Twenty years ago, he was Ryan Atwood in The OC, lighting up a smoke and making goo-goo eyes in the series’ iconic opening episode with erstwhile co-star Mischa Barton; his rebellious neighbour Marissa Cooper.

At the height of the crypto craze, he was the easy money sceptic the Bitcoin-drunk world didn’t particularly want but, as it would soon find out, desperately needed.

The only thing McKenzie could never bring himself to be was friends with FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried. Better known, for better or worse, as SBF, the 31-year-old CEO of one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges before it came crashing down into a steaming pile of Adderall and polycules.

“No,” McKenzie says, with another hard “no” for emphasis, of SBF’s thirsty attempts to befriend and convince him of the second coming of a digital currency.

“We had gotten off on such an odd foot because I asked him for a use case for crypto and he immediately talked about remittances. And right away my bulls**t radar went off.”

While the world was showering SBF with praise as a blockchain savant, and SBF showered the world with an alleged USD $100 million in political donations, McKenzie was deep into researching his new book, Easy Money: Cryptocurrency, Casino Capitalism, and the Golden Age of Fraud.

The actor, with an economics degree and a career built on creating performances designed to convince and persuade, had sniffed out what he thought was an alleged scam when everyone else was blinded by the glow of SBF’s alleged billions.

After their first meeting, McKenzie suddenly found himself with a direct line to the man behind the curtain of FTX Trading Ltd., headquartered in The Bahamas, which went from a $32bn valuation to filing for US bankruptcy in November, 2022.

“I was surprised with the access and the fact that we could just DM, that I was just DM’ing this purported billionaire,” McKenzie says.

“That was really surprising to me and unsettling as well, because if the story that he was telling was true, which is that he was in this tight-knit industry that was running a transformative, soon-to-be global empire, he really should not be spending time talking to me. That’s really a poor use of his time and resources.”

SBF suddenly found himself with a lot more time, but far fewer resources, when a US federal judge revoked his bail in August ahead of his October trial on seven counts of fraud and money laundering charges connected to an alleged scheme to defraud lenders and investors of FTX and hedge fund Alameda Research, which was run by ex-partner and self-described polycule proponent Caroline Ellison.

Prosecutors allege that SBF stole billions from FTX customer funds to cover the losses at Alameda Research.

Ellison pleaded guilty to seven charges, including wire fraud, securities fraud and money laundering, that carry up to 110 years in prison, but in a plea deal with the Justice Department she is likely to receive a reduced sentence for co-operating with the investigation.

SBF has denied any wrongdoing and has pleaded not guilty to the charges.

US District Judge Lewis Kaplan had revoked SBF’s USD $250 million bail after finding that the former billionaire likely tampered with witnesses when he allegedly showed a reporter from The New York Times the writings of Ms. Ellison, who is expected to testify in the trial.

In a series of filings to the court, defence lawyers have complained about SBF’s conditions, his lack of access to a vegan diet, his lack of Adderall to treat ADHD, and lack of access to a laptop with internet and decent battery life to prepare for the trial.

None of that behaviour would come as a surprise to McKenzie, who saw “red flags” in the “tight circle of trust” SBF kept around him, like having 28-year-old Ms Ellison as CEO of his hedge fund, rather than a cadre of the most talented and accomplished business minds that crypto could buy. If crypto could be used as legal tender.

In August 2021, when the bull market was driving Bitcoin up to its all-time high of USD $68,789.63, which it would hit that November, McKenzie was already pitching his expose on the general crypto racket to co-writer Jacob Silverman. They began writing articles that fall, sold publishing rights to the book the following January, and McKenzie was face-to-face with SBF by July 2022.

“The thing with Sam, that was so obvious to me having studied fraud as my COVID pandemic hobby, was that all fraudsters must control access to information. It’s absolutely critical,” he says.

“Sam surrounded himself with people that he had control over. Had influence over. An ex-girlfriend, colleagues from [trading firm] Jane Street, people that he grew up with. A friend of his brother. A very small group. And they all live together and party together in that penthouse in the Bahamas. That’s a massive red flag.”

McKenzie’s prescience on the crypto collapse, which would wipe out more than USD $2 trillion from its peak, led him to testify before the US Congress Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs the month after FTX filed for bankruptcy. As he told Senators, his background in economics and performance gave him a particular set of skills.

“I know about lying, because as an actor I do it for a living.”

McKenzie testified that Crypto’s core concept of “trustless money” cannot function because money is a social construct that relies on trust, and “you can no more create a trustless money than you can a government-less government or a religion-less religion”.

On the contrary, Crypto is an investment vehicle in the same way online poker is an investment vehicle.

“The entire cryptocurrency industry resembles nothing more than a speculative bubble built on a foundation of fraud. In my opinion, it is the largest Ponzi scheme in history by an order of magnitude,” he told the committee.

Being ahead of the curve didn’t prepare McKenzie for the “catastrophic” and “comically inept” collapse of SBF’s empire. To wit: The aftermath revealed this multi-billion exchange used QuickBooks for accounting software. They were signing $1bn loans with emojis.

To have his central thesis be proven right, seeing the car wreck play out as predicted if more rapidly than expected, was surprising and intensely gratifying.

“But the net result is that a bunch of people lose money. When the big money started coming into crypto, it was from regular people putting in $1000, $500, whatever they could spare,” McKenzie says.

“It’s deeply unsettling to know you’ve not been able to do anything about it.”

With the Hollywood strike putting writers and actors on the sideline again, McKenzie will be returning to his Covid lockdown hobby to follow the SBF trial for an epilogue in the paperback edition of Easy Money, which released in hardcover in Australia on August 31.

In the meantime, he may just check back in with Ryan Attwood’s old neighbour Mischa Barton, who will go from Orange County to Erinsborough when she moves into Ramsey Street as Reece Sinclair.

“I’ve heard a lot about Neighbours,” McKenzie says, remembering another OC co-star Alan Dale, better known as Jim Robinson himself.

“I’ll have to check it out,” he laughs when asked if he’ll tune in to the Aussie drama to once again make goo-goo eyes at Marissa Cooper, showing once again that the actor can still be whoever she needs him to.

Easy Money: Cryptocurrency, Casino Capitalism, and the Golden Age of Fraud by Ben McKenzie with Jacob Silverman, is published by Abrams Books and is distributed in Australia and New Zealand by Thames & Hudson.