For someone who devotes so much of his life to Bitcoin and finance \u2014 and who has made and lost a small fortune twice now \u2014 podcaster Peter McCormack doesn’t actually seem to care that much for money.<\/b><\/p>\n
“I did have a lot of money in my life a couple of times,” says the 42 year old on a call from his home in Bedford. “But the wealthiest time of my life was the most miserable. I had a company in London that turned over three million a year. Big team. Money in the bank, good salary,\u201d he says.<\/span><\/p>\n “My marriage broke up and I couldn’t have been in a worse place. Money didn’t make a difference. Even if I’d been really rich, I still would have had the panic attacks and anxiety. I still would have been miserable.”<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n McCormack is in a much better place now, and the anxiety has long since subsided. He\u2019s looking fitter and healthier than he has in years, after giving up drinking and riding his Peleton bike around digital courses for miles and miles during lockdown.<\/span> “We’re not rich, I don’t have a flash car, we don’t have a big house. But we have everything we need. Everything else is just like, more stuff.”<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n While he\u2019s still amassing piles of Bitcoin, McCormack places a much higher value on his time and independence than he does on making money \u2014 being able to do what he likes, when he likes, and to spend his days engaged in creative and satisfying work.<\/span><\/p>\n “Time is like the most valuable resource you have,” he explains. “I get to wake up every day and decide what I want to do.” After our interview he’s off to do a personal training session in the middle of the day, then he\u2019ll maybe pick up the kids at 4pm and hit the shops. (He has a 16 year old son he lives with and a 10 year old daughter he shares custody for.)<\/span><\/p>\n “I just do what the f— I want \u2014 and that is the best thing that you can have, complete control over your time. Would I swap that for more money? No, I wouldn’t at all. I also really enjoy my job. Like I f—ing love what I get to do. So I’m content. I mean, apart from having a good wife, I have everything I need in life, and money is not going to get me more of what I need.”<\/span><\/p>\n There are a bunch of apparent contradictions when it comes to McCormack. He’s a big muscly Bitcoiner with tatts and a beard who nevertheless sees major benefits in yoga, meditation and veganism.<\/span><\/p>\n He comes across like a Bitcoin maximalist, but when he <\/span>hosted a debate <\/span><\/a>between Blockstream’s Samson Mow and Ethereum’s Vitalik Buterin, he went out of his way to try and be impartial and fair. In person, he\u2019s considered and thoughtful, while on Twitter he is adversarial, or a bit “punchy” as he describes it.\u00a0 <\/span> “People often say my Twitter <\/span>personality<\/span><\/a> is not like my podcast \u2014 it’s because my podcast is me. My Twitter is just like a tool. Twitter’s a tool.”<\/span><\/p>\n I can\u2019t resist: \u201cAnd are you a tool on Twitter?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n “I am a definitely a tool on Twitter,” he laughs.<\/span><\/p>\n He’s also difficult to pin down politically. Despite his crypto libertarian sympathies he can see the arguments in favour of lockdowns, especially given the UK has one of the worst death rates in the world. A self described socialist in his youth, he says he went “through a phase of being like conservative” and now says he just <\/span>takes each issue on its merits<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n “That kind of f—s with people because I’m conservative on some issues and I’m liberal on others. It’s just the way I think. I’m a bit bolshie because I just see through a lot of bullshit.”<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n He’s willing to change his mind too. A year or two ago he tweeted that he’d probably vote for Trump if he was American. But by the end of Trump’s term he’d put out a <\/span>podcast series called Chaos<\/span><\/a> about what an utter disaster his presidency had been. He says he was initially drawn to Trump as a loose cannon, challenging the status quo and trying to drain the swamp.<\/span><\/p>\n “What I realized over time is just that he is not a stable enough or rational enough character to deal with the nuance. So for example, there are problems with the media, but to call all media which disagrees with you fake and then retweet Breitbart articles, this is not really an honest position. When I started looking into [former Treasury Secretary] <\/span>Steven Mnuchin<\/span><\/a> I realized he didn’t drain the swamp he just did exactly the same. And now I realize he’s just a complete f—ing moron.”\u00a0<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Of course, this sort of attitude doesn\u2019t go down well with the red meat eating, guns and freedom subculture of Bitcoiners and he says his anti-Trump stance lost him up to 500 followers a week. “What I realized is there are a lot of secret <\/span>Bitcoin Trump fans<\/span><\/a>. People who I thought were anarchists now seem to be Trump fans.”<\/span><\/p>\n He puts it down to a lack of trust in institutions and the media, enabling seemingly rational people to believe conspiracy theories about a stolen election. “They’re so easily debunked. But people just distrust so much that they will believe any nonsense.”<\/span><\/p>\n McCormack got an early start in the media as a teenager, putting out his own music fanzine with friends and trying to flog it at concerts. He even scored interviews with Korn, Pantera, Biohazard and Skunk Anansie, but shuttered the mag after four issues due to the workload.<\/span><\/p>\n When he started a music management course at Buckinghamshire Chilterns University College around the turn of the millennium, he considered resurrecting it as a website. But unable to afford to buy a site, he spent a summer working in a pub during the day for three British pounds an hour and learning to build his own sites from a book at night.<\/span><\/p>\n
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\n<\/span>He\u2019s also become one of the most well known and successful crypto podcasters in the industry, with the <\/span>What Bitcoin Did <\/span><\/a>show downloaded 7.2 million times in total, including a record 569,000 in January alone. As a true adherent to Bitcoin philosophy he transparently reports his <\/span>finances online<\/span><\/a>, showing the business \u2014 including his other podcast Defiance \u2014 turning over $71,000 a month and clearing $16,000 in profit. <\/span>
\n<\/span><\/p>\nTime rich<\/h4>\n
McContradictory<\/h4>\n
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\n<\/span>“I’m just f—ing winding people up,” he says. “I just think Americans don’t understand the humour.” McCormack says he also uses Twitter as a sounding board to work through his ideas.<\/span><\/p>\nNot left or right or in the centre<\/h4>\n
Music magazine mini mogul<\/h4>\n