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The Peter McCormack Show — Business
The Peter McCormack Show

The Peter McCormack Show – politics, macro, Bitcoin and AI, long-form interviews. Twice-weekly conversations about money, power, and the shifts reshaping the next decade.

Peter McCormack interviews politicians, economists, investors, journalists, founders and Bitcoiners. Past guests include Liz Truss, Lyn Alden, Curtis Yarvin, Matt Goodwin, Mike Green, Balaji Srinivasan, Rupert Lowe, Firas Modad, Scott Horton, Jeff Booth, Connor Leahy, Andrea Miotti, Neema Parvini, Dr Tim Gregory and Simon Dixon.

Recurring threads: the debt and inflation endgame, UK political collapse and what comes after, Reform and the populist wave, the Middle East and the American war machine, AI safety and the race for superintelligence, energy and net zero, Bitcoin adoption and policy, and the slow-motion decline of Western institutions.

Long-form – most episodes run 60 to 120 minutes. New episodes 2 to 3 times per week. Video on YouTube and Spotify.

Host: Peter McCormack, a retired rapper from Bedford, UK, trying to understand this crazy world.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Latest Episodes:

The Lightning Network 2019 Review with Jack Mallers - WBD180 Dec 27, 2019

Show notes

Location: Boulder, Colorado Date: Monday, 23rd December Project: Zap Role: Founder

The Lightning Network is a layer two solution that allows users to send and receive Bitcoin 'off-chain'. Sending and receiving transactions on Lightning is both fast and cheap, allowing the Bitcoin network to scale while maintaining decentralisation by keeping the basechain block size small.

The technology isn't perfect though. In its current state, the Lightning Network can be complicated and intimidating to newcomers as the user experience has key differences from transacting on the basechain. Lightning is developing at pace, and UX design is abstracting away many of the intricacies of the network.

Lightning as a micropayment mechanism for the mainstream market is just one potential use. Jack Mallers, Founder of the Lightning Network wallet Zap, thinks that Lightning may have a far broader value proposition.

In this interview, I review The Lightning Network in 2019 with Zap founder Jack Mallers. We discuss why Lightning matters, private key management, custodial v non-custodial wallets, and how proprietary trading firms may be the next big use case.

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Bitcoin World #2 - Bitcoin Youth Programme in El Salvador with Michael Peterson - WBD179 Dec 24, 2019

Show notes

Location: El Salvador Date: Thursday, 19th December Project: Bitcoin Beach Role: Founder

El Salvador is a country gripped by gang violence. It consistently ranks among countries with the highest murder rate per capita and is one of the deadliest countries in the American subcontinent. Gangs are prolific, and unlike other Central and South American countries, the drug route through Central America misses El Salvador, so instead, the gangs here turn to extortion and murder.

Jobs are scarce, and a considerable percentage of men leave the country in search of work, others are pulled into gang life, imprisoned or murdered. The breakup of the family and the difficulty of finding a job makes recruiting new gang members easy, perpetuating the gang culture.

Bitcoin Beach is trying to help. The organisation is building a Bitcoin economy in Punta Mango, a small beach town in El Salvador. Bitcoin Beach offers free Bitcoin classes and pays young people in Bitcoin to do work such as clean the polluted rivers and streets and stay in education. Local businesses are incentivised to accept Bitcoin, creating a local Bitcoin circular economy.

In this interview, I speak to Michael Peterson founder of Bitcoin Beach, to discuss the project, creating a Bitcoin economy, custodial vs non-custodial solutions and the gangs and violence that plague El Salvador.

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Bitcoin World #1 - What Argentina Can Teach Us About Bitcoin with Ariel Muslera and Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar - WBD178 Dec 20, 2019

Show notes

Location: Uruguay Date: Sunday, 15th December Project: arielmuslera.com | IOVLabs Role: VC Investor | CEO

Bitcoin is still mostly a speculative asset in the developed world. However, in countries with a history of poor monetary policy, Bitcoin is now a viable hedge against high inflation and government seizure.

Argentina's recent history is one of poor monetary policy. Between 1991 and 2002 the Argentine Peso was pegged to the USD with the central bank claiming to operate a full reserve. This peg was used to combat hyperinflation and initially appeared to work with inflation falling from 3000% in 1989 to 3.4% in 1994.

The reality was very different, and the strong USD overvalued the Argentine Peso and made international trade difficult. In 2001 the dollar-pegged Argentine Peso was abandoned, and the Argentine peso has lost over 98% of its value with 1 USD now buying almost 60 pesos.

With hyperinflation and the capital controls used by the Argentinian government, many locals look to find ways of protecting their wealth with hard assets. While many will use USD and real estate, more and more are turning to Bitcoin as a way to preserve their capital.

In this interview, I speak to Ariel Muslera and Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar about the current state of monetary policy in Argentina, the political landscape, and how more and more Argentinians are using Bitcoin to hedge risk.

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Quadriga: What Happened to Gerald Cotten with Nathaniel Rich - WBD177 Dec 17, 2019

Show notes

Location: Skype Date: Wednesday, 17th December Project: nathanielrich.com Role: Author

In December 2018 Gerald Cotten, the CEO of Canadian crypto exchange Quadriga, was on his honeymoon in India with his new wife. While there Gerald fell sick and a few days later died from complications related to his Crohn's disease.

Gerald was the only person who held the private keys to Quadriga's cold storage wallet, leaving an estimated CA$250m ($190 US) of customer deposits unrecoverable. In January 2019 QuadrigaCX, Canada's largest cryptocurrency exchange shut down for business, filing for bankruptcy in April.

While initially it was suspected the loss was down to gross incompetence and failure to structure a contingency plan, conspiracies quickly started to circulate:

Had Gerald faked his death in India as an elaborate exit scam?
When Gerald lost $millions of Ethereum in a smart contract bug a couple of years earlier, had he used customer funds on other exchanges to try and trade his way out of this hole?
Had Gerald lost funds he was harbouring for criminal gangs and escaped to avoid repercussions?

To add to the mismanagement of funds and keys the events leading up to and following his death were equally suspicious:

Just days before the trip Gerald had signed a new will leaving his entire estate to his wife.
Following his death, Gerald's wife did not request an autopsy and removed the body from the hospital.
His death was announced on January 14th, Despite dying on December 9th.

Whatever the course of events in India, the death and mismanagement of the exchange and private keys raise many questions, and there are likely parts of the story we may never know.

In this interview, I talk to author Nathaniel Rich about his investigation into Quadriga for Vanity Fair. We discuss the suspicious death of Quadriga's CEO Gerald Cotten, the missing $250m of customer funds and the FBI's investigation.

Note: following my interview with Nathaniel, the lawyers representing the customers of Quadriga have asked Canadian authorities to exhume Gerald's body. You can read more about that here.

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Trace Mayer on Proof of Keys - WBD176 Dec 13, 2019

Show notes

Location: Skype Date: Tuesday, 26th Nov Project: Premier Ark LLC Role: Manager

When Bitcoin is held on an exchange or with another 3rd party custodian, that 3rd party owns the Bitcoin, they have control of the private keys and can they have the ability to use it as they choose. As the customer to that custodian, all you have is the promise of that Bitcoin.

One of the core fundamentals of Bitcoin is that it allows you to become self-sovereign; so is adding a layer of trust to a trustless system antithetical to what it was designed to do?

On the anniversary of Bitcoin's genesis block Trace Mayer's Proof of Keys campaign encourages everyone to take control of their Bitcoin and remove it from these 3rd party custodians. Not only does this encourage everyone to control their private keys, but it also 'stress tests' the exchanges and offers proof that they are running fully reserved.

In this interview, I talk to Trace about his Proof of Keys campaign, exchange hackings, claiming your monetary sovereignty and stress testing custodians.

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Holly Randall on Porn, Censorship and Bitcoin - WBD175 Dec 10, 2019

Show notes

Location: Los Angeles Date: Monday, 25th Nov Project: hollyrandall.com Role: Pornographer

Holly Randall is a second-generation pornographer and the daughter of Suze Randall, the first female staff photographer for both Playboy and Hustler. In 1998, at the age of 20, Holly became a photographer for the family-run website suze.net.

Having worked in the industry for 20 years, Holly has experienced the porn industry pre and post-internet and witnessed how the industry has adapted to the growth in free online content.

Despite porn being legal, like others in the adult industry, Holly faces a constant battle with financial censorship. Banks regularly close accounts, credit cards are often rejected, payment operators freeze accounts and standard business services such as employee insurance can be hard to get.

With its censorship resistance, trustless and decentralised nature, Bitcoin is a natural fit to help the adult industry solve problems of financial censorship; however, as of now, it is a niche solution for the tech-savvy.

In this interview, I talk to pornographer Holly Randall about censorship. We discuss how the industry has changed, financial censorship, whether Bitcoin can be a solution and the misconceptions and misrepresentations of adult performers.

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Jimmy Song Killing the Hopes and Dreams of S***coin Bagholders - WBD174 Dec 06, 2019

Show notes

Location: Austin Date: Friday, 23rd Nov Project: Jimmy Song Consulting Role: Bitcoin Educator, Developer and Entrepreneur

Bitcoiners regularly criticise altcoins; so much so that the term "shitcoin" has become synonymous with anything which isn't Bitcoin. From the centralised nature of these projects to premines, often Bitcoiner will identify altcoins as a poor investment with some going as far as calling everything that isn't Bitcoin a scam.

Why are these projects still able to raise $millions in funding and why are investors so divided in their opinions? Are Bitcoiners right that Bitcoin is the only use for a blockchain or are they just toxic and close-minded? Are multicoiners right that this is a new wave in decentralised technology or holding a bias due to their bag holding?

How are inexperienced investors meant to navigate this minefield?

There are nearly 5000 cryptocurrencies with many claiming to have the superior-tech to Bitcoin; whether that's faster block times or cheaper transactions, Turing complete smart-contracts or environmentally friendly consensus mechanisms. But at what cost? The key trade-off with blockchain technology is decentralisation, where Bitcoin outperforms every other cryptocurrency in the market on almost every measure.

So if decentralisation is key and Bitcoin is king, why do altcoins continue to attract investors despite apparent risks? Is it all down to marketing and the centralised foundations, creators and businesses and are they all doomed to fail?

In this interview, I talk to Jimmy Song; Bitcoin educator, developer and author. Following his recent article "On Altcoin Valuation", we discuss why altcoins are a poor investment, the misuse of blockchain and why shitcoins rely on marketing to grow.

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Tuur Demeester on The Bitcoin Reformation - WBD173 Dec 03, 2019

Show notes

Location: Austin Date: Thursday, 22nd Nov Project: Adamant Capital Role: Founding Partner

The 16th-century Reformation was a political and cultural upheaval that spread across central and northern Europe. Reformers questioned the power and authority of the Roman Catholic Church and wanted change.

With the Reformation came decades of rebellion and several wars. However, the Reformation also brought with it a significant political and religious shift to greater freedom and a move towards the world we now live.

Could a new Reformation have Bitcoin at its heart? Will cryptography, computation and telecommunications be the 21st-century equivalents of the printing press, bookkeeping and the hourglass of the 16th century?

Millennials have grown up in the wake of 9/11, where safety is not guaranteed, and trust is not a given. The millennials early adulthood witnessed the 2008 global financial crisis, living through a recession and budget cuts alongside reckless and immoral banking practices.

Millennials are also the primary adopters of Bitcoin, and by 2029 they are expected to be the generation with the largest share of disposable income. They will likely be controlling the management of significant funds and institutional money, and this could mean a paradigm shift in the way the world sees and uses Bitcoin and lead to the Bitcoin Reformation.

In this interview, I talk to Tuur Demeester; macro investor, analyst, business cycle expert and founding partner at Adamant Capital. We discuss his recent article The Bitcoin Reformation, Bitcoin financial services and distrust in the current banking system.

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Gun Violence Prevention with Texas Gun Sense - WBD172 Nov 29, 2019

Show notes

Location: Austin Date: Thursday, 22nd Nov Project: Texas Gun Sense Role: Executive Director (Texas Gun Sense) & Board Member (c)

The 2nd Amendment to the U.S constitution outlines Americans' right to keep and bear arms. America is now home to more guns than people and is the country with the highest number of deaths by firearms in the world.

The gun debate continues to polarise the nation. While many firmly stand by the constitution and see removing their right to own a gun as an attack on their civil liberties, others see the weapons as a dangerous and unnecessary threat responsible for tens of thousands of deaths per year.

Texas Gun Sense is a group who come at this debate with a more nuanced viewpoint. They aim to bring 'common-sense, fact-based gun policies to Texas'. The organisation is not anti-gun, but they do support increased and more rigorous background checks alongside education to improve gun safety practices.

In a previous episode, Ragnar Lifthrasir joined me on What Bitcoin Did, and we discussed why he believes it is every American's right to own a gun. To continue the discussion, in this episode, we hear from Executive Director at Texas Gun Sense, Gyl Switzer and Leesa Ross from Lock Arms for Life, whose son was killed in a handgun accident. We discuss their approach to gun ownership while still supporting the 2nd Amendment.

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Michael Goldstein on Rejecting All Forms of Activism - WBD171 Nov 26, 2019

Show notes

Location: Austin Date: Thursday, 22nd Nov Project: Noded Podcast Role: Co-Host

The ideology of Bitcoiners aligns closely with Libertarians as both value self-sovereignty and self-governance. Because of this, going down the Bitcoin rabbit hole often leads to Libertarianism and Austrian Economics.

There are though many levels of Libertarianism. Some believe in minarchism, the reduction but not complete removal of the state while others believe in full anarchy where there is no centralised state planning, and the free market determines what is best. Alternatively, some see it as a personal philosophy that they follow within the lines of current government and state systems.

How would the free market operate in an imperfect world? Without regulations, would it be possible to keep people safe? What about human greed? Would there be a social cost to a society structured this way?

To find out the answers to some of these questions, I talk to Michael Goldstein, the co-host of the Noded Podcast and President of the Nakamoto Institute to discuss Libertarianism. We discuss Libertarianism, the free market, rejecting activism and the transition to an anarcho-capitalist society.

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