heavily to U.S. campaigns—over $26 million before 2022. The Blockchain Eight in Congress pushed conciliatory language toward the industry. As watchdogs competed for relevance, enforcement stalled. The result was a “race to the bottom” of oversight. Mark Hays warned that bad laws could legitimize risk instead of reducing it.

For you, this emphasizes that absence of clear jurisdiction equals absence of safety. When political influence shapes regulation, consumers become test subjects in experiments without protections.

McKenzie’s collaboration with independent investigators like James Block (Dirty Bubble Media) proves that transparency and accountability can emerge from citizens, not just institutions. Using public ledger tools, they followed wallet trails to reveal insider fraud at Celsius and Alameda. These efforts underscore how data literacy empowers defense against deception.

Dirty Bubble Media and Detective Work

James Block traced CEO wallets, NFT transfers, and token flows that exposed Celsius’s insolvency months before bankruptcy. His findings saved some customers who withdrew early. Blockchain visibility, once touted as a virtue, became a weapon against the industry itself. Yet transparency has limits—mixers, shell companies, and legal threats hamper investigation.

Human Cost and Moral Dimension

Beyond numbers, McKenzie highlights addiction and grief. Crypto’s psychological design—24/7 markets, influencers, and dopamine feedback—trapped ordinary people. Stories like Reverend Henson’s father reveal the devastation behind charts. Victims lost homes, savings, and lives while influencers marketed “community.” The absence of accountability made loss collective yet invisible.

For you, the final insight is moral: technology does not absolve responsibility. Systems that weaponize hope must answer for the harm they cause. The crypto saga isn’t just a financial failure—it’s an ethical one.