Peter McCormack - Blissfully Content in Bedford
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Peter McCormack’s life has been a bit of an open book. His initial rise to financial success and subsequent crash in both work and personal life is the stuff of movies; especially since his well-documented recovery and new successes are in the equally dazzling industries of crypto and football, or rather Bitcoin and Real Bedford.
A straight talker, he is not backward in coming forward on X.com which landed him in hot water more than once, most notably with the now ill-fated Dr Craig Wright. Last year, the libel case taken by Dr Wright against McCormack failed spectacularly with compensation of just £1 to be paid by McCormack. This year, Dr Wright’s woes were compounded in March in the UK High Court where Judge Mellor said in no uncertain terms that Dr Wright’s claims were fallacious and moreover supported by outright lies and bad forgeries. In a damning statement, Mellors said: “Thus, Dr Wright presents himself as an extremely clever person. However, in my judgement, he is not nearly as clever as he thinks he is.”
This is only relevant as McCormack is not for taking prisoners and is currently chasing Dr Wright for losses and won an important legal step the day of our interview allowing his legal team to freeze £1.548 million of Dr Wright’s assets worldwide.
McCormack says Dr Wright either has to pay £800,000 on account or reveal his assets.
“I’m not stopping. My point to both Craig and Calvin 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.”
Aside from tilting at windmills, McCormack claims to be happy and content. He can do anything he likes as long as he turns out for three podcasts a week in What Bitcoin Did, the most popular podcast on Bitcoin in the world. He doesn’t choose his guests anymore, he leaves that to his production team, and it is seven years in production now.
And then he is busy with the Real Bedford football club, which he bought in April 2022, where recent spats with the Mayor of Bedford over excluding the women’s team has been resolved, albeit in frosty tones. Someone should send a memo to the council to explain that McCormack does not back down when he has right on his side.
His more general entrepreneurism has extended to the purchase of a bar but this has also raised his general ire, this time directed at government. He dismisses the benefit of government where the sole aim seems to be to want to tax productive people. Of this more later.
Story Telling
He enjoys his podcasts, sometimes veering into entertainment and sometimes sticking to pure journalism.
“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 recent moderation between bitcoineer Samson Mow and Vitalik Buterin engendered praise across the spectrum for the neural 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.”
It’s not always the case. “I moderated another conversation with Peter Schiff and I was not particularly impartial in that one.”
“Prior to Bitcoin I never really thought about money but while I was successful in my digital advertising business, I came to understand that government puts a lot of hurdles in the way of earning money and also takes a lot of tax. For me, every penny I gave the government was money that I could have reinvested back in my business. The government may claim to be creating new jobs or whatever, but in reality, they take productively earned money and destroy it.”
According to McCormack, Bitcoin makes you think about money.
“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 that you want to do, but how you manage money is a weapon.”
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He cites the government also using 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 favour. 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 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.
Despite being the host of the biggest Bitcoin podcast in the world, allegedly says McCormack modestly with a shrug, he has not been successful in persuading his friends to invest.
“They won’t listen, you need to visit a country that has ‘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 can lead to a different kind of wealth distribution and to help those who are suffering the most.”
McCormack at this stage 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 not I don't think, the pain goes back to the unreasonable war reparations which the country had to pay.”
McCormack does not generally equate money with politics, certainly not the rise of the far right and money. He didn’t vote in the recent UK general election. He’s a mishmash of politics anyway – not monster looney, not far right, not far left. He had zero interest in the currently line up of candidates.
“I would conservative economic views, but also fairly liberal social views, certainly in the privacy of your own home.”
To be honest, he sees both the Conservatives and the Labour party as being in disguisable in policy terms, with Reform headed up by Brexiter Nigel Farage taking advantage of the traditional conservative vote.
“I’d want cameras following me around the entire time. Everything I did, everything my party did would be available for people to see. No backdoor dealings. People would be judged on what they did. I also would not like to be mudslinging party. I’d like to be able to meet other parties, with very different viewpoints, and find some commonality. So, we could work together for the betterment of the country.”
And yes, he would make government as small as possible.
“I think I think the job of government is to ensure safety, to uphold important parts of the law with regards to fraud, theft, violent crimes, and I think the rest of the door of the government has to get the fuck out of the way of people.
At the end of the day, McCormack’s passion is telling stories and that led him to make documentaries – although he has reached the end of the road there. There are two ones still in the pipeline but he doesn’t really have much interest in doing more. He has written a screenplay however, a fictional one which 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 refection.
He says he is slipping into retirement. He is busy with the football, the podcast and his family and friends.
