 |
Peter McCormack’s life has been an open book. He’s been candid with his audience and with Magazine about discovering Bitcoin while buying far too much cocaine on Silk Road and winding up in hospital in 2014.
A few years later, in 2019, he wrote a piece for The Guardian revealing that he’d made $1.2 million investing in Bitcoin and then lost it all.
But after selling his stack during the bear market to keep his What Bitcoin Did podcast afloat, in 2024 he’s emerged wealthier and healthier than ever before. This cycle he’s kept his earnings and realized his childhood dream of taking over the Bedford football club.
What Bitcoin Did is on the verge of transforming into a whole new podcast called The McCormack Show, and Real Bedford has added Bitcoin to its treasury. McCormack says he’s in a good place, both professionally and personally.
“I have everything I want in the world. When I wake up, I get to do whatever I want, which is a fabulous place to be. I work with my son, who is a beautiful soul. I see my daughter all the time. My dad comes to live with me six months a year and helps with my football club. I work with my brother. I see my friends. Yeah, you know what, I feel like I’m the luckiest person in the world to deliver this life.”
What Bitcoin Did becomes The McCormack Show
McCormack is in the fortunate position of being able to do anything he likes most days, as long as he turns out three podcasts a week. For the past seven years that’s been for What Bitcoin Did, the most popular podcast on Bitcoin in the world.
But having discussed every conceivable Bitcoin topic with every possible guest over 900 shows, he’s mixing things up and from September 10, it’ll be a whole new podcast with a different format and a theme that is “broader but with Bitcoin as the heartbeat.’
He shared more information on The McCormack Show on August 28 on X, saying that he’s fed up with traveling the world to interview Bitcoiners, as it takes him away from his beloved football club and local community. Instead be bringing guests to his new Soho studio.
He says the inspiration for the podcast’s evolution was the realization the Bitcoin world can be somewhat insulated from the bigger issues that affect ordinary people’s lives.
“I’d come home from spending two weeks with Bitcoiners and be with friends and family locally and notice a distinct difference in how we see the world. As everything feels like it is going to shit, I feel like there is a bigger job to do now.”
As a result the new show aims to cover a wider range of topics in an attempt to introduce listeners to “fresh perspectives and ideas, aligning with sound money where relevant—think of the shows we’ve had with the likes of Eric Weinstein and Michael Malice.”
Fair and balanced, except when interviewing Peter Schiff
He enjoys podcasting, sometimes veering into entertainment and sometimes sticking to pure journalism. He tries to be fair and even-handed — sometimes.
“It’s the job of a journalist to tell a story and sometimes your voice gets involved. Podcasting offers a weird mix of both styles and everyone has an opinion.”
A good example of being fair was his famous moderation between Bitcoin maximalist Samson Mow and Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin. This received praise across the spectrum for the neutral moderator stance taken by McCormack.
“Naturally, I side with Samson on these issues, and I’ve zero interest in Ethereum, but I wanted to give Vitalik space to frame his arguments,” he says.
However, his neutrality doesn’t extend to goldbug Peter Schiff ranting about how terrible Bitcoin is.
“I moderated another conversation with Peter Schiff and I was not particularly impartial in that one,” he says.
McCormack’s passion for telling stories also led him to make documentaries — although he has reached the end of the road there. There are two still in the pipeline but he doesn’t really have much interest in doing more. He has written a screenplay for a movie he is considering developing. He won’t be drawn on the plot but expresses a liking for art house movies and says it is a film about reflection.
Real Bedford FC: Bitcoin funds a football evolution
He says he is slipping into retirement. He is busy with the football club and his family and friends.
As part of that new journey, he has bought more Bitcoin for his club — 66.9 Bitcoin, in fact.
The funding comes after an initial investment from the Winklevoss twins back in April, helping McCormack with his goal of getting his home town club from the bottom tier of English football to the Premier League.
Since he bought the club, Real Bedford won the Spartan South Midlands League Division One in the 2022–23 season, which led to their promotion. They continued their success by winning the Premier Division in the 2023–24 season, securing another promotion to the Southern League Division One Central for the 2024–25 season. Now, they are only four promotions from the Premier League — an unbelievable trajectory that will take time but is very much within their grasp.
McCormack is clear how the new investment will be spent, reserving 15.8 BTC for ongoing football expenses and the rest going into the club’s treasury, echoing the strategy of Michael Saylor, chair of MicroStrategy.
Read also
Craig Wright saga: Legal victory against “Faketoshi”
Another big success (eventually) was his uncompromising public criticism of Craig Wright for claiming to be Satoshi Nakamoto.
In 2023, the libel case taken by Wright against McCormack resulted in a technical win for Wright, but McCormack was ordered to pay compensation of just 1 British pound. Wright’s woes were compounded in March when UK High Court Judge Mellor said in no uncertain terms that the Australian’s claims were fallacious, supported by outright lies and bad forgeries. Mellor said: “Thus, Dr Wright presents himself as an extremely clever person. However, in my judgment, he is not nearly as clever as he thinks he is.”
McCormack is currently chasing Wright for losses and won an important legal victory on the day of his interview with Magazine, allowing his legal team to freeze 1.548 million pounds of Wright’s assets. McCormack says Wright either has to pay 800,000 pounds on account or reveal his assets.
“I’m not stopping. My point to both Craig and [his backer] Calvin [Ayres] is to do the right thing. They tried to defraud people and they didn’t get away with it. We’re five years into the fight but we will succeed.”
Bitcoin is a weapon
Given he has devoted much of his life to Bitcoin, he has some intriguing thoughts about it, and has changed his life to take advantage of those ideas.
“It makes you think about the nature of money, how you use it, how you store wealth and how you plan for the future. For me personally, money is a tool for you to achieve what you want to do, but how you manage money is a weapon,” he says.
He says the government also uses money as a weapon but in a negative way, weaponizing the financial system for their own gain.
“When you understand money, you can weaponize it in your favor. No one taught me about money until Bitcoin came along, and I realized that I needed both money and an asset — and Bitcoin was that asset.”
McCormack explains his own financial revolution. He recently bought a house and traditional financial thinking would be to have as small a mortgage as possible. However, he opted to have as large a mortgage as possible, thereby maintaining as much money as possible in Bitcoin.
McCormack’s entrepreneurism has also extended to the purchase of a bar but this has also raised his general ire, this time directed at the government. He wonders darkly about the benefit of a government where the sole aim seems to be to want to tax productive people.
Turning Argentinians onto Bitcoin
Despite making a fortune, buying a football club and hosting the biggest Bitcoin podcast in the world, McCormack modestly admits with a shrug that he has not been successful in persuading his friends to invest.
“They won’t listen,” he says, adding he’s had better success converting residents of countries with “bad” money, “such as Argentina, where they have bouts of hyperinflation. “And you tell them about Bitcoin — and they say, ‘money we can control?’ ‘how do I get me some of that.’ It’s an easy sell.”
“The great thing about Bitcoin is that it can lead to a different kind of wealth distribution and help those who are suffering the most.”
But McCormack seems a little taken aback and categorically does not agree with my next question, which is: Would the presence of Bitcoin have stopped the rise of the Third Reich? Would those wheelbarrows of worthless money not have become weaponized, to use his term?
“Do I think Bitcoin would have stopped the rise of the Nazis and stop the Holocaust? I mean, it’s a hell of a thought experiment, but no, I don’t think so, the pain goes back to the unreasonable war reparations which the country had to pay.”
Read also
Politics and crypto aren’t just left vs. right
Which probably gives you a good insight into McCormack. He’s a Bitcoiner, but he doesn’t think it will stop all wars and cure cancer. He’s also not as right-wing as many in his audience, as his regular bouts with them on X shows. He didn’t vote in the recent UK general election. He says he has a mishmash of politics.
“I would have conservative economic views, but also fairly liberal social views, certainly in the privacy of your own home.”
In the UK he sees both the Conservative Party and the Labour party as being very similar in policy terms, with Reform headed up by Brexiter Nigel Farage taking advantage of the traditional conservative vote.
But he’d rather they just manage what they need to and then stop interfering.
“I think I think the job of government is to ensure safety, to uphold important parts of the law with regard to fraud, theft, violent crimes, and I think the rest of the time government has to get the fuck out of the way of people.
Subscribe
The most engaging reads in blockchain. Delivered once a
week.
Jillian Godsil
Jillian Godsil is an award winning journalist, broadcaster and author. She changed electoral laws in Ireland with a constitutional challenge in Ireland’s Supreme Court in 2014, she’s a former European Parliamentary Candidate, and is an advocate for diversity, women in blockchain and the homeless.
