‘The OC’ star slammed Kim Kardashian and other celebrities for swindling crypto – calling it a ‘moral disaster’ | Currency News | Financial and business news

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Ben McKenzie (left) played Ryan Atwood on the hit TV show “The OC”

J. Merritt / Getty Images

A star of “The OC” wrote an article criticizing celebrities pushing cryptocurrency on their fans. Ben McKenzie, who played Ryan on the show, said that “the Hollywoodization of crypto is a moral disaster.” He said crypto is very dangerous and that many celebrities are “promoting the financial equivalent of Russian roulette.” See more stories on the Insider business page.

On the hit TV show “The OC” from the early 2000s, Ryan Atwood was a kid on the wrong side of the slopes with a strong moral compass.

Now Ben McKenzie, the actor who played him, has channeled Ryan and taken a principled stance on cryptocurrencies, criticizing his fellow celebrities for offering risky tokens to unsuspecting amateur investors.

“The Hollywoodization of crypto is a moral disaster,” McKenzie wrote in an article in Slate Thursday. The article criticized celebrities such as Kim Kardashian for “promoting the financial equivalent of Russian roulette.”

Kardashian posted an Instagram story in June encouraging her 250 million followers to buy a little-known cryptocurrency called ethereum max, which has since plunged. The post earned Kardashian a note from the UK financial regulator, which said it was putting retail investor money at risk.

McKenzie said celebrities – especially those like Kardashian, who he says is “400 times more famous than me” – should be much more responsible for selling crypto tokens.

Whether it’s Lindsay Lohan peddling five-digit NFTs, laser-eyed Tom Brady endorsing the FTX exchange, or Akon promising to build a $ 6 billion crypto-inspired town in Senegal, there is a lot of capital that This industry swirls around, and a lot of reason to be concerned, ”he wrote.

Read more: Crypto pump-and-dump scams cost victims hundreds of thousands of dollars. 4 experts break down 3 smart ways to spot a scam and invest safely

“Celebrities are encouraging their fans to bet on speculative, unproven investments that could soon see major regulatory repression or even outright implosion of the market.”

McKenzie, who rose to fame playing Ryan Atwood in “The OC” in 2003, majored in economics at the University of Virginia and has a keen interest in markets, at least according to his Twitter. McKenzie also played Detective James Gordon in the Fox Batman spin-off “Gotham”.

His article on Slate was co-authored by journalist Jacob Silverman, with whom McKenzie is writing a book on crypto and fraud.

The actor said the cryptocurrency world has a whole host of problems and is full of scams like “stack draws” – when token founders simply take everyone’s funds.

“The Hollywoodization of crypto is a moral disaster. And for celebrity fans, who probably have a lot less money to spare, it’s also potentially financial,” McKenzie wrote. “These rich and famous artists might as well offer payday loans or sit their audience at a rigged blackjack table.”

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