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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:

Bitcoin is More Than a Financial System with Zac Prince & Jeremy Welch - WBD130 Jul 26, 2019

Show notes

During the previous bull run, the hype led to an influx of companies using Bitcoin or 'blockchain' to inflate value and attract investment. Many of these were questionable projects, and some were outright scams. Even legitimate companies struggled with the difficulty of creating value with Bitcoin, as companies failed two thrived: Casa and BlockFi.

BlockFi is building financial products for Bitcoin holders which allow them to use their crypto as collateral for taking out a loan or lend out their Bitcoin to earn interest. Casa is improving security by simplifying multisig.

So why have BlockFi and Casa been able to grow and thrive duing the bear market while so many others have failed?

In this interview, I speak with Casa Founder Jeremy Welch and BlockFi Founder Zac Prince, we discuss Bitcoin utility, non-financial and sometimes unexpected applications and why Bitcoin is more than a financial system.

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Nicholas Percoco on Defending the Crypto Honeypot - WBD129 Jul 23, 2019

Show notes

Exchange hacks have been a constant thorn in the side of the industry. Where a physical bank robbery of $millions will make headline news, a +$100m exchange hack will barely break out of the crypto news media. Exchange hacks are now so commonplace that a recent report from Ledger's CEO Eric Larcheveque found that the equivalent of $2.7 million a day was stolen from exchanges last year.

Almost all major exchanges have experienced a hack of some kind, from Mt. Gox which could have destroyed the industry to Poloniex and Bitfinex, and more recently Binance and Cryptopia, the list goes on and on.

As such, security is one of the biggest challenges faced by any exchange and there are very few that haven't suffered from a breach, one that has managed to remain unscathed is Kraken. With attacks becoming more sophisticated and hackers working 24/7 to find vulnerabilities how is that Kraken has managed to succeed where so many others failed?

The man in charge of this roll at Kraken is Nick Percoco, their Chief Security Officer. In this interview we discuss:

Ethical hacking
Finding critical vulnerabilities in iOS
Vulnerability brokers
Kraken's company-wide security culture
The difficulties in disclosing vulnerabilities
Kraken Security Labs

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Juthica Chou on The First Physically Settled Bitcoin Futures - WBD128 Jul 21, 2019

Show notes

There are a few places retail investors can currently trade a Bitcoin futures contract, but these tend to clouded in regulatory uncertainty and most are unavailable to US retail traders. That's about to change though as LedgerX have recently announced both the first regulated physically settled Bitcoin futures contract and the launch of a new trading platform called Omni which, for the first time, will give US retail investors access to regulated derivative markets.

The physical settlement in Bitcoin is a big step forward for the ecosystem. It means that when a contract expires, the buyer will now receive Bitcoin as opposed to fiat, meaning businesses and miners can now bypass the fiat system entirely, hedging or betting in Bitcoin and settling in Bitcoin. This is just one of the implications the LedgerX's new contract.Will this lead to reduced volatility in the Bitcoin price and bring in more institutional investors? I visited LedgerX in New York and spoke with the Co-founder and COO Juthica Chou. We also discussed;

Regulators being open to Bitcoin
The licenses required to run a regulated exchange
If the institutions are coming or if they are already here
Working at Goldman Sachs during the 2008 financial crisis
Betting on the Bitcoin halvening
$20k, $25k and $50k contracts
Bitcoin being better than gold
Wall street's interest in Bitcoin
Ledger X's competition

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Saifedean Ammous on Understanding Bitcoin Economics - WBD127 Jul 19, 2019

Show notes

When landing in the world of Bitcoin there are many concepts down the rabbit hole to get lost in, from technology to economics there is a wealth of information available. Within the world of economics, many will discover the theory of Austrian economics for the first time.

Those who believe in Austrian Economics believe in free markets, the gold standard and minimal government intervention. So where does Bitcoin fit into this? Could it be the perfect tool to facilitate a free market Could it even become an improved and new gold standard?

To find out more, I sat down with Saifedean Ammous, author of The Bitcoin Standard and an Associate Professor in Economics at the Lebanese American University. Having recently launched his online academy it was a great time for Saifedean to teach me more about Austrian Economics and catch up on our mutual love for Liverpool FC. We discuss:

Is Austrian Economics the only economic model that Bitcoin fits into?
Is taxation theft?
What makes a market a free market?
What is money and is Bitcoin money?
Will fractional reserve banking occur with Bitcoin?
Will central banks adopt Bitcoin?
Will improved monetary policy kill Bitcoin?
Will Liverpool win the Premier League in '20?

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Michel Rauchs on The Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index - WBD126 Jul 16, 2019

Show notes

Whenever you hear about Bitcoin in the mainstream media, undoubtedly one of the things that comes up time and time again is the power consumption needed to secure the network and which is the latest country Bitcoin has overtaken on power usage. Is this something Bitcoiners should be worried about and can the criticism be written off as a way for Bitcoin naysayers to ignore it for a little longer?

Michel Rauchs recently released The Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index to address this issue and try and put Bitcoin's power consumption into perspective. We discussed:

Whether Bitcoin needs to be inefficient to work?
If holding Bitcoin is using Bitcoin
What is Bitcoin's carbon footprint and is it a concern
How much of the power used to mine Bitcoin is renewable?
If Bitcoin were to reach $1,000,000 would mining use all the available power on earth?

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Neha Narula on Bitcoin Security and Ethics - WBD125 Jul 12, 2019

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Bitcoin and Cannabis With Bitcoin Mom, Bill and Jack Mallers - WBD124 Jul 09, 2019

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Tadge Dryja on Scaling Bitcoin With Utreexo - WBD123 Jul 05, 2019

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Brad Stephens & Spencer Bogart on How Venture Capital Thinks About Bitcoin Investing - WBD122 Jul 02, 2019

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Charlie Shrem's Untold Prison Stories - WBD121 Jun 28, 2019

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