Peter McCormack launches a new podcast.

Peter McCormack’s life was an open book. He spoke candidly to audiences and magazines about discovering Bitcoin and buying too much cocaine on Silk Road, which landed him in the hospital in 2014.

A few years later, in 2019, he wrote an article for The Guardian in which he revealed that he had made $1.2 million investing in Bitcoin, but lost it all.

However, after selling your stack during a bear market What Bitcoin Did As the podcast goes, in 2024 he is richer and healthier than ever. This cycle he has maintained his income and achieved his childhood dream of buying Bedford Football Club.

What Bitcoin Did It’s going to be transformed into a completely new podcast. McCormack ShowAnd Real Bedford added Bitcoin to its treasury. McCormack says he is in good shape, both professionally and personally.

“I have everything I want in the world. I wake up and I can do whatever I want and it’s a wonderful place. I work with my son, who is a beautiful soul. I see my daughter all the time. My dad comes to live with me for six months a year and helps with the football club. I work with my brother. I see my friends. Yeah, you know, I feel like I’m the luckiest person in the world to have this life.”

What Bitcoin Did It’s possible McCormack Show

McCormack is fortunate enough to be able to do what he loves most days, as he hosts three podcasts a week. For the past seven years, that has been What Bitcoin Did, The world’s most popular Bitcoin podcast.

But after over 900 shows discussing every guest and every Bitcoin topic imaginable, he’s changing his tune, and starting September 10th, he’ll be launching a completely new podcast with a new format and “broader, but Bitcoin-centric” topics.

He shared more information. McCormack Show On August 28, X said he was tired of travelling the world to interview Bitcoiners, saying it was a departure from his beloved football club and community. Instead, he would be bringing guests to his new Soho studio.

He says the podcast was inspired by the realization that the Bitcoin world could be somewhat isolated from the larger issues affecting the lives of ordinary people.

“I spent two weeks with Bitcoiners and then came back home and spent time with my local friends and family and noticed a stark difference in how I viewed the world. It felt like everything was going to fall apart, but I now feel like there is a bigger job to be done.”

As a result, the new show aims to cover a wider range of topics in an attempt to introduce listeners to new perspectives and ideas, “where relevant, and with sound funding. Think of the shows we did with Eric Weinstein and Michael Malice.”

Fair and balanced, except for the interview with Peter Schiff.

He loves podcasting, sometimes straying into entertainment, sometimes staying true to pure journalism. He tries to be fair and impartial. Sometimes.

“A journalist’s job is to tell a story, and sometimes your voice comes into play. Podcasting offers a weird mix of the two styles, and everyone has an opinion.”

A good example of fairness was the famous mediation between Bitcoin maximalist Samson Mow and Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin, which earned McCormack praise across the spectrum for the neutral mediator stance he took.

“Obviously I’m on Samson’s side on this issue and have no interest in Ethereum, but I wanted to give Vitalik some space to make his case,” he says.

But his neutrality doesn’t apply to Peter Schiff, the goldberger who raves about how terrible Bitcoin is.

“I had another conversation with Peter Schiff, and I wasn’t particularly fair in that conversation,” he says.

McCormack’s passion for storytelling has led him to make documentaries. But he’s reached the end of that path. He has two films in the works, but he doesn’t want to do more. He’s written a screenplay for a film he’s considering developing. He says he’s not drawn to the plot, but he does have a taste for art films and says they’re about reflection.

Real Bedford FC: Bitcoin Funds Football Evolution

He says he is entering retirement. He is busy with his football club, his family and friends.

As part of that new journey, he bought more Bitcoin for the club – 66.9 Bitcoins in fact.

The money comes after the Winklevoss twins first invested in April and will help McCormack achieve his goal of taking his hometown club from the bottom of English football to the Premier League.

Since he took over the club, Real Bedford have won the Spartan South Midlands League Division One in the 2022-23 season and achieved promotion. They have continued their success by winning the Premier Division in the 2023-24 season and secured another promotion to the Southern League Division One Central in the 2024-25 season. They have now won promotion to the Premier League just four times. It will take time but it is an incredible trajectory that is within their reach.

McCormack was clear about how the new investment would be used: 15.8 BTC would be reserved for ongoing football expenses, with the remainder invested in club finances, a strategy echoed by MicroStrategy Chairman Michael Saylor.

The Craig Wright Saga: Legal Victory Over ‘Faketoshi’

Another example of (ultimately) great success was Craig Wright’s public and decisive criticism of his claim to be Satoshi Nakamoto.

In 2023, Wright’s libel suit against McCormack ended in a technical victory for Wright, but McCormack was ordered to pay just £1 in damages. Wright’s troubles were compounded in March when UK High Court Judge Mellor definitively ruled that the Australian’s claims were false and supported by outright lies and bad forgeries. “So Dr Wright considers himself a very intelligent man,” Mellor said. “But in my judgment he is not as intelligent as he thinks he is.”

McCormack is currently pursuing Wright’s losses and on the same day as the magazine interview, he won a significant legal victory, allowing his legal team to freeze £1.548 million of Wright’s assets. McCormack says Wright must either pay £800,000 in accounts or disclose the assets.

“I won’t stop. What I want to say to Craig and (his sponsor) Calvin (Ayers) is to do the right thing. They tried to scam people and they got away with it. We’ve been fighting for five years, but we’re going to succeed.”

Bitcoin is a weapon

He has an interesting idea about Bitcoin because he has devoted a large part of his life to it, and he has changed his life to utilize that idea.

“It makes you think about the nature of money, how you use it, how you store your wealth, how you plan for the future. Personally, money is a tool to achieve what you want, but how you manage it is a weapon,” he says.

He says governments also use money as a weapon, but in a negative way: they weaponize the financial system for their own benefit.

“Once you understand money, you can weaponize it to your advantage. Nobody taught me about money until Bitcoin came along, and I realized that you need both money and assets. And Bitcoin was that asset.”

McCormack explains his financial revolution. He recently bought a house, and the traditional financial thinking is to take on as little a mortgage as possible. Instead, he took on the biggest mortgage he could, and by doing so, he kept as much money in Bitcoin as possible.

McCormack’s entrepreneurial spirit extends to buying a pub, but it also fuels his general resentment, this time directed at the government. He is bleak about the merits of a government whose sole purpose is to tax the productive.

Converting Argentines to Bitcoin

McCormack humbly admits that despite making a fortune, buying football clubs and hosting the world’s biggest Bitcoin podcast, he has yet to convince his friends to invest.

“They won’t listen,” he said, adding that in countries with “hyperinflation like Argentina,” they have been more successful at converting people into “bad” money. “And when you tell them about bitcoin, they say, ‘Money that we can control?’ ‘How can I get some?’ It’s an easy way to sell.”

“The beauty of Bitcoin is that it could lead to a different kind of wealth distribution and help those who are suffering the most.”

But McCormack seems a bit bewildered, and doesn’t entirely agree with my next question: did Bitcoin prevent the rise of the Third Reich? Did it, in his words, weaponize the useless wheel of money?

“Do you think Bitcoin prevented the rise of the Nazis and the Holocaust? I mean, it’s a crazy thought experiment, but I don’t think so. The suffering goes back to the absurd war reparations that countries had to pay.”

Politics and cryptocurrencies aren’t simply a left versus right issue.

Perhaps you can get some good insight into McCormack. He is a Bitcoiner, but he doesn’t think it will stop all wars and cure cancer. He is also not as right-wing as many of his audience members, as he regularly fights them on the X show. He didn’t vote in the recent British general election. He says he is politically mixed.

“I have conservative economic views, but I also have fairly liberal social views, especially when it comes to the privacy of my home.”

He sees the Conservatives and Labour in Britain as very similar in terms of policy, and sees the Reform Party, led by Brexiteer Nigel Farage, as capitalising on traditional Conservative votes.

But he thought it would be better for them to just manage what was necessary and stop interfering.

“I think the role of government is to ensure safety and enforce the law as it pertains to fraud, theft, and violent crime. And the rest of the time, I think government should stay out of people’s way.

Subscribe

The most interesting articles on blockchain, delivered once a week.

Jillian Godsil

Gillian Godsil is an award-winning journalist, broadcaster and author. She changed Ireland’s electoral law through a constitutional challenge in the Irish Supreme Court in 2014, is a former candidate for the European Parliament, and advocates for diversity, women in blockchain and the homeless.