The Peter McCormack Show

Location: Remote Date: Thursday 27th January Company: Hypersheet Role: Co-Founder Given the unprecedented combination of events that impacted Bitcoin in 2021, it is perhaps not surprising that the market currently feels like it's in uncharted territory. Patterns of trading behaviour have changed, new investors and trading instruments are influencing the price, and the old cycles no longer seem to apply. This wasn't forecasted. The rally into the back end of 2021 was expected to be sustained: institutional adoption ramped up. Yet, despite the influx of capital, whales hodling, and even miners keeping hold of their bitcoin, the price has seen a 50% correction since the ATH in early November. However, shorting Bitcoin from this position would be a bold trade. The old coins are still not selling. Further, positive regulatory clarity could kickstart a rush of institutional capital. In this interview, I talk to Willy Woo, on-chain analyst and Co-Founder of Hypersheet. We discuss the current Bitcoin price, why it doesn't look like a bear market, the breaking of the 4-year cycles, and how he's positioning his portfolio. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Location: Remote Date: Wednesday 26th January Company: lynalden.com Role: Macroeconomist January 2022 has been tough for Bitcoiners, a lacklustre end to 2021 has been followed by a drawdown. However, the stagnation of Bitcoin's price has mirrored wider macroeconomic issues as both bond and equity markets react to inflationary pressures. This has resulted in a flurry of criticisms that Bitcoin is not the inflationary hedge it has been purported to be. Yet, the economic rationale that drove Satoshi's development of Bitcoin is manifest. Decades of relaxed monetary policy, an era of cheap money, has resulted in significant excess capital being generated. A lot of this has been ploughed into US equities. Lyn Alden's latest newsletter likens the stock market performance over the last 40 years to a sponge soaking up water. Well, that sponge seems to be saturated. The US equities now represent over 61% of the market capitalization of all global stocks. At the same time, inflationary pressures are forcing the hands of governments around to world to raise interest rates. Fears of stagflation abound. The sponge is about to get wrung out. Economic history shows these are the periods when hard money becomes dominant. That's why hodlers continue to hodl. In this interview, I talk to macroeconomist and investment strategist Lyn Alden. We discuss the signals pointing to the end of the equities supercycle, the risks of energy prices continuing to drive inflation, the IMF and El Salvador, central banks being at an impasse, and Bitcoin's next play. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Location: Remote Date: Monday 24th January Project: balajis.com, glenngreenwald.com.br Role: Angel Investor & Entrepreneur, Journalist and Author US exceptionalism and continuance of its role as the world's leading power is under threat. Whilst it is arguable whether America has truly lived up to being that 'Shining City on a Hill', it's potential demise and a resultant shifting balance of power eastwards should give those who believe in freedom and privacy pause for thought. The reasons for the current predicament are varied and complex. Whilst there are powerful external forces seeking to damage the US, the most critical wounds are those that have been self-inflicted. Of these, a breakdown of public trust in government and the media are perhaps the most consequential. The impacts are apparent to all: polarisation, ineffective governance, paranoia, stasis. All the while, China continues to make bold and aggressive moves aimed at supplanting the US. All of this has occurred in a relatively short period of time. Just 30 years ago the Soviet Union fell, whilst Chinese nominal GDP was 6% of the US's. Complacency and a focus on fighting imaginary enemies allowed rot to set in. Does Bitcoin offer an opportunity for the US to regain it's discipline whilst also living up to the mantle of being the land of the free? In this interview, I talk to angel investor Balaji Srinivasan and journalist Glenn Greenwald. We compare American incompetence to Chinese competence, how Bitcoin offers hope, why the US establishment has struggled to assimilate new technology and the damaging conflict between tech and media over the past 20 years. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Location: London Date: Thursday 13th January Project: LNbits, NOSTR Role: Bitcoin and free open source software advocate What are the politics of Bitcoin? Satoshi in a post in 2008 said "It's very attractive to the libertarian viewpoint if we can explain it properly." And, it certainly has garnered a strong libertarian following, principally because of its unique utility to undermine governments' control of money. However, Bitcoiners are a broad church. The original cypherpunks philosophy was predicated on anarchist ideals, to work outside of government controls. This attitude is analogous to a wide variety of political philosophies, including those on the left who feel disenfranchised by the current global capitalist hegemony. There is a strong and growing group of left-leaning Bitcoiners, who see the protocol as a radical means of achieving a fairer society where the levers of power and organisation are controlled by a community rather than elites. This may trigger a powerful section in Bitcoin whose views are antithetical to those on the left. And yet, this broad range of communities with divergent dogmas have all enabled Bitcoin to develop its critical mass. This is because early adopters viewing Bitcoin as a philosophy, whatever that philosophy may be, has inspired ardent advocacy and robust hodling behaviour. It surely underlines the genius of Bitcoin's protocol if those with seemingly divergent opinions can all lay claim to the benefits of the technology. Furthermore, history has shown that robust societies are ones where ideas are debated, tested, and then synthesized. If we can do this as a community we have a real opportunity to lay the foundations for a more open and fair society. In this interview, I talk to Ben Arc, an industrious Bitcoin and free open source software advocate. We discuss the attraction of Bitcoin to those on the left, Bitcoin as a commons for society, developing open source applications to take on big tech, and Marxism. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Location: London Date: Thursday 13th January Company: Real Bedford Role: Chairman For years I have wanted to buy a football club in Bedford and get them in the football league. Now it's a reality as I have agreed to acquire Bedford FC and set up the first Bitcoin standard football club: Real Bedford. And, it's thanks to Bitcoin and its amazing community. There are two prime motivations. Firstly I want an opportunity to play my part and help spread the wider exposure, education, and adoption of Bitcoin. There are many great people I've been fortunate to interview over these past few years who have provided real value to the ecosystem. Secondly, I want to give something back to my hometown where I still live: Bedford. Like many small towns throughout the UK and around the world, it has gone through various waves of growth and contraction that have tested its identity. A football club that's able to compete at the highest levels could provide a positive focal point for the town and put it firmly back on the map. Don't be fooled into thinking this isn't without major challenges. I have never run a football club before, we're 9 leagues below the Premier League, I have other significant commitments, and there's widespread incredulity about my ambitions. But, this is a boys' own dream, and I want to take you along for the ride. In this interview, Bitcoin advocate and good friend of What Bitcoin Did Dominic Frisby talks to Peter McCormack, Chairman of Real Bedford. We discuss the dream to help Bitcoin and Bedford, learning to run a football club, and documenting the adventure. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Location: New York Date: Thursday 9th December Company: Casa Role: CEO Not your keys, not your coins. Despite being a central mantra of Bitcoiners, self-custody is still an issue for the ecosystem. Whether it be major institutional investors or new small volume retail buyers, there are material concerns over the risks and technical skills required with being responsible for Bitcoin keys. Whilst delegating custody removes perceived barriers to entry, they present new risks to individuals and the wider network. These new risks may be nebulous and abstract to many. But they are real and significant issues that contravene Satoshi's central mission for a decentralized self-sovereign system of peer to peer cash. The paradox is that rather than requiring specialist technical skills, modern hardware wallets are both significantly more user friendly and intuitive than their recent predecessors. This is both in terms of the products themselves and the support infrastructure (i.e. helplines etc.) provided by manufacturers. Whilst it may be easy to have someone else store your bitcoin, it is still the case that if you don't own the keys, you don't control the coins. The irony is you may only discover this at the time you are in most need of your bitcoin. In this interview, I talk to Nick Neuman, CEO of Casa. We discuss the scale of third-party custodying of bitcoin, the inherent risks of delegating bitcoin custody, the security and support provided to users of hardware wallets, and the latest innovations. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Location: New York Date: Tuesday 6th December Company: Messari Role: Founder & CEO Bitcoin's architecture uses decentralisation to achieve censorship-resistance and permissionless access to a revolutionary monetary protocol. And despite thousands of altcoins that claimed to be better or faster over the years, Bitcoin reigns as the non-sovereign store of value in the digital world. However, what is not yet clear is if the wider world of 'crypto' can achieve similarly permissionless innovation outside of money, or if they are instead 'decentralised in name only'. Can these protocols resist influence by powerful actors? What is 'enough' decentralisation? Will the fundraising-via-token model survive the SEC? Will they adapt to increasing pressure? Is there real innovation, or is it all just a house of cards of venture capital and marketing? Many questions remain. As Bitcoiners it is important to engage those with broader outlooks, even if we have seemingly incompatible ideologies. The battle of ideas involves free, open, and respectful discussion. In this interview, I talk to the founder and CEO of the research and data firm Messari, Ryan Selkis. We discuss Messari's industry-leading opus on the state of the ecosystem, Bitcoin and gold, regulation, both sides of the Web3 debate and the differentiation of Bitcoin and 'crypto'. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Location: Remote Date: Wednesday 12th January Company: Validus Power Corp; Equity Management Associates Role: Bitcoin Strategist; Investment Manager For an extended period of time, a working career for many, the economic system has been going in one direction: interest rates have been declining, whilst bonds have been on an extended bull market. Since the economic chaos of the 1970s, a globalizing world has been aligning around a reasonably stable and predictable financial paradigm. That all changed in 2007 when the global financial crisis turned traditional financial markets upside down. The crisis normalised extraordinary measures like open market operations and quantitative easing. Little did we know that the turmoil of the global financial crisis was setting the stage for even more anomalous actions by central banks. In response to the pandemic, the US treasury in 2020 increased the money supply by 20%. This stimulus was mirrored by governments across the world. In a collective state of denial, the world's leaders all seem to have believed that this sudden massive injection of money will not have a systemic impact on world economies. The velocity of money would keep pace, that deflationary pressures would balance out, or that these massive sums of new money somehow wouldn't seep into the 'real' economy. Herbert Stein was an American economist, who amongst other things was chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. In 1986 he presented Stein's Law: "If something cannot go on forever, it will stop." Unprecedented activity on the bond markets last week suggest that the can being kicked has run out of road; the state of denial may be over. In this interview, I talk to Bitcoin Strategist Greg Foss and Investment Manager Lawrence Lepard about last week's extraordinary activity in the bond markets. We discuss the convergence of economic constraints boxing in the Fed, the pretence of bond value, contagion risks, and using Bitcoin for capital protection at the individual and national level. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Location: New York Date: Friday 10th December Project: Democratic primary for 2022 US Senate election in Ohio Role: Democratic candidate It is a common refrain that US politics is broken: a two-party system limiting serious debate, corporations corrupting politics via PACs and lobbyists, media monetizing rage, a polarised electorate demonizing the opposition. The themes are well worn, but nothing seems to change. At the same time, society is beset by a growing list of material issues: rising inequality, a squeezed middle class, unprecedented levels of debt, impacts of technology on jobs, climate change, the rise of China, etc. etc. etc. There are strong grounds to suggest that such issues can only be only mitigated or solved through coordinated action managed by the government. There are equally persuasive arguments that rather than fix things, the government actually exacerbates problems. If we are to start to repair society, we need to fix politics. This starts with having politicians citizens can trust, politicians that are informed, politicians not beholden to corporations, politicians that make decisions based firmly on the merit of an argument. Cynicism is justified, but it does seem there is a new cohort of budding representatives on both sides of the political spectrum who want to bring such change. In this interview, I talk to former senior advisor at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and prospective Democratic candidate for the 2022 US Senate election in Ohio, Morgan Harper. We discuss her political motivations, removing corporate money from politics, how Bitcoin can help level the playing field, and taking politics out of policy. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Location: New York Date: Wednesday 8th December Company: Former CEO of Blockstream Role: Entrepreneur, VC & Cypherpunk It is a common refrain that we are living in unprecedented times. Yet, the most inconceivable changes to society are ahead of us. A confluence of exponential forces could see our species either flourish or wither. The changes that these forces will bring are fast approaching. A technological singularity is predicted to occur in a generation: innovations will bring rapid change that is both bewildering and uncontrollable. These technologies will become increasingly cheaper and ubiquitous such that the risk profiles associated with misuse will grow significantly. At the same time, we risk seeing the traditional financial systems shatter as exponential growth in debt finally becomes unsustainable and deflationary pressures finally dominate to destroy traditional credit systems. Bitcoin can't solve all these problems, but it is a central part of the toolbox of solutions. In the second of two interviews, I talk to Austin Hill, the entrepreneur, cypherpunk & venture capitalist. We discuss the singularity and vulnerable world hypothesis, how technology can strengthen totalitarianism and the role of Bitcoin in harm reduction. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.