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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:

Reflecting on Two Years of What Bitcoin Did with Luke Martin - WBD170 Nov 22, 2019

Show notes

Location: Indianapolis Date: Monday, 18th November Project: Coinist Podcast Role: Host

Two years ago I sat down with Bitcoin trader & analyst, Luke Martin in LA to record the very first episode of What Bitcoin Did

Luke has dropped out of school to focus on his trading full time, and he's now known as being one of the most followed in his field. He's also a fellow podcaster, the host of the Coinist Podcast and even been a guest on CNN.

By coincidence, we managed to find ourselves in the same city exactly two years ago to the day that Luke and I recorded WBD001. Two years is a significant amount of time in Bitcoin and lots has happened. Luke and I have remained friends, and we have supported each other along the way, Luke telling me to stop fighting on Twitter, and I have encouraged Luke to continue podcasting.

As a fellow podcaster, Luke speaks with people in the industry, gaining insights predominantly on the Bitcoin market, trading and exchanges. In this interview, we sit down and reflect on the two years since we recorded WBD001 and discuss Bitcoin, financial services and Twitter.

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Nelson Minier on Running a Bitcoin OTC Desk - WBD169 Nov 19, 2019

Show notes

Location: New York Date: Thursday, 14th Nov Project: Kraken Role: Head of OTC Sales & Trading

Liquidity is crucial for any tradeable asset. A liquid market means lots of buyers and sellers, making it easy to move in and out of a position without paying a premium or selling at a discounted price. Increased liquidity also means a smaller spread (the gap between the highest bid and the lowest ask).

Bitcoin is the most liquid cryptocurrency by far but compared to traditional stocks, bonds or precious metals, it is still comparatively illiquid. For smaller trades this doesn't present a significant problem, however, for large traders buying and selling tens, hundreds or even thousands of Bitcoin, this can present a challenge as even $100,000 can move the market significantly, especially during times of low volume.

Large traders have the option of using an over-the-counter service which allows them to place an order which is fulfilled by the OTC desk utilising multiple exchanges or other OTC clients orders to limit the effect that these large trades have on the market.

In this interview, I talk to Nelson Minier. Nelson is a Wall Street veteran who, for the last two years, has been head of Kraken's OTC desk. We discuss working on Wall Street, how an OTC desk operates, and if institutional investors are buying Bitcoin.

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What Bitcoiners Can Learn from the OneCoin Scam with Jamie Bartlett - WBD168 Nov 15, 2019

Show notes

Location: London Date: Monday, 11th Nov Project: The Missing Cryptoqueen Role: Host

OneCoin, a project founded by Ruja Ignatova, promised a financial revolution. By the time Ignatova disappeared, the scam was alleged to have received over $5bn in investment (though some estimates may put it at over $15bn).

While OneCoin claimed to be running a private blockchain, in reality, it was a Ponzi scheme where buyers purchased 'packages' and received 'educational material'. During the process, they earned OneCoin tokens, and there were incentive schemes to onboard new users.

Once people had received their OneCoins, the only place they could trade them was with another OneCoin user on the scheme's private 'exchange'. While the scam began to unravel with the disappearance of Ruja and the arrest of her brother, many struggled to accept it was a scam and money continued to pour in.

The word scam is thrown around loosely in crypto, often from cult-like followers who disagree with an ideology that another coin possesses or sometimes due to a lack of knowledge. While some projects may be misguided or have questionable use-cases, not all are scams like OneCoin Bitconnect and PlusToken.

Experienced investors see these projects and immediately identify the warning signs; sadly, this is not necessarily the case for newcomers. The language used in Bitcoin and crypto can be confusing, and when regular people hear or read about a project that is 'The New Bitcoin' with promises the project is like buying Bitcoin at $1, $10 or $100, these scams can quickly suck in naive investors.

So, should Bitcoiners be doing more to spread awareness of these scams as they arise and what can Bitcoiners learn about guiding new investors from scams such as this?

In this interview, I talk to Jamie Bartlett, host of the BBC's podcast The Missing Cryptoqueen, an investigation into OneCoin and the disappearance of its founder Ruja Ignatova. We discuss scams, Ponzi's, pyramids, cults and multi-level marketing.

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Jim O'Shaughnessy - From Wall Street to Bitcoin - WBD167 Nov 12, 2019

Show notes

Location: New York Date: Tuesday, 22nd Oct Project: O'Shaughnessy Asset Management, LLC Role: Chairman & Chief Investment Officer

Jim O'Shaughnessy is a true Wall Street Legend and the best selling author of What Works on Wall Street and Invest Like the Best.

With over 30 years of research in equity returns, Jim O'Shaughnessy is a pioneer of quantitative equity research, with over $6 billion under management.

How he achieved this success is no secret, and his four books share, in detail, what he's learnt along the way. As a New York Times bestseller, he writes on the roles that value, quality and momentum all play in investing.

His grandfather's success sparked Jim's interest in investing. O'Shaughnessy's grandfather built what was, one of the world's largest privately-owned oil companies, before giving away 95% of his fortune. It was family discussions around what to do with that money which got 17-year-old O'Shaughnessy interested in the markets.

In this interview, I sat down with Jim to discuss his career, media power & bias, censorship and free speech, quantitative easing and investing.

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Dark Markets and Bitcoin Adoption with Cedric Dahl - WBD166 Nov 10, 2019

Show notes

Location: Los Angeles Date: Friday, 18th October Project: 1000x Role: CEO

Bitcoin is a public ledger, which allows anyone to view any transaction and address thus offer pseudonymity rather than anonymity. What this means is that Bitcoin can provide a certain level of privacy if your Bitcoin address is not attached to personal information, for example, exchange KYC data.

Bitcoiners wanting to protect their privacy must take careful steps, a lapse in concentration can identify you as the owner of a particular address. By accessing a block explorer without using Tor or a VPN, posting your public key online, utilizing a KYC compliant exchange are all examples of how chain analysts can identify you.

Because of this, Bitcoin may not seem like the perfect tool to facilitate transactions on dark markets, yet it currently accounts for the vast majority of them. So why is this?

Bitcoin, by design, as a censorship-resistant currency enables dark markets. If you want to purchase something that your government deems illegal, and If you are willing to take the necessary precautions (using a VPN or Tor, CoinJoin and not reusing addresses) you can maintain your privacy.

Since the Silk Road, Bitcoin has been the most used cryptocurrency used to buy drugs, firearms, identity documents and anything else from dark markets. By tracking the data in this space are we able to judge whether Bitcoin adoption is growing? And, is censorship resistance the only use-case that matters?

In this interview, I talk to Cedric Dahl from 1000x. 1000x is a private think tank focused on researching Bitcoin usage data. We discuss dark markets, sanctioned states using Bitcoin and censorship resistance.

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Is Bitcoin Selling Out with Joe Weisenthal - WBD165 Nov 08, 2019

Show notes

Location: New York Date: Friday, 25th October Project: Bloomberg Role: Editor

The Winklevoss twins first Exchange Traded Fund (ETF) application was rejected by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in March 2017.

In the 2 ½ years since, there have been a number of other applications for an ETF, all of which have been rejected, with the SEC citing concerns regarding manipulation, volatility and fraudulent activity.

But does a government-granted ETF fit with the ethos of Bitcoin?

Bitcoin was born out of the cypherpunk movement, with the goal of taking power away from the government by giving people a trustless and censorship-resistant monetary system. As such. seeking approval from a government-run body for an investment fund is seemingly against this ideology.

It seems apparent that most Bitcoiners' motivation behind seeking an ETF is likely down to money. The added liquidity, easy access to investors and media coverage an approved ETF would garner may well lead to a price increase and thus an ETF approval seems like an easily identifiable path to another bull market.

Could this be interpreted as Bitcoiners being hypocritical and caring more about the price of their coins than the intended goal of a censorship-resistant currency? On the other hand, it could be seen as a significant achievement in terms of mainstream adoption. After all, nothing aides Bitcoin's adoption than media coverage and price-driven FOMO.

In this interview, I talk to Bloomberg Business News Editor, Joe Weisenthal. We discuss contradictory Bitcoin ideals and challenging the status quo, ETF's, censorship resistance, privacy and the current state of the global economy.

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Hotep Jesus on Nobody is Born a Maximalist - WBD164 Nov 05, 2019

Show notes

Location: New York Date: Friday, 25th October Project: Independent Role: Tech Startup Advisor, Author & Speaker

The name Hotep Jesus hit many radars for the first time when he appeared as a guest on the Joe Rogan podcast. The tech startup advisor, was there to speak about his latest book, and during the interview, the topic of blockchain was raised and BSV was mentioned.

The mention of BSV, although brief, caused a significant backlash towards Hotep on crypto twitter despite it not being Hotep who raised it. Many were angry that he chose to speak out seemingly in favour of the altcoin and felt he was 'promoting' it without the required knowledge and was adding to the misinformation and confusion in the space.

Although misguided, I could relate to Hotep's confusion and felt that his conversation with Rogan was a typical example of many people who are beginning their journey into Bitcoin. I too had attempted to raise the confusion when a friend asked me which Bitcoin to buy on Coinbase as he saw two options. The "2 Bitcoins" saga became a meme to attack by particular Bitcoiners, avoiding the issue of confusion.

Coming into the space it can be confusing. With multiple coins with Bitcoin in the name, some with a cult-like following and all shilling different ideologies/technical narratives, it can be confusing. How is a newcomer meant to know who to believe and which Bitcoin is the real Bitcoin? The objective amongst us can understand that the narrative for each coin can be persuasive.

Some people prefer to go for the approach of letting the newcomers get rekt before finding out for themselves. However, I believe this hard-line approach can scare people out of the market altogether, and we should concentrate on educating these newcomers.

In this interview, I speak with Hotep Jesus about confusion entering the market, as well as the benefits of Bitcoin, altcoins, race and equality and free speech.

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Nick Szabo on Cypherpunks, Money and Bitcoin - WBD163 Nov 01, 2019

Show notes

Location: San Francisco Date: Monday, 21st October Project: n/a Role: Blockchain, cryptocurrency, and smart contracts pioneer

On October 31st 2008, Satoshi Nakamoto emailed the cypherpunk mailing list, telling them "I've been working on a new electronic cash system that's fully peer-to-peer, with no trusted third party." In the 11 years that followed Bitcoin has proven to be the most successful attempt at creating a censorship-resistant and trust minimised digital currency.

Bitcoin was not the first attempt at creating a trust minimised currency, and there were several proposals, implementations and technologies which led to Bitcoin:

In the 1990's DigiCash, headed by David Chaum, attempted to make online payments anonymous.
In 1997 Adam Back created HashCash using a proof-of-work system to reduce email spam and prevent denial of service attacks.
In 1998 Wei Dai proposed B-money to allow for an "anonymous, distributed electronic cash system".
In 2004 Hal Finney built upon the idea of Hashcash and created Reusable Proofs of Work.
And in 2005 Nick Szabo proposed Bit Gold. Where unforgettable proof of work chains would share properties of gold: scarce, valuable and trust minimised but with the benefit of being easily transactable.

When Satoshi released the Bitcoin whitepaper, rather than a revolution, Bitcoin was an evolution of all that had come before it with Bitcoin being the most trust minimised, censorship-resistant and hardest currency that has ever existed.

Among Satoshi's email recipients was Nick Szabo, a computer scientist, cryptographer, the designer of Bit Gold and Smart Contracts pioneer. In a rare interview, Nick joins me to discuss the cypherpunk movement, what money is, privacy and of course, Bitcoin.

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Pierre Rochard on Bitcoin Adoption Hurdles - WBD162 Oct 29, 2019

Show notes

Location: New York Date: Tuesday, 22nd October Project: Kraken Role: Bitcoin Evangelist

Despite the arguments that Bitcoin is the hardest money, it is the opportunity for new Bitcoiners to make a profit in their local fiat currency which is the primary driver of awareness and adoption.

Since the launch of Bitcoin over 10 years ago, there have been a number of bull markets which has seen a rapid rise in the price of Bitcoin leading to wider awareness. The volume during the most recent bull run in 2017 led to exchanges struggling to cope with the volume and some dropping offline. Such was the demand that Bittrex and Bitfinex had to close down new user registrations.

Making it easier for new Bitcoiners to acquire the asset has been a key driver of adoption. Good exchange and wallet UX, and education regarding key issues such as private key management not only support adoption but help new Bitcoiners avoid making silly mistakes.

The Bitcoin rabbit hole is deep and there are many new concepts which can be intimidating to new Bitcoiners which sometimes OGs take for granted. Transacting alone requires consideration for a type of transaction fee, unconfirmed transactions and the reality that mistakes can't be reversed.

Having talked to Hotep and followed his journey into Bitcoin and the distraction with shitcoins, people told me to ignore him. I wanted to do the opposite as I wanted to learn about how someone new sees the space.

Kraken recognises that UX can be a hurdle for adoption, and are working on making it as simple as possible for new Bitcoiners to acquire and understand the asset. They recently hired Bitcoin OG Pierre Rochard to help with onboarding new users and Bitcoin adoption.

In this interview, Pierre and I discuss why they were the right fit for him, mass adoption, onboarding, Bitcoin financial services and the lightning network.

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Nik Bhatia on Bitcoin is a Response to Central Banks - WBD161 Oct 25, 2019

Show notes

Location: Los Angeles Date: Friday, 18th October Project: OpenNode & Tantra Labs Role: Research Strategist

State adoption of Bitcoin is unclear but countries such as Iran, North Korea and Venezuela are believed to be holding and using Bitcoin. While these countries are in the minority, some believe it is just a matter of time before Bitcoin becomes a generally accepted state-level monetary tool.

State-level censorship resistance is useful for nations subject to tight sanctions. The unique properties of Bitcoin could make governmental ownership of Bitcoin a necessity in the future and increased accumulation by governments around the world may lead to the U.S Dollar being replaced by Bitcoin as the global reserve currency.

Further, the global economy is becoming increasingly uncertain, with negative interest rates and the Fed's growing intervention in the repo market standing as warning signs of an imminent global recession.

Could all these factors speed up the shift towards Bitcoin adoption?

In this interview, I talk to Nik Bhatia, Research Strategist at OpenNode and Tantra Labs. We discuss how banking works, the global economic outlook and why Bitcoin is a response to centralised and monopolistic money creation by central banks.

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