The Peter McCormack Show

Location: El Salvador Date: Saturday May 8th Project: tomerstrolight.medium.com Role: Writer The inflationary aspects of fiat money and the ultimate control wielded by the central banks create a rigged game that forces us to consume rather than save. As Tomer Strolight puts it, ‘time-travelling thieves are stealing our energy and wealth’. As the soundest money the world has ever known, the magical qualities of Bitcoin fix this. Tomer Strolight has been pondering Bitcoin’s profound implications for nearly a decade. His writings are unique, elegant tidbits of helpful perspectives for bitcoiners, new and old. In this interview, I talk to Tomer, and we discuss his many short articles on Bitcoin, the dark magic of fiat money, and why Bitcoin is the most important thing happening in the world.

Location: El Salvador Date: Friday 30th April Company: BTC Media Role: CEO & Co-Founder On June 4th & 5th, the Bitcoin world will descend on Miami for the largest Bitcoin-only conference in history. Since the outbreak of the pandemic, conferences and gatherings have been postponed and cancelled. It is fitting that a conference centred around Bitcoin, a tool for freedom that allows people to bypass government control, will be one of the first gatherings of its kind in a post-covid world.  With the massive increase in retail and institutional interest in bitcoin, it looks to be an event on a scale not seen before for bitcoin. The lineup of speakers ranges from Michael Saylor to Jack Dorsey and Nick Szabo to Tony Hawk.  In this interview, I talk to David Bailey, CEO of BTC Media. We discuss the massive Bitcoin 2021 conference in Miami, maximalism, hyperbitcoinisation, and the bitcoin revolution. For tickets, head over to their website and use promo code “WBD” to save 10% off your tickets.

Location: El Salvador Date: Saturday May 8th Company: Strike, Ed Carpenter Racing Role: CEO, Owner Ed Carpenter lives life at over 373 km/h. He’s worked his whole life for his dream of racing in the Indy 500. And now, with 18 Indy races under his belt, the finish line is within his sights. But Indy racing requires millions per year in funding, and the way people consume entertainment is changing. Ed’s team needed to do something different, and a dose of orange pills gave them an idea. A cold email to Jack Mallers may just have changed the game forever. The two have joined forces and are looking to the Bitcoin community to raise money to enter car number 21 into the Indy500 covered in the Bitcoin logo.  In this interview, I talk to Jack Mallers and IndyCar driver Ed Carpenter. We discuss Ed’s racing aspirations, entering a Bitcoin car into the Indy500 and supporting open source development and Bitcoin.

Location: El Salvador Date: Wednesday 5th May Company: n/a Role: n/a Bitcoin is an open and permissionless system that, by design, is available to anyone and everyone who wants to participate, without prejudice or bias. However, while the system is open to all, some of the participants in the system push strong narratives. As a decentralised system with no single entity in control, these bitcoiners and their narratives have been fundamental in helping protect the network from bad actors and those looking to exploit it for personal gain.  Some of these narratives are clearly beneficial, such as running a full node to help decentralise the network or pushing self-sovereignty through things such as not your keys, not your coins. However, several other narratives have become things that some groups of bitcoiners identify with, such as following a carnivore diet, anarchism and scepticism regarding vaccines.  How important are these narratives to bitcoin? And what makes someone a 'real' bitcoiner? In this interview, I talk to American HODL and Surfer Jim. We discuss bitcoin narratives & purity, shitcoins, NFTs, the bitcoin plebs and Surfer Jim's battle with Chamath Palihapitiya.

Location: Remotely Date: Wednesday 21st April Company: Horizon Kinetics Role: Co-Founder & MD Value investing is a simple but highly effective strategy used by some of the world's most renowned traders, most notably Warren Buffet. These investors hunt out stocks that they believe to be trading below their true value. The theory is that the market overestimates both good and bad news, which means stock or asset prices can swing wildly askew of their actual value, and they then look to capitalise on this by buying cheap and holding for the long term. It is easy to argue that Bitcoin fits perfectly into this category. If you believe that Bitcoin has the potential to become the world's premier store of value and absorb a large portion of gold's market cap, then at a $1trillion market cap, bitcoin seems massively undervalued. However, many value investors, including Buffet, refuse to accept Bitcoin. Peter Doyle is a value investor who believes that bitcoin has a crucial role in our future. Not only just as a store of value and a hedge against inflation but also as a way of removing monetary policy decisions from the central bankers and politicians. In this interview, I talk to Peter Doyle, the Co-Founder and MD of Horizon Kinetics. We discuss the risks of high inflation, value investing in the current macro environment and why the world needs Bitcoin.

Location: Remotely Date: Monday 3rd May Company: Kansas City Chiefs Role: Tight End Sean Culkin rocked the sports world with his recent announcement that he is taking 100% of his $920K salary in bitcoin. Sean is not the first NFL player to dive into bitcoin, but he is the first to take his entire salary in bitcoin in a truly trailblazing move. Sean argues that athletes now need to "view themselves as corporations", and with many corporations now using Bitcoin as an inflation hedge, why should athletes be any different? Microstrategy CEO Michael Saylor described his cash position as being like a '$500m melting ice cube' when he led the charge.  In this interview, we discuss his journey to the NFL, taking his entire $920K salary in bitcoin and where his conviction comes from.

Location: Remotely Date: Friday 26th, March Company: lynalden.com Role: Macroeconomist Bitcoin was born out of the 2008 financial crisis when central banks worldwide started printing money at levels never seen before to bail out the banks for a mess they created.  Now, a decade later, amid a global pandemic, the money printer is again being used to rescue up a faltering economy. This time, the level of money printing dwarfs that of 2008/09. With the ongoing debasement of fiat currencies globally, inflation is more of a concern than ever before. Bitcoin offers a hedge against the threat of inflation, and with its sound monetary principles, it is the antithesis of the inequity and reckless money printing of central banks. Corporations are now using Bitcoin as an inflation hedge. When MicroStrategy announced their initial bitcoin purchase in 2020, CEO Michael Saylor explained that he was worried about their cash position being like a ‘$500m melting ice cube’. This sentiment has been echoed by many other corporations, with a record 47 S&P 500 companies citing ‘inflation’ in their 2021 Q1 earnings reports. The link between printing money and inflation is not black and white, so how is inflation measured? And what are the markets telling us?  In this interview, I talk to Lyn Alden, a macroeconomist and investment strategist. We discuss the growing concern of rising inflation, CPI as a measure and what the markets are signalling.

Location: Remotely Date: Tuesday 27th April Company: Block Digest, Suredbits Role: Host, Software Engineer Since Bitcoin’s inception, scaling has been a divisive topic. The very first reply to Satoshi Nakamoto’s email introducing the bitcoin whitepaper stated that “We very, very much need such a system, but the way I understand your proposal, it does not seem to scale to the required size.” The scaling debate came to a head in the block size wars. Part of the community wanted to scale bitcoin by increasing the block size. However, a larger section believed that scaling was better handled on other layers, culminating in 2017 with the BCash fork. Four years on and the market has decided that layered scaling is the preferred solution. Today, there are several approaches to off-chain settlement, and by experimenting with these on higher layers separate from the protocol, the security of Bitcoin can remain robust. These different second layers offer additional functionality and programmability not found on the Bitcoin base chain, but they do come with tradeoffs. Users should consider who or what they are trusting, be it a peg, a federation, a protocol, or a combination. In this interview, I talk to Shinobi, the host of Block Digest and Suredbits software engineer Nadav Kohen. We discuss Bitcoin scaling, the Lightning Network, wrapped Bitcoin and Liquid.

Location: Remotely Date: Tuesday 27th April Company: Kraken Role: Growth Lead When Dan Held first wrote about a possible bitcoin supercycle back in 2019, the idea seemed far fetched. The bitcoin price was just under $10,000, and we were a few months away from the first reported cases of COVID-19. Now, 18 months on from that tweet, the idea of a supercycle is gaining traction. With governments around the world resorting to astonishing amounts of monetary and fiscal policy to temporarily prop up economies in response to COVID-19, the case for bitcoin has never been so clear. A new wave of investors has arrived, with bitcoin offering them a life raft from fiat currency debasement. In early February, Dan Held came on the show to discuss the Supercycle thesis, and since then, the price of bitcoin is up over 50%. Still, more critically, Tesla bought $1.5 billion worth of bitcoin in a move that plays nicely into the supercycle theory. In this interview, I talk to Dan Held, the Growth Lead at Kraken. We discuss his supercycle thesis, the macro elements that make this cycle different and why traditional investors are waking up to bitcoin.

Location: Remotely Date: Friday 23rd April Company: Pantera Capital Role: Co-Founder & CEO Dan Morehead is a veteran of Wall Street, having worked at Deutsche Bank and Goldman Sachs before co-founding Pantera Capital. He is the embodiment of institutional investors, and he is predicting bitcoin will hit $115k by August 2021. In 2013, Pantera launched the first cryptocurrency fund in the U.S. and offered accredited investors direct exposure to bitcoin. The firm also provides insights and price targets based on historical performance, market conditions, and models like stock-to-flow. While, historically, bitcoin has faced many challenges that have kept some investors at bay, with the availability of institutional custody solutions and increasing regulatory clarity, these investors are now entering the market. This increased institutional adoption of bitcoin has been a significant driver of the current bull market. With $trillions in government deficits worsening asset inflation, corporations have begun looking to bitcoin to protect their wealth.  In this interview, I talk to Dan Morehead, a veteran investor and the co-founder & CEO of Pantera Capital. We discuss the Pantera price target, the firm's investment thesis for bitcoin and the impact of inflation.