The Peter McCormack Show

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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