All Things Bitcoin with Peter McCormack

All Things Bitcoin with Peter McCormack

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Intro:

Intro: You’re listening to the DYOR podcast where your host Tom Buonincontr1 helps simplify blockchain and cryptocurrency for investors and crypto enthusiasts. If you’re looking to learn about blockchain, bitcoin and cryptocurrency without all the hype, your in the right place, all opinions expressed by Tom or his guests on this podcast are their own and do not reflect the opinions of any organization they are associated with. This podcast is for informational purposes only and is not investment, legal or tax advice. Remember to always do your own research. Now here’s your host, Tom Buonincontri.

TB: Hey guys, welcome to episode one of DYOR. I’m your host Tom Buonincontri and I am super excited about this episode. This is the first episode of the podcast and I couldn’t think of any other way other than having the one and only Peter McCormack, host of the What Bitcoin Did Podcast come on as my guest. Peter’s really cool guy, very down to earth and I’ve been a huge fan of his podcast over the past year and a half or so. And I didn’t think there’d be another guest that could parallel his viewpoint as far as podcasting in general and just picking his brain a little bit from some of the things that he’s learned from his interviews over the past year or so. We really had a great discussion about bitcoin and some of the things that he’s learned and it was actually funny at the very end of the episode we find out that finance has the listed bitcoins Satoshi’s vision from their exchange so we had to cut the episode a little bit short because obviously Peter has that whole lawsuit with Craig Wright going on and that was some exciting news from him. Make sure you stick around to the end and listen to that. You don’t want to miss it. So let’s just jump into it.

Interview

TB: All right guys, I’m really excited today. I have a very special guests on the DYOR podcast. It is the king of Bedford and host of the what bitcoin did podcast. Peter McCormick. Peter, thank you so much for taking the time to be on the show today.

Peter: Hey Man, thank you for having me on. It’s a real pleasure.

TB: Yeah, it’s a pleasure for me as well. You are one of the biggest, don’t want to say influencers, but one of the biggest people in the crypto community right now, so having you on the show for episode number one is truly an honor of mine. So for people that don’t know a little bit about your background, do you want to just tell them who you are and how you kind of fell down the bitcoin rabbit hole?

Peter: Yeah, and it’s a honor for me that you’ve actually asked me that I’d make for a good first show. I don’t ever think I’m particularly special. Not very technical, very good with money. I just like finding out about this stuff and like asking questions. So that’s really cool to have you say that. My background is advertising what’s in the industry for 20 years. I had my own agency, which did very well for eight years and then kind of spectacularly collapsed. And then I discovered bitcoin because, well I’d heard about bitcoin before and traded at a little bit, but didn’t really know much about it. And then a few years ago when my mom was sick, I wanted to buy a treatment for her, which had to buy with Bitcoin, which was a kind of cool reintroduction. And this time I fell down the rabbit hole big and nearly I guess two and a half years later I’m still here trying to learn as much as I can.

TB: Cool. So what was it exactly about bitcoin? So you purchase it for your mom’s treatments and how did that kind of like reengage you to start digging a little bit deeper into it?

Peter: Well, I guess I had a real world use case for it, but she wasn’t possible without using bitcoins. So that was kind of like, oh this is really cool. I can buy something with this thing and nobody can stop me. And then I started trading and so really I would say for the first six to eight months as falling down the rabbit hole, but I was more interested in broadly blockchain technology. I mistakenly at the time thought this was some revolutionary technology that would open up the opportunity for lots of applications and businesses and kind of fell down that rabbit hole believing there were multiple use cases and then I started the podcast in November ’17 over time and interviewing and meeting people. I started to realize actually bitcoin is king and the majority of everything else, blockchain is most likely nonsense and unnecessary. I’ve not completely closed the door, but I am 90-95% bitcoin now.

TB: Yes. I feel like a lot of people kind of fall into that same trap when they’re first starting out, especially because there’s so many old coins that are out there. That’s definitely something I fell into. I thought, hey, blockchain technology is going to be revolutionary and there’s going to be so many different use cases that this can really be impacted towards, but going through the ICO craze of 2017 and seeing a lot of these projects die down, it’s definitely been an eye opener and it’s just really reconfirmed the idea that bitcoin really is king. What would you kind of tell someone that’s just starting out at this point? They’re kind of going through that same thought process of, Hey, there’s all these other use cases that bitcoin or blockchain technology can be used for.

Peter: Just read, just read and read and read as much as you can. It’s very hard to tell somebody not to give a damn about alternative blockchains and tokens and crypto assets because you can’t wake up a maximalist. It’s very, very hard. There’s a lot of knowledge to consume and you can almost have to go through a kind of few different experiences. Sometimes you just have to get wrecked. You just have to get recked to realize, but it’s very hard to wake up a max on this or wake up and even up to say maximus just wake up and realize like bitcoin is king and most of this other stuff is probably nonsense. So my advice is I would never tell anybody or I would try not to tell anybody so dogmatically that bitcoin is king of forget everything else because I don’t think that works. I think help people understand why bitcoin is so important and maybe guide them on why other things aren’t important. But I would just say read, listen to podcast, subscribe to some main list by a little bit, move it around between wallets and just kind of get a feel for what it is and then go from there.

TB: And I think that’s the biggest problem too, is a lot of people get intimidated at first because it’s technology and they just don’t think it’s very easy to use. I find that a lot of people are just hesitant to even get started in any sense just because they’re so intimidated at first.

Peter: Yeah, potentially. I think the majority of people come in and get involved because the potential financial gains, right? Bitcoin price suddenly goes up. You read a story about somebody who invested $1,000 and now they have a million and suddenly you think, oh, I want to be part of that. I think that’s probably the way, not everyone, but the majority of the people get involved, so during these kinds of crappy bare market times, it’s very difficult to convince people. I think what happens is once people do decide to get involved, then it’s, that’s the opportunity to start educating them and sharing information with them and and helping guide them is kind of what I tried to do with my podcast. Try and make it very accessible for new people, but it’s a complicated world. You’re going into it, you know, I was chatting to somebody about this yesterday. It can completely upend your view on, on the world and governments and politics and money. Before I was really that into Bitcoin, I lived in a world of pretty much to party politics. We have labor and conservatives in the UK and then a few small parties like the Lib-Dems who have a bit of sway, but it’s kind of like you’re either on the right and you’re conservative and you’re on the left of your liberal. And you know, and I was probably more of a liberal, I would never voted for say labor, but I might have voted Liberal Democrats, but I kind of was in that world where I was like, I’ll socialism’s good conservatives are a bit too harsh. And then you kind of get into this world of bitcoin and you start to realize some of these things you’ve been taught about economics or politics are either a lie or there are alternative viewpoints out there that you haven’t considered. Austrian economics is very popular months. Bitcoin is something I’d never been exposed to, not even when I discovered bitcoin. And then you start to become exposed to other things such as censorship and freedom of speech. And so for me it’s completely shifted my world view. And that takes some adjustment. That takes some getting used to. So trying to get people involved.

Peter: It’s not just about bitcoin & money I think is about a whole bunch of more things. It’s about how the world kind of operates and how people interact with each other, how governments treat us, and that’s been a real adjustment to go through. I think there was the biggest Aha moment that I had was once I really started to realize that bitcoin was in just electronic money.

TB: Couldn’t agree any more with that. But there’s so many different factors that go into it. Whether it’s computer science, economics, Game Theory, it’s just so much, and I’m still baffled at how Sitoshi we’re able to come up with this technology like this because it really is revolutionary. And like you said, once you kind of fall down that rabbit hole and see things, you really do start to look at the world a little bit differently. I guess there were building blocks, right?

Peter:  If you can read Satoshi’s Whitepaper, I’m going to say he for the benefit of doubt, he cites a number of people. He sighs and backs. Is it hash cash and sites a number of things. So there are all these groups beforehand trying to work on this better form of money. David Chow, digicash friend, but that failed because it was centralized. So essentially there were all these building blocks beforehand of people trying different things. I’m like, yes. Satoshi kind of got as genius as that person was, kind of had all these different building blocks beforehand of what had worked and what hadn’t. Digi cash was very popular for awhile word but failed because it was centralized entirely because it was centralized and Satoshi realized that bitcoin had to be decentralized. Therefore I had to have a decentralized ledger and it had to have proof of work and had to have all these different things for it to work.

Peter: And to some extent it has now worked for pretty much 10 years brilliantly. But as brilliant as Satoshi was, I think we have to credit the people who’ve come before Satoshi and try different things and perhaps Satoshi might have tried something and there had been a weakness in there on a failing and then somebody after suppose you would have come along and try something else.

TB:I think that’s what we see happen with all these different cryptocurrencies, but there’s so many different ones that are out there, whether it’s Etherium Eos, Cardano or Neo, they’re all kind of going after the same type of thing with smart contracts. Each one has their own uniqueness associated with them, but I think that’s what we tried to see in 2017 we’re in a lot of other people try to build on top of that original protocol.

Peter: It feels like it just keeps going backward. Bitcoin is king, you really is. Bitcoin is king and it’s been a real difficulty of mine going through this process of kind of figuring that out because there are people who’ve said to me or put pressure on me to say, you must ignore all these other projects are all scams or their own nonsense, but I kind of had to go through my own process to figure out a lot of that and I’m not entirely there. I’m like 95% there, but not entirely and it’s a very difficult process to kind of get there. Do I believe that bitcoin will be the only use of blockchain in the next 10 years. Now people are going to keep trying to do things, so I believe it should be the only. I don’t think I do. I think if someone figures out a very good use for one and it works and it’s a better than any other option, then fine, but I’m always getting closer and closer to focus in the entirety of my time on bitcoin.

Peter:  Every time we get there, I kind of bounce off it and then bounce back and go, hmm, yeah, but actually I just want to look at these other things. Or at least sometimes I just want to learn why. I’m intrigued. Why people believe in these other technologies or these other uses of a blockchain. The bitcoin will always be king. Nothing’s going to uproot bitcoin from now. It been king for 10 years. It will be king for the next 10 years or so. You kind of mentioned this before, there’s so Satoshi realized that bitcoin had to be decentralized.

TB: How do you respond to some people that claim that with the mining in China, that bitcoin actually is centralized?

Peter: Well that’s been debunked because they’re just mining polls. The polls don’t actually really affect the individual miners themselves. So I’m mining was slash poor if I don’t want to mind was slash per working solo mind or I can join another pool.

Peter: The pools aren’t really centralized. It’s just uh, uh, Jimmy Song has debunked that time and time again. You can go to his medium and find that debunked so you can listen to my interview with him. I think we covered that as well. All right, cool. Yeah, I’ll make sure to link to that in the show notes. So how long have you been mining for? Are you still mining or um, have you shut it down? It’s on hold. So my equipment there in the facility, I mainly lost money mining. I timed it badly, awfully. I started mine in the top. I think I made money for a couple of months and then I lost money. So now my equipment’s in storage. You know, as soon as uh, the prices go up again and it becomes profitable, I will start them again for sure. But it’s not my area of expertise.

Peter: I did it more as a play a little bit of greed, trying to make more money, make more bitcoin kind of failed and learned a lot about it.

TB: Yeah, it’s definitely not my game. So when I first started out, I had no idea how to build a computer or anything like that. And the biggest use case that I saw was with ethereum. So a buddy of mine, we started watching a ton of videos on youtube and we started to learn how to build these mining Griggs towards the end of 2016 and beginning of 2017 we built a number of them and it was great. It was very profitable and then all of a sudden the prices just crashed and we had to shut them off. So it’s been a tough year and a half or so.

Peter:  Mining, I still got that. Did it right whenever to losing a whole bunch of money. I don’t really care. I like money. I’m money motivated, but I’m never bothered by losing it. When he comes and goes, it’s not so important to me. Yeah. And I think in the long run, at this point, we’re still so early on in this game that even if we hold a couple of bitcoins or whatever it is that you have mind that is going to be super profitable at the end of the day. Again, it was a, it was a useful exercise. I’ve learned a lot about it. I’ve learned it’s not really for me. I’m not smart enough for it, but I don’t regret, I mean, yeah, of course I regret doing it because if I hadn’t done it, I’ll have more money. But like it’s not that big a deal.

TB:   So what’s something that you wish you’d known when you first started out?

Peter: Ooh, good question. Ah, I think I wish I’d have protected my bitcoin more and hadn’t just been sort of frivolous trading and doing the mining. Realize that every bitcoin you are and a bit a bit when you were in is a highly valuable and now I every Satoshi I have or I get or I receive, I, I now got them and I do not want to spend them on, I want to hold onto them. And the hodl mentality is very, very important. Yeah. I wish I had protected every satoshi I had. Um, I wish I had just taken a lot more care of them because once they’re gone, they’re gone. Right. There was a time where had what would now be considered a good, well I don’t mind saying I had like to 150 bitcoins and I screwed it all up by putting most of it into mining and then so I have materially very, very small amount of bitcoin left now.

Peter: Nothing life changing. And that was something I wish I’d realized at the start. So I would say to anyone now, if you’re going to buy bitcoin, don’t try and trade unless you’re a professional trader and just hold onto those bitcoins for dear life over a long time period, like 10, 15 years.

TB: Do you think that people that hold bitcoin is beneficial to the network or is that not as beneficial?

Peter: Um, well if you think that, hey, these bitcoins, if we need usage and we need transactions that happen on the network consistently holding kind of keeps a lot of those bitcoin out of the ecosystem, you can argue it might not be the good thing. Yeah. See, one of the things I’m starting to adjust to and with bitcoin is realizing bitcoins or whatever you want it to be and whatever you need it for.

Peter: I don’t think we need to push any particular narrative that it is a store of value or a medium of exchange or we should be pushing anyone to do anything with their bitcoin. I think it’s down to you individually. Now I have a, my small amount, which I’m now going to hodl for 10 15 years and hopefully when I’m at the age when I want to retire, that that will be a nice nest egg, right? I will occasionally buy things or sell things or invoicing. Bitcoin will be invoiced in bitcoin. And I therefore use it for a medium of at that point. And I’m think I’m going to be one of those people who’s going to particularly be using bitcoin to do small transactions on, because to be honest, it’s just a lot easier with my credit card right now. Now that’s not to say there’ll come a day where that will change, but that’s really at the point where the bitcoin becomes a unit of account and it’s not really there at the moment unless you’re trading all coins.

Peter: So, you know, I think, I think lightning networks important, but I think it’s a red herring if people believe that’s going to suddenly start this whole, um, phase of commerce based on it. Because I just think most people are in the mentality of huddle in there and, and bitcoin therefore becomes a good way of transferring significance, amounts of value across borders. So I’m, I’m very much like the thought of Bitcoin as a settlement layer. Um, you know, I think it’s a very useful way for companies or banks to be able to settle large amounts of value cross border in a very short amount of time with a very low fee. So for example, you could send 100 million from Australia to America for about $3 with bitcoin. I think that’s very cool one. I think that’s, that’s going to be one of the big uses of bitcoin later on.

TB: So when do you foresee that happening? If you had to look in your crystal glass and make a timeline as far as adoption, how do you see bitcoin evolving over the next two, five and 10 years?

Peter: Yeah, good question. A good question. I think one of the most important things that’s going to be coming is more effort and more focus on fungibility. I think that’s really, to me that’s more important than lightening right now. Um, I think really think we need to have a little bit more of a private and anonymous way to transact with bitcoin. And so I think privacy and fungibility that kind of linked, but they are separate. I think they’re going to become super important. I don’t like this company chain analysis who monitor the blockchain and and understand the argument that people say they want to stop money launderers or terrorists or criminals, et Cetera, et Cetera, blah, blah, blah.

Peter:  Fine. I just don’t like them as a company and I don’t think it’s, I don’t like the fact that you can analyze the blockchain and track people, so I think that’s going to be super important. I think that’s one of the most important things is going to happen over the next kind of two to five years. I’m not sure how long this stuff we’ll take. I do think lightning is going to be important, but I think it’s going to take longer than people anticipate. My, I myself have set unfair expectations on it when I first played with that. I’ve found problems with it rather than saying, hold on, this is very, very early given a break, but I think that’s going to be important. I also think we’re going to have some kind of bull run over the next sac that kicks off in any time, but in the next year to two years.

Peter I think the next one could be wild. I think the next one could be the one where the banks and the government and the laws, institutions are realizing, shit we need to get in now because if we don’t get in now is going to be too hard. And then, you know, remember there’s only ever going to be 21 million bitcoins, 4 million of prepared even lost, some ever been released. There’s not a lot of supply. And once start fighting for those bitcoins, they’re going to be very, very expensive. So I think, um, I think it’d be very interesting to see what happens over the next, uh, kind of two to five years. I struggle to predict what will happen, but what I can say is some of the things I think are going to be important, but these things change, right? You know, who knows what’s going to happen.

Peter:     There might be new government legislation coming place that affects people. You know, we just got no idea. But I think he’s going to be, it’s going to be a wild ride anyway.

TB: Yeah, no, I couldn’t agree more. So I think there’s a couple of things that we have to unpack there. So first is the lightning network. I know you’ve been doing a ton of podcasts episodes throughout April right now talking about light changed. So for people that have no idea where lightning network, sorry, can you kind of just give like a one on one very high level on what the lightning network is?

Peter Yeah, lightening network is a second layer technology for bitcoins. So one of the big problems that even a problem, but one of the big conversations as their baits over the last few years of Bitcoin is how does it scale? Because blocks are limited to one megabyte and therefore the bras can get four of transactions. And with that also confirmation times can can go out. I mean there were times where it was taking a few hours together, a payment confirmed and also they can get quite expensive. The fees went up to say $50 during the spikes. Bull run of ’17 so for the future of Bitcoin, there needs to be scaling solutions. Now the debate has been between entree and an off chain. Do do you scale to two megabytes and four megabytes and constantly scale on chain? What’d you scale off chain? Now there are a lot of solid arguments both sides, but I side with scaling off chain I think is important to you. Keep the block size down. So let’s look at both arguments that the people who say scale off train and have bigger blocks, that’s people who’ve fought in, created some cool bitcoin cash. Their belief is that this is the only way to scale bitcoin because you have to constantly incentivize minors because at some point in the block subsidies going to go and when the substance is gone is going to rely entirely on the fee network.

Peter: If you’ve moved to a layer, second layer technology, that means bitcoin transactions are happening and not paying the miners. So essentially, I mean I’m simplifying here, whereas people who are small, Brock’s believe it’s important to keep blocks small for decentralization to make it very cheap to run a node to ensure that the blockchain does it become too bloated and therefore they’re the solution. There’s been secondary technology lightening. You create transactions in a kind of separate layer on Bitcoin, which which doesn’t blow the main block chain and and with that you have the benefit of instant fast, almost instant fast payments and as sometimes hopefully lower cost payments to be now user. Now look, it’s much more nuanced than that than I’ve said there, but it’s been an interesting debate over the last couple of years. I sympathize with both sides of myself, but ultimately I support smaller block sizes, small support, the lightning network, and I believe that is the best to scale bitcoin.

TB:  I agree. Like you kind of said, I think we’ve been putting a lot of unfair expectations on it right now. I don’t see it happening for at least another year and a half, two years when all the irons would be wrinkled down and whatnot. But I do see it contributing to the network, but I think it’s just a little too complex right now with the idea of lightening towers with the watch towers of nodes that are kind of making sure that all these off chain transactions or not double spending it.

Peter: Again, I think that’s something that’s maybe a little bit too complex for people initially you starting to get involved with bitcoin and crypto currency to understand, but I think as as the development continues to go on, it’s going to be easier and easier for people to use and it’s going to be better that we’re going through this period right now.

TB: . Yeah, I do. So that’s one of the concerns I have with someone new come into bitcoin is like bitcoin itself is hard to understand and then to kind of get your head around lightening network as well.

Peter: I mean it’s so complex. There’s so many things you kind of have to get your head around. So it’s almost like you almost have to, I almost think about it like levels. Okay. Level one understand bitcoin level to then understand lighting network. To throw somebody in to make them understand it. Oh well, I mean it’s, it’s tough, but you’ve got to make a choice. You know, you’ve got to read about it and understand and say, do I want to become part of this to one only to become part of bitcoin and the protocol and the network and do I want to hold some and support it? What do I not care? If you care then you should kind of throw yourself in and just keep learning and learning and learning because these are complicated subjects that get your head around and you know, it takes effort and dedication, but those who have put the time in have often been rewarded with the financial gains of being part of bitcoin. But it is complicated.

TB: No, it’s definitely complicated. And that’s the question that I keep hearing is like what is bitcoin? And trying to like simplify to easy to understand terms is it’s just skimming over so much of the complexities about it’s for someone who’s really considering investing in Bitcoin, they should really take the time to learn that and understand it for themselves. Because at the end of the day, you hold your private keys, you hold your own money and it’s not like you can call Satoshi as at a help desk and ask them to refund your money.

Peter:  Yeah. So how did you discover bitcoin and how did you find it to begin with?

TB: So I first heard about it when I was watching the movie, the social network look on Facebook and this was in about 2013, 2014 and at the end of the movie he talks about the Winklevoss twins and how they took their money from the lawsuit and in most of it in bitcoin. Uh, so after I heard about that, I was like, oh well these seem to be too pretty smart guys. And they took a huge sum of money invested in Bitcoin. So I started researching it a little bit. And this was around the same time, was like Silk Road and Mt. Gox, just happened. So I saw the price drop back down to like a hundred bucks, maybe I’m a little bit below that as well. And I was like, oh well, you know, it just lost about 75% of its value.

TB:  This seems very volatile. Um, I just started learning about mining a little bit, but it just didn’t click for me back then. Uh, so a few years later goes, it’s probably around like the beginning of 2016 and I think that’s when Ethereum started really coming out and we saw a lot of these other alt coins. So I was reading the article in Forbes and it was talking about the market cap of how bitcoin was losing its share from like 100% to 75 or whatever it is and how all these altcoins, we’re making a huge rise on it. So at the end of 2016 I got promoted at work and one of the trainings they were talking about one of the big bets the firm had relating to blockchain and everything just kind of like hit me right there as I go. Well you know, to see that these firms are already playing around with the technology and they were actually using ethereum to build some smart contracts and everything.

TB: At that point I was like, hmm, this is probably something I should pay a little bit more attention to. So from there I just kind of went down the rabbit hole and I just tried to learn as much as I can. That’s when I started learning how to build the mining rigs. I was just trying to ask as many questions as I can just because I was so new to the space and I didn’t really have the technical background. My buddy and I just kind of went through the exercise of going through like the top 100 cryptocurrencies in by market cap and just trying to learn a little bit more about them, what the use cases were, how they were trying to use blockchain technology and seeing all the prices fall from 2018 or so. It was just really eye opening to understand that you know, ideas are great, but if you don’t have the team to back that execution or the technology might be a little bit too early right now you’re not going to accomplish what the goal is.

TB: So that’s where I started to fall a little bit more down the bitcoin rabbit hole and realize, hey, you know what? I think bitcoin is for real. Even though it may not be the most advanced technology in certain aspects compared to some of these old coins, the network is just far superior and there’s no way it’s going anywhere right now.

Peter: It is a rabbit hole there. Right? It’s so hard and it’s so hard to find the truth and things. There’s so many different opinions all the time that people have that lead you one way or the other. I just, yeah, I find it fascinating. It really is.

TB: But that’s the thing, like you said, there’s so many different points of views in this space. So for someone who’s just trying to come out and learn, they’re taking in all this information but they might not necessarily know what’s correct and what’s in your accurate and a lot of the times I just feel, I find people regurgitating information that they heard and they have no idea what it means. And then you try to like debunk it a little bit for them and they get pretty argumentative over it.

Peter: Yeah. Yeah, they do. They do. Where’s your mindset at the moment between like bitcoin is king and everything else?

TB: Honestly, the more and more that I’m in this space, the more and more I believe that bitcoin is king. Do I believe that over the next five years or so we can see another bitcoin or something like that, potentially. But I don’t think the network will ever get as big as what we’re seeing with bitcoin right now. I believe in the Lindy effect that I first read in crypto assets by Chris Burniske, I know you just interviewed him, um, a little while back, but I think that as the technology is here longer and longer, it’s just harder for it to be replaced. And even though we’re seeing a bear market right now, I’m just so reassured by the fact that these original cyber punks or just people who’ve been building, they’re still in here and it just doesn’t phase them at all. And like you said, I do think that we are going to see a bull run within the next year and a half or so. And I think it’s just gonna be absolutely crazy and bitcoins totally going to lead the charge. A lot of people can probably invest in some of these other cryptocurrencies and prices will probably go back up as we saw in the last bull run. But I’m putting my money on bitcoin.

Peter: Yeah, me too. Me Too

TB: So you had mentioned that in the next bull run, you kind of expect that a lot of these financial institutions and banks start getting involved in buying up a lot of these bitcoins. Do you think that they’ve already been doing that for the past year or so and they just haven’t announced it?

Peter: Potentially. Maybe. I mean, there’s no way of knowing if you were doing it. The crazy thing would be to admit it. You don’t want to be last to the party and you don’t want to be secret. And to everyone else, you do just say one government just for example, say the UK government sector around said we’ve accumulated a billion, billion pound of bitcoin. Suddenly that’s going to start a race for other governments and say, Whoa, we need to be part of this. So we need to be started buying it and then it will go crazy. So I don’t think anyone’s going to be admitting it, but I mean, why wouldn’t you, why wouldn’t you just head yourself and just hold some, I mean, I think it’d be crazy not to. I really do. And you know, that’s a lot of the messages that you hear from pomp is that it’s just kind of irresponsible for a lot of these institutions. Not that I have at least a portion of their funds in bitcoin.

Peter: Yeah. Um, I think, I think we’re starting to see a little bits here or there institutionally like this, this signals right, that certain institutions would be involved, but there’s also signals that there, there an also the demand at times. I mean, I think one of their futures products is being closed down because of low volumes. Um, but again, I don’t really care anymore. Like I don’t really care for getting an ETF anymore. I don’t really care if institutions are or governments are. I stopped caring what everyone else was doing and I started a focus really on myself and what bitcoin means to me and what I want to use it for.

TB: Yeah, definitely. Um, so what, what does it mean to you exactly?

Peter: Um, it means to me freedom of choice in certain situations and, and personal sovereignty, which I think is really, really super important, like really important. But it just gives me freedom of choice. Like I can buy things and move money, you know, without somebody telling me I can’t. I, I think censorship resistance is super important is probably the single most important thing about bitcoin is I can, if I want to send you some money now, nobody can stop me. If I want to buy something off you. Nobody can stop me. Like whatever people say about the Silk Road, the Silk Road road undoubtedly improved the drug trade and made it a safer, better industry for something we’re prohibitionist failed. You could buy cleaner, purer drugs in an environment with less violence and with more knowledge to help you protect yourself from say, overdosing. That was enabled by Bitcoin. Now it’s gone. We’re back to the old ways of having to buy on the street corner from nefarious people. And, and that’s a shame. So I, for me it means freedom in so many different situations. And uh, and uh, I love that. That’s, that’s what I love about it most.

TB: Yeah. I’ve had some personal experiences there where I’ve tried to transition money from one bank to another and things like that and it gets blocked for various reasons or there’s time delays on it. So I think it’s not until someone experiences that where they realize that, hey, like I’m not really in charge of my money. Even though it says I have x amount of dollars in the bank account. If you go to withdraw that money, depending on the size of it, the bank probably doesn’t have that sitting in their vault. The just give you all that cash whenever you want to go redeem it. So I agree that you know the sovereignty of it and just being free to spend it and do whatever you want with it. It’s awesome. But again, it comes with a high responsibility as well.

Peter: Yeah, it does. It does. And but look, this isn’t for everyone. Some people just want their money in a bank account, you know, they don’t have a lot and it’s easier for them as much as people criticize the current banking system and it does have a problem. Problems it easy. It is easy. You know, chargebacks are terrible and annoying for retailers, but it’s very useful for me. Then if I get my credit card or debit card use, fortunately I have a claim to get that money back, so I don’t hate the current banking system. I think there’s problems with it. I think there’s a lot of problems with it, but I don’t see a scenario where I want to go for self sovereign. Just yeah, I think that might be too, too much anarchy for me to be asked to deal with that.

TB: Do you think we’ll ever see a full sovereignty method or do you think we’ll just kind of have like a financial institution like in parallel with the bitcoin network?

Peter: I honestly don’t know, but I do think I do, I do see a symbiotic relationship between bitcoin and theater and I don’t know if and when that will ever end and I don’t know if a full self sovereign thing is right. I mean I don’t even know the proper terms. We’re explaining it, but I don’t even know if that would be right. Certainly not right for everyone. Um, yeah, I’m just, I, it’s very, very hard to know where some of this stuff actually, what do you think? And

TB: I think we’ll have like a pseudo financial system that’s essentially taking like all of these tokens through like stos or whatnot and it’ll just kind of run in parallel with the financial system that we already have in place. And a lot of these financial institutions are going to have to start adopting blockchain technology in various ways and use bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies for settlement purposes as well. I think we’ll see a lot of things starting to get tokenized. I’m really excited about that. I think there’s a lot of hiccups that are going to happen along the way and a lot of law specifics I need to be worked out, but within the next, within our lifetimes definitely we’ll see something like that and it’s going to be super exciting.

Peter: Yeah, I’m with you on that. I’m with you on that is a, it is a super exciting and I just, it’s just great to have this additional option. This is way of opting out of the current system or you know, having this whole global network and money, which, which you can become part of and no one can stop you. I think that’s so cool and super exciting, but to try and imagine what that’s going to be in 10 years or 50 years, how that’s going to change the game. I think it’s very, very hard. But I do find it super exciting.

TB:  Yeah. Or like you said, it’s not for everyone. So what’s the message that you would give someone who is skeptical of Bitcoin or they’re thinking about getting in and they just saw the price drop from 20,000 to 3000 and they just haven’t done the research on it yet.

Peter: As I’ve always said is just we’ve got to do your research, find out if you’ve got an appetite for this, find out if it’s important for you. Find out if this is something you want to hedge and be part of a, you know, if you hold any kind of investment portfolio, I think it’s kind of a bit silly these days. Not to have a small amount in Bitcoin, but all I can ever say to people as you need, just need to read, read, read, learn, learn, learn. Cause it takes so much time. There is so much. But yeah, it’s, it’s, you’ve just got, you’ve got to make a decision. Do you want to be part of this? Did you want to be left behind? Everybody who’s a avoided it for the last 10 years has been left behind a little bit more as time goes on in 10 years time. Almost certainly the price of Bitcoin is going to be higher than what it is now. Do you want to be left behind it again? I certainly don’t. I, I, uh, I don’t hold any investments beyond bitcoin. MMM. Which is probably itself a bit stupid, but at the same time, I think over the next 10 years, 10 years, it will be the best performing asset. So, uh, I have no reason to hold anything else, but yeah, you’ve just got, you know what it’s like, you got to throw yourself in it. And that can be anything that could be just research and you’re doing what you’re doing, which is a podcast or writing. I think if you start writing and throwing yourself in like that, you learn a lot more and you learn the quicker.

TB:  Yeah, definitely. Because there’s a lot of research that has to go in with it and the Internet is completely brutal. If you put out a piece of content that isn’t well researched and is inaccurate in a lot of ways, you’re going to get tired just shreds really quickly.

Peter: Yeah. Even though I’m very, very quickly like that.

TB: I’m sorry. Yeah, very, very quickly. You’ve had a few hiccups in the past on Crypto Twitter, Huh?

Peter:  Yeah, man, I’ve screwed up so many times. I still screw up all the time and even right now I’ve got Kevin Pham, if it even as him attacking me relentlessly like digging up my past, etc. Etc. MMM. Yeah. You know what? And I should just ignore them, ignore the trolls, get on with life and I, I’ve got a habit of defending myself or, or getting in little petty spats, which I shouldn’t do. But yeah, it’s brutal. But you do learn a lot there. You don’t, and you do learn quickly.

TB:  Yeah. But you know, I think that’s just part of the process and that’s just human nature, right? And like it’s easy to just say, Hey, just block out the trolls and don’t pay any mind to them. But when you hear someone talking shit about you on did, the first instinct is to defend yourself.

Peter:   Yeah. Hey, if you just seen that by Binance have announced they’re going to delist a bitcoin cash SV.

TB: Ah, there you go. I wasn’t going to bring that up. But do you want to talk a little bit more about that?

Peter:  Wow. I mean, for your breaks, my, uh, the legal case against, with a bit stronger now from Craig. Right. But, uh, God, that’s massive. That’s huge.

TB: So did he actually put a lawsuit against you?

Peter: Well, no, not yet, but I’m, it’s almost certainly going to be become one, right? Yeah. Because you know, I’ve called them out as a fraud straight up. I’ve called him a fraud and shit. Yeah. I mean, I’m just trying to take this all in right now. Um, that’s huge. Um, yeah. I mean it’s, it’s, it’s fraud and his bullshit and Craig Wright is a fraud and he needs exposing for this and somebody has to do, and I seem to be one of the people doing that and um, and yeah. God, I’m just trying to suck this all in. Yeah. He’s just trying to think this all in.

TB: Yeah, man. But you know, hats off to you because you, you really are calling up people that you think are frauds. And I think that’s in the long run that really helps people that are trying to get into bitcoin and everything initially. So hopefully you get the proper lawyers and everything you need to defend yourself. But thank you for doing that.

Peter: Yeah, I might come to regret, it might end up bankrupt in me, uh, at some point. So, uh, yeah, I mean, yeah, it might have not been the smartest decision I’ve ever made, but, um, but uh, yeah, cause I’m sorry, I’m struggling to take this all in, um, because that is such a huge thing to happen. Um, I, I can’t, I mean how long was it was an ambulance for a few months. I have no idea. Um, but that is, uh, certainly going to impact me. I don’t know. I just need to take it all in, man. I just need to have a think about it.

TB: Yeah, no worries. Do you think that this has anything to do with your tweets back and forth with CZ?

Peter: Um, I think I wouldn’t want to be arrogant enough to say that, um, that it’s because of that I think is a combination of factors. I think whether or not I’d done what I’ve done, this would have happened anyway. This is a natural conclusion for what is fraud and bullshit, right? This is just the natural conclusion that Craig Wright is digging his own grave with his behavior and his fraud in his lies. I think it’s certainly become part of it. You know, I’ve talked about it with Cz. I’ve shared my view, but I don’t think I would influence him. I think he knows what the right thing is to do. Oh, definitely. So, I mean, that’s really big news and that’s great that I just kind of strengthens your case a little bit more as well. Hopefully everything goes smoothly with that.

Peter:  I’ve, I don’t know what a point. Uh, I’d rather a lambo.

TB: Don’t we all? Do you want to talk a little bit more as far as you’re a support page with holdonaut?

Peter: that’s not my support page. Somebody else did that. That I think stockless um, Elizabeth starts the lightening person was heavily involved in that.

TB: Okay, cool. Where can people go to learn a little bit more about what’s happening there and send some support?

Peter: Well I mean I think they’ve hit the soft target. I don’t remember how much more than they need to raise. But if you go to Elizabeth Starks, Twitter pages on there, I think it’s, I think domain might be, weareallhodlnaut.com I think that might be a where you find out more about it. But yeah. Do you mind if we kind of wrap up now or if you want more information recorded at a later day? Cause I think I need to deal with this now because this is kind of a big, like lots of people are starting to message me.

TB:  Yeah, no worries. I think I have enough right now. Um, I just wanted to give you an opportunity to talk about your podcast and put a plug in there for people to listen to it if you want to do that and then we’ll just wrap up from there.

TB:   Yeah, sure. Peter, this has been awesome. I really appreciate you taking the time to sit down and talk to us about this. Is there anything you kind of want to talk about the, what bitcoin did podcasts and kind of, you know, tell people a little bit more of what they would do, expect to hear from your podcast episodes and where they should subscribe.

Peter:  Yeah, sure. Thanks for having me on. I’m sorry. This, uh, this binance and is kinda knocked me sideways. But yeah, thank you for having me on. Look, my podcast is what bitcoin did. You can find it on anything. Spotify, iTunes. You’ll find it there if you want to have a listen to you. Yeah, if you want to find out there, I’m happy to call back on Twitter. If you ever want to reach out to me, feel free. We’d love to hear from you and look, I wish you all the best with your podcast. If I can help you in any way, give me a shout. I’ve really enjoyed this. I think you’ve done a great job for your first interview.

TB:   Awesome. Thank you so much, Peter. That means a lot coming from you.

Peter: All right, thank you. Bye Bye.

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