The Peter McCormack Show

Location: Zoom Date: Friday 3rd July Company/Project: DarkHorse Podcast Role: Host In 2017, Bret Weinstein was thrust into the public limelight, when he objected to a change in the college's tradition of observing a "Day of Absence". Bret stating that "there is a huge difference between a group or coalition deciding to voluntarily absent themselves from a shared space in order to highlight their v...

Location: Zoom Date: Monday 29th June Company/Project: Real Vision, Wyoming Blockchain Coalition, Ikigai Asset Management Role: Co-Founder & CEO, Co-Founder, Chief Investment Officer In late 2019 and early 2020, the global economy was showing signs of stress. Even before coronavirus, we saw the Fed having to step in and provide liquidity for the repo market and issuing rate cuts. But the rapid spr...

Location: Zoom Date: Tuesday 23rd July Company/Project: N/A & Unchained Capital Role: N/A & Director of Product Marketing Throughout 2019, President Trump's re-election campaign looked to be on steady ground, but 2020 has been a very different story. Following the outbreak of COVID-19, countries across the world have gone into lockdown. However, Trump, Fox News and a large number of key Republican...

Location: Zoom Date: Friday, 19th June Company/Project: Kraken Role: Director of Business Development The very early believers in Bitcoin tended to fall into two camps, the Libertarians who were drawn to the censorship resistance & self-sovereignty of Bitcoin and the tech-savvy developers who saw a new experimental technology that was the first to truly offer a distributed & decentralised digital...

Location: Zoom Date: Friday, 19th June Role: Entrepreneur & Author In an inflationary Keynesian economic system, governments target low inflation to ensure a healthy economy and steady growth; however, inflation functions as a hidden tax on savings. Inflation also leads to a drop in purchasing power which drives the incentive to spend and invest rather than save. Deflation, the opposite to inflati...

Location: Zoom Date: Wednesday, 17th June Project: Basecamp Role: Founder & CTO New concerns have been raised around Apple's business model after the company rejected future updates for Basecamp's newly launched email app Hey. Apple initially approved the app, but then put it on hold — meaning Basecamp couldn't submit any updates or bug fixes until it added an option for users to subscribe to Hey'...

Location: Zoom Date: Tuesday 16th June Project: Human Rights Foundation & Bitcoin Developer Role: Chief Strategy Officer & Independent Developer Privacy is a fundamental human right, and with society migrating away from physical to digital cash, we are losing one of the remaining ways to transact privately. Bitcoin is an entirely public ledger, in that every transaction is broadcast to everyone ru...

Location: Zoom Date: Friday 12th June Project: The Investors Podcast Role: Host With the current global economic outlook and rise in social unrest, we are living in unprecedented times. The coronavirus pandemic, subsequent lockdowns and preventative measures put in place by governments around the world has led to many businesses closing or relying on bailouts, and jobless figures are amongst the h...

Location: Zoom Date: Thursday 28th May Project: Microsoft Role: Head of Decentralised Identity Social media is omnipresent with most all of us have a Twitter, Facebook or Google account, using them every day for both personal and business. We build connections, relationships and trust through them. However, these companies implement strict controls over the content on their platforms with shadowba...

Location: Zoom Date: Friday 5th June Project: Coindesk Role: Journalist The role of a journalist is to question, educate and inform. A truly free press is a fundamental pillar of a free society, and unbiased and objective reporting is crucial in getting a broad understanding of any industry. News corporations are now arguably more partisan and divided than ever before, highlighted by how Fox News...

Location: Zoom Date: Wednesday 3rd June Project: Bitcoin & Black America Role: Author On May 25th George Floyd was killed by Minneapolis police officer, Derek Chauvin. Police were called over allegations that George Floyd had used a counterfeit $20 bill. During the arrest, Chauvin restrained Floyd by placing his knee on his neck and pinning him to the ground, during this time Floyd was pleading wi...

Location: Zoom Date: Wednesday 27th May Project: Guns N' Bitcoin Role: Chief Range Officer Bitcoin's immune system has evolved from years of defeating threats, staving off bad actors and protecting the core principles of the network. Many Bitcoiners consider Bitcoin as gold 2.0, threatening the corrupt practices of central banking. As such, small blocks, the fee market and hodling are essential co...

Location: Zoom Date: Thursday 28th May Project: Abra Role: Founder & CEO This week, Goldman Sachs held an investment advisory call for its clients during which it slammed Bitcoin as an investment and refused to accept it as an asset class. Goldman's take on Bitcoin was in equal parts bearish and ignorant, with the investment bank listing five reasons for not classing Bitcoin as an asset or a suita...

Location: Zoom Date: Friday 22nd May Role: Independent Trader Despite being the best performing asset over the past decade, Bitcoin is an incredibly volatile asset and risky to trade. Outperforming the market is hard, and very few people manage to beat the strategy of buying and holding. Unlike traditional markets, bitcoin markets are open 24/7/365, and traded on both regulated and unregulated exc...

Location: Zoom Date: Monday 18th May Project: Gemini Role: Co-Founders The Social Network, directed by David Fincher, introduced Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss to the world. The film told the story of how Mark Zuckerberg stole their idea to create Facebook, and would later settle for $65 million. After settling the court case and retiring from their careers in rowing, where the twins represented the...

Location: Zoom Date: Friday 15th May Project: Blockstream Role: CEO & Chief Strategy Officer Bitcoin: decentralised, permissionless, censorship-resistant and unconfiscatable. Unique properties which make it a unique form of money For Bitcoin to keep growing, these features mustn't be compromised. However, scaling solutions for Bitcoin, may trade off some of these features for other benefits. With...

Location: Zoom Date: January to March 2020 Bitcoin can be intimidating for beginners. The protocol is complicated, the community can be unforgiving, silly mistakes can lose you money, and it is easy to succumb to altcoin marketing. Bitcoin offers you the opportunity to hold a new type of monetary asset, one which can't be seized by the government and is censorship resistance, and it is changing th...

Location: Zoom Date: Sunday 10th May Project: Hypersheet Role: Co-Founder On May 11th, at block 630000 Bitcoin had its 3rd halving, cutting the block reward issued to the miners from 12.5BTC to 6.25BTC. This reduction in the subsidy is seen by many as a bullish event for Bitcoin. With the block reward cut in half, the amount of Bitcoin available for the miners to sell in the market drops from 1800...

Location: Zoom Date: Tuesday 5th May Project: The Libertarian Party Role: Party Leader & Coordinator Long before Bitcoin dropped on the world, libertarians have criticised government-issued fiat money, arguing that it goes against their core beliefs of political freedom and autonomy, viewing gold as a superior currency. Many libertarians were early to Bitcoin, understanding its sound monetary poli...

Location: Zoom Date: Monday 4th May Project: Parallax Digital Role: Founder & CEO The properties for measuring the soundness of money include divisibility, durability, portability, recognisability and scarcity. Current government-issued and controlled fiat money fit some of these characteristics but, with the central bank's ability to print money at will, the current system completely fails as a s...

Location: Zoom Date: Wednesday 29th April Project: Independent Trader Role: Bitcoin Quant Analyst Plan₿'s Stock-to-Flow model was warmly received by many in Bitcoin. The chart gave context to price action around halvings, validating the importance of scarcity. The S2F model does have critics, and with the third halving approaching, some had questioned whether the reducing subsidy drive price. The...

Location: Zoom Date: Wednesday 22nd April Project: Coinkite Role: CEO & Co-Founder Bitcoin attracts a broad range of enthusiasts with different backgrounds, experience and political beliefs. The spectrum is broad, from those who treat it purely as a speculative asset, happy to buy and hold, to those who head deep down the anti-state and hard money rabbit hole. Those who are attracted to Bitcoin's...

Location: Zoom Date: Monday 3th March Project: Bitcoin & Co Podcast Role: Host Earlier this year, I travelled to Venezuela to find out the reality of Bitcoin adoption in the country and what I found didn't exactly fit the widely accepted narrative. The truth is that while Bitcoin may have some use cases for the middle and upper classes, the poorest in Venezuela are surviving on a few dollars a mon...

Location: Zoom Date: Friday, 10th April Project: Circle Role: CEO & Founder By complementing Bitcoin trading, and making it easy to send digital dollars around the world, stablecoins continue to grow in popularity. Commercial banks operate on a fractional basis, holding only a small % of deposits. During challenging economic times, this can lead to what is known as a run on the bank, where deposit...

Location: Zoom Date: Friday, 10th April Project: Blockstream Role: Director of Research Bitcoin is very conservative. Unlike the typical tech industry ethos of move fast and break things, it is paramount that Bitcoin upgrades and changes to the protocol are absolutely necessary, slow, well planned and well tested. Two protocol changes that have been discussed for a while now are Schnorr signatures...