I start a podcast and it's like the biggest Bitcoin podcast in the world.
No, no, not enough. I've got to start a football team.
No, not enough. I've got to buy a bar.
No, not enough. I've got to become an MP.
I've got to fix my local town.
We as Bitcoiners, we know exactly what's happening.
We know exactly what's going on.
We're trying to tell everyone.
My ego required success and money.
And that meant I hurt people that loved me.
And I think about that a lot.
I used to have this spreadsheet where at every shitcoin, it's value in pounds, dollars and Bitcoin.
But there are people in the world of Bitcoin, billionaires.
And I think they could have stepped up and helped people, but for whatever reason, they chose not to.
As hard as this interview is, because you're making me really be vulnerable and open up, it's nice to have this conversation.
And if I just vote for that party, that one's going to fix it.
And they don't realize it is a feature, not a bug.
It is how the system of incentives works.
I'm more curious right now about what you dream, what you go to sleep.
All views expressed by the host or guests are solely their own opinions.
Nothing stated in this podcast should be considered a specific endorsement to make any particular investment or follow any specific strategy.
Welcome to Own Bitcoin, Pete.
I'm excited to talk to you about Bitcoin, everything you've built and what's next.
But first, let's clear the air.
You interviewed Mike Peterson a couple of times way before I did. Your first interview was episode 179.
Was that what it was?
Yeah, I checked there. Mine was episode 12. Now please read what he said after sitting down with me.
Hands down, my favorite podcast interview I've ever participated in. I had never ever heard of Peter McCormack when I agreed.
I had never even heard of All In Bitcoin pod when I agreed to the interview,
but the questions CK asked were the personal and challenging.
Definitely not just another Bitcoin podcast.
Excited to check out her other interviews.
Well, I've got a couple of thoughts on that.
Firstly, I'm excited by your personal and challenging questions.
Do you know the background to my interview with him?
Do you know I met him in Uruguay?
No.
So I went out to LeBitCon.
I know you interviewed him when no one knew anything about Mike Peters or El Salvador, for that matter.
Nothing at all. I think I was probably one of the first people to go there. So what happened was I was at LeBitConf in Uruguay and I was stood outside the conference venue and he came up to me. I think he was with his son. And he said, I've got this project in El Salvador. And I was like, okay, tell me about it. He said, yeah, it's called Bitcoin Beach. It's in a place called El Zante. Someone's given us some Bitcoin and we use it to help people locally and we accept Bitcoin. And I was like, sounds cool. Can I see it? He said, yeah.
So I went straight on my phone, looked up the flights to El Salvador.
I think I had to go via Panama.
And two days later, I was in El Salvador.
I was down in El Zonte with him looking at his project, having some pupusa.
And then obviously, after that, everything went wild in El Salvador.
But that was pre...
I think Bukele was in power at that point.
But Jack Mallers hadn't been...
The whole Bitcoin project hadn't started.
It was just...
It was him at a beach.
I mean I thought I did a good interview with Michael and if he says yours was the best
and the questions were personal and challenging I'm I'm excited okay let's start with my 21 takes
on you and let's take it from there ready takes on me yeah 21 takes on you wow okay okay here we
go you've got a big heart what does it come from my big heart yeah oh I don't know if you ever know
why do you say I have a big heart? Because I have followed you since the very beginning so
I think you have a huge heart I think you are generous I think you you see the good in people
I think I'm just being who I am is nature nurture my mother would have played a huge role in that
she had a huge heart she trained to be a nurse in her 40s and decided that's what she wanted to do
because she wanted to help kids and look after kids and she also worked for a charity for the
church called St. Vincent de Paul, where, I don't know, a woman who's left her husband and has been
just moved into a temporary accommodation or immigrants had come into the town and they didn't
have any furniture. She would help them get furniture. And I used to see her do that. So
perhaps it came from my mom because my mom never cared about money. She never gave a damn about
money. She cared about people. I think that's probably rubbed off on me.
Were you always a bit of a troublemaker?
Yes, I was always a bit of a troublemaker. I'm the youngest of three. My brother and
and sister were born a year apart four years later my dad had a few beers took a look at my mom
accidentally made me in cyprus and uh yeah so trying to compete with an older brother and sister
um i was like the little rebel kid rock and roll kid punk rock kid kid and yeah i've always been a
troublemaker yeah okay so what two out of these six qualities make someone most british must be
able to huddle massive amount of liquor must curse creatively and at all times apologize for
everything bad teeth but deeply sorry about it secretly believe tea solves actual emergencies
and handovers and best world-class humor ever well the world-class humor of course yeah of course
i think it's all six how can i how can i choose between a perfect description of british people
in six takes um i think the irish are better with the liquor okay i am half irish as well
and we do swear a lot for youtube we need to not swear for the first 15 minutes um
i'm trying to not swear for the first 15 minutes of any interview i give or or do um i think you've
missed one which one we uh we are very civil in the way we queue up i just do yeah yeah we see a
and we just join it.
But yeah, look, we swear a lot, T-Souls.
I'm going to go with-
You apologize for everything.
Yeah, I'm sorry about that.
I think we're just quite civil people.
Although I think that's going at the moment.
Life is hard.
I think people are starting to get a little bit sick
of what's happening
and people are losing their temper a little bit over things.
But I would say I'm going to go with T-Souls everything.
any argument you can pause say let's have a cup of tea and that solves something and uh it's humor
and i think we are the funniest people in the world it's the thing i miss the most when i leave
the uk even in america um americans aren't very funny um and the annoying thing about their humor
is they think they're funny but they're not funny and they don't understand sarcasm or irony it's
very brash like just shouting your face humor um and it's not funny and so when i'm in america
i find it painful hanging around with americans when they think they're being funny and then i
i will say the most amazing joke and then inside i have to just laugh to myself because it
completely passes by do you see parts of your dad in how you are today huh if you'd have asked me
that a few years ago I said no because me and my dad are very different my dad is very safe
risk averse um very careful with money whereas I'm a lunatic I take endless risks and
financial risks career risks and I accept what will be will be but my dad also did work very
hard he put a work ethic into me he wanted me to go to a private school and have a good education
He thought education was the most important thing.
And he could not afford to send me to private school on his salary as an aircraft engineer,
which was four days on, four days off, 12-hour shifts.
But in those four days off, if there was overtime, he would accept it every single time,
which means he just worked endlessly.
And I got that work ethic from him.
But what was interesting about my dad is that as he retired, he became, he just chilled out a lot,
became very relaxed, non-confrontational, very soft, very gentle towards people.
And there's parts of me I sense that's coming. And I wonder where it comes from sometimes. I think
perhaps it's, I mean, for me personally, whether you're religious or not, we all wonder what's next.
It's one of two things. It's nothingness forever or something. And if it's something,
well we've been raised to think there may be a judgment on who we are which puts you in a
position of some existential perspective and spiritual perspective on life and you know we
defer things in life for me the diet always starts tomorrow okay and then I go to my coffee shop and
I have a chocolate croissant it's like okay it's another day and I think sometimes we defer some of
our decisions perhaps what are moral decisions we defer them and think we can repent later in life
but i think when you face death i think if you were struck down with a terminal illness
you have now a ticking time clock and i assume people make very quick changes to their lives
one with regards to how they use their time and secondly with how they behave and the decisions
they make and I was thinking about this the other day is why would you defer being a good person
why would you defer how you consider your time and until a point where you're faced with
looking at death in the face and so and myself starting to think a lot more about
like how I use my time and my uh the decisions I make and whether there's any harm that comes
from decisions I've made or do make. And I'm trying to make less of them now. And I think
that that makes you a more gentler, slower still person. And I think that's what I see
from my dad in me now. It's a long answer to a simple question.
It's a great answer. What is it like to be a father?
Oh, that's a really good question.
I have plenty of them.
It's not really a Bitcoin interview, is it? It's a life interview.
um 21 takes on you and then bitcoin hits yeah i mean being a father is is incredible and hard
it's the best thing in the world and the biggest pain in the ass it's a constant challenge
you never stop being a father my dad i still turn to him for things now he's his late 70s and i'm in
my late 40s and he's always 30 years ahead of me and he's got 30 years of wisdom more than me on
certain things. We have a problem. We have a problem in the world that you and I are really
acutely aware of, which is inflation and a financial system that is designed to extract
from the poorest and the middle class and to give to the richest in society, which is why we buy
Bitcoin. But so fragile is the world's financial system now. And so late are we in this kind of
debt cycle that you really start to think about the world you're leaving for your kids and we are
leaving a much worse world. American HODL said this, he said money is a proxy for time.
You earn money to save so you can buy time to do other things to give yourself optionality.
But if we as a, and I say the collective we as a country, take on debt, we are actively stealing
from our kids future and when you think about that how cowardly is that for us as humans to say to
our kids i want stuff now so you are going to pay for it in the future i mean it's cowardly i would
never do that to my own children i i build up a life for me and hope to leave them more than i've
had to give them a better life and better options and better choices more freedom and i think most
parents want to do that for their children but collectively as a society we don't do that we
consume from their future to have what we want now and that is to me is pure cowardice and so i feel
like i i think about my job as a parent but i also think of our jobs our generation we have a
collective parental job for the collective future of our children we are doing a terrible job we are
doing a terrible job. I wish I'd had more children. I have two. I wish I'd had more.
I regret that. It's probably my biggest regret in life. And...
Why is that?
Because, you know, like last night, we went to the shops and we got home and I cooked
a Sunday roast. I don't cook often. And the kids had been making fun of the last Christmas
dinner I made a year ago saying it was rubbish. I was like, no, it's good. It's good. I was
like screw you i'm gonna prove it and so uh i made sunday dinner it took me three hours
and because i'm there at the kitchen making the dinner we're all kind of hanging around
talking having fun and then we all sit and eat together whereas if we go to a pub and have dinner
the conversations are slightly different because we all sat together the whole meal you're forced
into the conversation whereas when you're making the meal you're all a bit mobile around the room
doing your own things, dipping in and out of conversations.
And we just had a really good time together.
Like it was quite special to just spend that time.
If I hadn't have cooked dinner, maybe I'd have ordered a takeaway
and would have sat on our lap in front of the TV and watched football.
But we didn't. We were together as a family.
What's the process for turning the next generation into builders?
Not heirs, but into builders.
It's education, really. And it's more than education. You've got to give them something to believe in and inspiration. I remember leaving school and being excited about the world, that I can go and get a job and create a business and buy a home. And I was excited by the world.
mobile phones were very new there was texts and calls the internet was an exciting new frontier
and I think what the kids can face now is very different they've been raised on mobile phones
and social media and their peer group isn't the other kids who live on the same street as them as
the ones they go to school with their peer group is the entire world so whereas we saw the kid at
school who was maybe the better runner who was better at chemistry or math they see the kid who's
20 years old and drives a lamborghini and lives in dubai or the girl who dances on tiktok and is
a multi-millionaire or a girl who goes on to bloody only fans and makes millions of pounds
and that creates a pressure to be something that's unachievable for the vast majority of
kids now. And then the reality of what's in front of them is,
can I make a life as a multimillionaire doing something on this phone?
Or do I do something locally in my community? And what can I do? Where can I work? What
opportunities exist? I remember when Connor started working at what Bitcoin did and then
left. So I'm curious about that process to turn next generation, your kids into builders.
because there's some worry well nepotism helps um he and i went out to uh malaysia early in the
year earlier last year i met up with belagi and we went for a walk with belagi around
forest city where we were and belagi made this very interesting point i was explaining how
connor's quit university and is working with me and he said you're basically doing what happened
you know a century or two ago where connor's come to work on the farm you're the farmer he's come to
work on the farm and the reason this is good is well he's half your dna and you can imprint on him
what you think are important values and so he will get to create a life based on that experience with
you it's better than a university experience and it's a fair point because university is
I think largely considered a scam now you get a huge amount of debt with no guarantee of job at
the end of it um whereas Connor has no debt he has a job he has skills he's mobile he's financially
secure and he's had that because he's had to work with me but that's he's in that fortunate position
how many kids have got that yeah and so how do you inspire a generation to be builders
I think you just have to set them a good example and I don't think we're doing that right now
I would hate to be a kid right now.
They've got every opportunity in front of them
and everything just feels so hard and distant.
I mean, how are most kids these days
meant to afford to get on the property ladder?
I mean, it's virtually impossible.
So it's tough.
What makes a good partner?
A good partner?
You don't mean business partner, do you?
Not necessarily, but it's up to you.
I don't think I make a good partner.
because i prioritized the wrong things it cost me my marriage so i i don't really know what makes a
good partner because i've never really been a good partner myself i think i'm a difficult person to be
in a relationship with because i i have adhd um so i can't switch off i'm always thinking about how
I can save the world um and I just I'm always reading or watching things or listening to things
and consuming the information and knowledge and trying to process it and I think um if you want
to be in a relationship with somebody it's about uh being a partner as you say use that word a team
creating a team that takes on the world and and I've never really done that I've always
have gone solo and probably when I've had that person with me not spent enough time
thinking about well what does the world mean to mean for them and what do they want
and supporting them in what they want to do I've always just been tunnel visual on mine it's like
you join me for the ride I'm on I'll see you later something even my kids had to adapt to
but I am in that really reflective period of my life where that recognition of understanding what
ADHD means for an adult helped me understand why I keep starting businesses and doing things and
creating movements and never really finishing them and so I've started to slow down I've started to
switch off some of the things I was doing because I'd rather actually just spend time with my kids
and so in doing that perhaps over the next year or so i may be the kind of person who would make
a good partner because i've understood my own priorities are wrong so so i don't know i'm i've
just never i don't think i've been a very good partner to anyone what were your obsessions
growing up oh good um good question uh music i was obsessed by music i understand rock and roll
heavy metal i started a fanzine when i was 15 i'd go around and interview bands which was really
cool i'd turn up at concerts and be on the guest list to go and i interviewed corn skunker nancy
pantera slayer it was amazing i used to get all my cds for free um so that i was obsessed with
music just obsessed uh skateboarding yeah but i used to just finish school on on a friday get
a skateboard and uh lurk street car park behind here you know the car park behind here um no on
the street behind here where we are let street car park we used to go up to the fifth floor and when we had cars and we were driving we park up the car we stick on some punk and we would skateboard for an hour two hours and then go to a club called Esquires and rock out I was obsessed with that and I was obsessed with making
money I didn't have a poor life but my dad's put all his money into schooling and I wanted money
so I just worked I had paper rounds and a milk round and worked in a factory you know worked in
a local shop anything i could to earn money i was obsessed with making money was football a big
thing at home back then i loved football i wasn't a very good player so so i love football i've
always liked football i became more of an obsession as an adult but that wasn't an obsession with
football as such that's an obsession with trying to ensure my local town as a team that's successful
so it's more about the community and we are we are one of the largest towns in the country that's
never had a professional team and i was like well how do we make that happen a childhood lesson
that still shapes your decisions today so i was obsessed with money i wanted to make money my dad
had a friend successful friend a guy called keith mason uh sadly died a couple years ago um but he
was the successful guy in my dad's community of friends he had the big house his own business
and we were on holiday in cyprus once a year and he was there and i must have been about 14 years
old and i said to him i remember asking him i said what's it like to sack somebody i was you know
like the apprentice you're fired i asked him all excited and he said to me pete listen
sacking somebody is one of the hardest things you ever have to do because when you do that
that person might have a wife kids a home and you've taken away from them their income and at
the point they don't have their income you've introduced instability into their life and that's
I mean I don't remember his words exactly but it was along these lines
and it really hit me hard and so I've always been worried about other people's financial position
and so when I make decisions I like any of my businesses if it costs somebody a job I
I dwell on it a lot I think about it a lot and maybe that's part of like your heart question
I do worry about other people's finances.
Right now, the global economy, the economy here in the UK,
I am planning to protect myself,
knowing other people are going to get absolutely screwed.
That lives with me.
That really kind of unsettles me.
What's your most expensive mistake?
There's so many ways you can answer that.
like you can answer that financially buying a bar was an expensive mistake and emotionally
i think the most expensive mistake i made was um not loving my wife enough because it cost me my
marriage and then cost me my family being a unit i took it for granted um it was very selfish
focused on myself and my career and ultimately she didn't want anything to do with that anymore
and it's a really weird thing because it fundamentally changed my life my company
collapsed afterwards my health went I became a drug addict I hit what you would call rock bottom
I nearly went bankrupt and then I stopped I went running for a year chance meeting of a podcaster
called Rich Roll, started a podcast, discovered Bitcoin, made some good money, bought a football
club, and now I can functionally retire if I want to. So weirdly, it kind of changed the direction
of my life professionally in the most amazing, incredible way. I've got to travel the world,
been to 50 countries with this podcast, I've made documentaries, I've met so many incredible
people. But the cost was my marriage and my family, and that's never left me. I still think
about it most days with a huge amount of regret, primarily because I wasn't a good person.
I just wasn't a nice person at all. I was so obsessed with success and making money.
and whatever trauma that is about i don't know you know maybe it's because i went to a private
school and my dad couldn't afford it and i was surrounded by rich kids and wanted to prove
myself maybe it's because i was just the youngest of three and wanted to prove myself
but whatever it is my ego required success and money and that meant i hurt people
that loved me and and i think about that a lot
what's one stupid risk you took that actually paid off taking copious amounts of cocaine
which led me to a website called the silk road which led me to bitcoin i mean taking drugs each
time you snort cocaine you're taking a risk with your life you can you can die you know and you're
becoming a drug user and eventually for me a drug addict so that was a huge risk um but i discovered
bitcoin was changed my life um another one was just for for no reason at all i just decided to
attend a yoga retreat in italy um after i separated from my wife because it was run by this podcast
that i was listening to i was like i think i need to be at this yoga retreat so i went to it met the
guy and became friends with him and started a podcast um going out to Italy to be at a yoga
retreat with a bunch of people I didn't know a bunch of vegans was a was a was a risk but I think
the biggest risk I'm gonna take is ahead of me in in that um I I have a I have a need to go through
an ego death I've got an ego and I have a need to go through that and I'm kind of going through
at the moment and with that um it's a risk because what i'm doing is ending not ending that's the
wrong word but refocusing myself so that i can maximize the time i have with my family and the
people i love which means sacrificing maybe some of my ambitions and that's a risk but maybe that
will pay off. Are you ready to sacrifice some of your ambitions? Yeah, I've been doing it recently.
I've been cutting things out of my life, selling businesses I have and saying no to things that
I want to do. I've been offered the opportunity to become a MP. Yeah. I mean, what an incredible
thing. Honour would be if I was to run and just say I had a chance of winning to become MP,
say for Bedford. That would be a huge honour and commitment. And you'd be in the Houses of
parliament and you would be one of the 650 people who get to govern this country in terms of
ambition it'd be incredible and you are near the levers of power but the cost of that would be
less time with my children and i'm i'm not willing to make that sacrifice i think the bigger risks are
the ones now your children are gonna lift the nest yeah i know i know but but i can still be a
farther from distance even if they leave the nest if they need me i want to be able to go okay i'm
there you need to have the time yeah but also next i'm reading a lot at the moment i'm reading so
many different books at the same time just old wise books i'm i'm near the end of dante's inferno
um i'm halfway through rereading bastiat's the law um i've just downloaded machiavelli's of the
prints. I intend to go back and read the Odyssey, the Iliad and the Aeneid books I read as a kid.
There's so much wisdom in these old books and when you look at how society is at the moment
I want to have the kind of the wisdom and knowledge so that if my kids need some kind
of guidance it's not from me guessing what's going on in the world but just standing on the
shoulders of giants who warned us about all of this what's something you dream of
oh man ice if i told you what i dream of yes do you mean i actually dream the dreams i have when
i go to sleep or my ambition dreams i'm more curious right now about what you dream when you
go to sleep gosh if i told you that'd be so embarrassing no i'll tell you afterwards okay
but i do have recurring dreams whereby i can't complete a task i'll tell you the funny one i
had a dream once i was in the british open golf and i was winning and we get to the final t
do you understand golf what i mean by t the last hole so you put the ball on to strike it
it's the final fairway I've got to hit down and I'm winning and I put the ball on the tee and it
falls off and every time I try and put the ball back on the tee it falls off and it keeps falling
off and like everyone's like saying to me come on come on and I just can't get the ball on the tee
and everyone just leaves and I've had so many dreams like that where I'm near to something
and I cannot complete the task,
it's kind of a bit like my ADHD.
And what do you see it means?
That I don't complete things.
Because that's true, I don't complete things.
I just move from one thing to the next thing.
I get bored very quickly and have to do...
I start a podcast and it's like the biggest Bitcoin podcast in the world.
Not enough, I've got to start a football team.
Not enough, I've got to buy a bar.
No, not enough, I've got to become an MP.
I've got to fix my local town.
and it's just like I don't finish things.
And it's like what is going on there?
What is this constant need to prove something?
But I've stopped it.
Like I said, I've kind of got to that point where I was like,
ah, I don't need to do that anymore.
And I don't know if I've had one of those dreams recently.
Are you in therapy right now?
No, I tried it.
I did try it after my divorce, but it just didn't work for me.
Okay.
No, I'm very good at living in the present right now.
I used to have anxiety, which we know anxiety is a bit worried about the future.
The future, yeah.
Depression is worried about the past.
I have neither.
I'm very peaceful and happy and content right now.
I have, you know, a perfect day to me is like today's a good day, right?
I get up, get my daughter ready for school, drop her off, go and have a cup of coffee
and do a bit of writing.
I'm here having a lovely conversation with you.
I'm going to go back.
I'm probably going to play tennis with my son.
Then I'm going to pick my daughter up.
I'm going to make dinner and we're all going to have dinner together.
that's living in the present if i'm worried about the future i'm not gonna have that tennis game with
my son because i'm gonna be working and yeah maybe i'd order a takeaway and we'd sit there and
and then i'll get my laptop out and start working again i just there's a funny thing about money
i think most people want to make good money most people like i'd love to be a millionaire i want to
make money and my thesis on money is quite simple it's like being broke sucks like not being able
to afford to pay your rent, feed your kids. That sucks. Nobody wants to be in that position. It's
awful. Worrying about money all the time sucks. But once you get to a certain position, it's not
rich. You get to the point whereby you don't have to worry about day to day. You might not realize
it, but you are rich because you have control over your time. You don't have to worry. Everything
after that is a lump. The Lamborghini is just a lump. A bigger house is a lump. People get yachts
and they're just lumps it's like when when you've when have you got enough and none of them actually
bring like i love cars don't get me wrong and i've had poor shasta martin i've always just had
wanted there's always been like the goal the next car i want i can live without it i would much
rather just play tennis or read a book or hang out with my family and that's that's a recent thing
i've discovered which which is maybe where some of my ambition has gone from because yeah i don't
know i can't remember what was the question again something you dream of do you know what i just
right i mean i've told you what i dream of in terms of like that weird not being able to finish
something but ambition dreams i don't have any anymore be a granddad be a granddad yeah i cannot
wait for the day and it's i don't want them to do it yet cannot wait but my son's like he's early
20 if he came home one day and said i'd be over the moon i look forward to being able to help my
kids with their kids I I look forward to be able to wake up with no commitments at all just get up
and be able to read and write and maybe just help other people I'd like to be able to do things for
other people now that's great you're in a great position yeah I honestly I'm it's quite reflective
time but yeah I've never achieved anything truly incredible and I'm very content with life now
I always thought ambition was about reaching for something.
But actually, I realized for me, it was about running away from something,
from the personal battle you have with your own ego.
Yeah, again, I can only speak for me, but I've become content
by very small little things like making dinner last night with the kids.
When you realize what does really make you happy,
like when are you truly happy the the gift of my divorce was i've had two really weird gifts when
i explain their gifts i mean their gifts because if you look at them and accept the perspective
that comes with it they can teach you something so my divorce was hugely painful it was a horrible
thing to go through but it was also a gift in that i uh ended up taking a year off work i didn't do
anything for a year i ran i ran every day i was coming off drugs and trying to get my act together
and i was suffering with like chronic anxiety couldn't get out of bed and i'd gone to the
doctor and they wanted to put me on antidepressants and i didn't want that so i went and bought some
trainers i just started running and i ran every day the river down have you seen the river yeah
it's beautiful i used to run up and down the river 10 kilometers a day and a half marathon a week
and I'd go home and I'd have nothing to do and so I'd try and find things to do and it might be like
clear up a drawer or clear up a room and then I'd have nothing to do so I started going to the gym
and I'd do whatever was on at the gym I was doing Pilates with old women and yoga and whatever
and then suddenly I started to get busy again but I was busy with the choices I wanted like how I
would spend my time and that was a huge gift um and the second gift is going to sound super weird
but when my mum died she had cancer and there's only one good thing about cancer is that it gives
you time like if if my dad passed away say he has a heart attack it's gonna be that you're gonna get
a phone call and that's it he's gone but when somebody gets cancer you have a it's awful don't
get me wrong anyone listening i'm not saying cancer's cool in any way at all but you get um
you get the gift of time if you choose to accept it so when my mum had cancer she was living in
ireland uh if she'd have died at the age she died which was 67 i actually think what's the date today
january 12th yeah i think today is the ninth anniversary of her death i'm pretty sure it's
the january the 12th she died um and because they were living in ireland i'd see them once or twice
a year so say she had a heart attack from the period we found out she'd had cancer that i would
have seen her six times because she had cancer i i was seeing her twice a month so i got to spend a
lot more time with my mum because of that and the only gift of that is is that that appreciation of
time with the people you love there's this really good website called i think it's called wait but
why and it's got this chart and it and it says how many times a year do you see your parents
what's the average age they live to this is how many more times you're going to see them and you
look at the number and it's something weird like nine or twelve and you're like crap I'm going to
see my parents twelve more times and so when you get that perspective you want to spend more time
with them and the perspective I got from that a long way down the line is I just want to spend
more time with my kids I want to maximize the time I have with them and so ambition for me it's a false
got in that what is it you're trying to do and what do you think it's going to do for you when
you get there so i start a bitcoin podcast ends up becoming the biggest in the world i can get
nearly any bitcoin interview i want it pays good money i get it's just the most incredible life
and when i got there and what i'm in texas in an airbnb and my kids are here in the uk and i'm not
with them and when i come back i'm busy like what actually does it mean what because some people say
wow you've done a great job can have a photo and it's like but what does that actually mean
does it like where does happiness come from does happiness come from people saying you've done a
great job i mean how many times do you hear that and it's yeah it's meaningless you know you've done
it you've done a good job but it's kind of meaningless yeah i understand like again what
when are you truly happy driving my daughter to school this morning and we're listening to punk
rock we're listening to a band called pierce the veil and singing together that's a great moment
i'm happy and when i'm sat in my coffee shop and i'm right i'm having a coffee i'm happy
as hard as this interview is because you're making me really um be vulnerable and open up to a bunch
of people are going to make fun of me on uh online i'm still it's nice to have this conversation and
when i go and play tennis with my son it's going to be great we're going to run around we're going
he's going to probably win and I'm going to be out of breath and tired. But again, I'm going to
be enjoying it. And then I'm going to pick up my daughter and we're going to go and make dinner.
And it's great. And like in the moment, it feels good because you're enjoying what you're doing.
And that's not to say building that podcast, I didn't have a great, I had so many great moments.
That's a lot of sacrifices though. And so my relationship with ambition is
I'm going to try and live day to day doing the things that make me happy. And if with that
success comes and that has some benefits, then great. Like my podcast now, if I wanted to have
2 million downloads next month, I know how to do it. I know which people to interview, which topics
and how to trigger people. But actually I just, me and my son drive to London to the studio to
make the interview so each day we do that we leave at eight in the morning we get back at six seven
o'clock and i'm tired and so you kind of lose a day and the time in the car with him is great
because we talk about stuff but i said to him we could build that studio we have that beautiful
studio in london we could build something it's not going to be as cool or fancy but we could build
one in the house and then if we're talking about something we want to make a show we can just go in
that room and make it and we lose an hour we don't lose a whole day and that means we can get to do
more of the stuff we want to do quality of time yeah my my ambition is tied to maximizing the years
i have left doing things i want to do and if benefits come off the back of that great and if
i wither away and nobody remembers me then so be it as long as i'm doing the things i want to do
each day this is such a deep interview i know i know why he said that now so you like showing off Has that ever got you in trouble Yes it has It has but I am becoming more introverted Yeah Again I think
ambition and showing off for me were correlated. Again, it was just all about ego,
trying to prove myself to the world. I can be somebody. That ties probably back to my
failure of my marriage we go to a party and i'll try and be the center of attention the funny guy
telling the stories and shit and just leave her in the background and forgot about her neglected
got me in trouble there um i've probably a lot of people on twitter think i'm a dick
the funny thing about twitter is it's a bit like in business i always say to people work for me
don't have important conversations over text because you can't hear the tone the context of
people saying things so you might read it as rude and it's actually polite i think twitter's like
that sometimes i'm like when i'm like writing something i'm cracking up and thinking it's
funny and if somebody reads it might just look like really rude yeah what's the worst thing i
could do to you the worst thing you could do to me i mean i could think of some awful things but
I don't think we need to go there.
The worst thing you could do to me?
To me, I value loyalty.
Have you read Dante's Inferno?
No.
So I'm just reading it now because I was listening to an interview
between Mike Cernovich and Tucker Carlson, and he mentions it.
And it's about the journey through hell.
And there's nine rings of hell.
Before you get to hell, there's an era of limbo for the cowards,
which I think about a lot.
but the final rig of hell the deepest part of hell is reserved for the treacherous people
and so for judas i i'm not there yet because i haven't finished the book but my i as i understand
it judas is in uh he's there and they're frozen in a lake and the deeper the treachery the deeper
you are in the lake and i think satan gnaws on you uh so yeah treachery you know it's something
disloyal i don't think you could do something so disloyal to me unless you ai'd this to say i
things I didn't say. But if you're asking generally what's the word, not you personally,
I think, yeah, disloyalty. Yeah. And I think about disloyalty in two ways. Someone can be
disloyal to you, but you can be disloyal to yourself. And that's a form of treachery that
we all should try and face. Like not getting in shape. I'm being disloyal to myself. I'm
being disloyal to this body I've been given. And I am increasing my chances of dying younger
than necessary because I don't look after my health.
The secret behind making friends.
Well, I've made friends and enemies.
Well, I mean, making friends and keeping friends
is two different things.
I mean, making friends, you just,
there's just something where something clicks with somebody
and you get on well with them.
Like I met a guy on an airplane once, a guy called Justin,
who actually came up with the name What Bitcoin Did, by the way.
And we just clicked and we became friends
and we stayed friends.
But I think loyalty goes in there.
Just always being there for somebody,
them knowing you're always there and that you will be there.
Can you tell me a story of decay you witnessed in your own circle,
one that really touched you?
Oh, decay.
My mother was diagnosed with stage 3B ovarian cancer,
so I watched her body decay to the point of death.
I was there in the hospital.
I popped home and she died after I popped back to my dad's.
And I watched that and I saw her body give up.
I saw her get frail and regularly need to be going back and forth to hospital
and then be in hospital permanently and then die.
So I've seen that.
Do you want to hear the most incredible thing?
so in ireland if you die um they bury you within two days they don't muck around and the body they
leave the body in the house in an open casket like my mom was just there in an open casket we're all
having cheese sandwiches and drinking beer and doing what the irish do and then we get up in the
morning to take her to the um church for the service anyway we carry her down put her in the
car get in the car turn the corner and there's a rainbow and the end of the rainbow is on the church
i've got a photo i'll show you okay and i was like wow look at that isn't that weird
and then we went through a period of a few years of everyone in the family seeing rainbows at the
maddest times like my i don't know might be my mom's birthday my sister went over to ireland
played golf with my dad and there's a rainbow i've got a tweet thread i'll show you and it's just
it just happened over and over again it was just the weirdest thing anyway that's a tangent
I think the biggest story of decay is we are watching the world decay at a rapid rate. I mean, we have a revolution appearing to happen in Iran at the moment. We have the black bagging of Maduro in Venezuela. And what does that mean?
We have the unfortunate confrontation between ICE agents and the young mother in America where she ends up dead.
We've got endless conflict here.
Everyone is at conflict everywhere.
We swing from existential crisis to existential crisis.
Every political party treats the other one like they are.
If they win, it's existential crisis.
and whilst that happens we are slowly quietly watching the extraction of all wealth
upwards from the poorest middle class to the rich and in doing so society is just
fracturing and decaying itself a lot of people feel it but don't see it we as bitcoiners we know
exactly what's happening we know exactly what's going on we're trying to tell everyone
but everyone else feels it but they feel it like a it's like a slow decay of their life
everything just gets a little bit worse all the time and for me that just there's a privilege
that comes with it because if you recognize it you can put in place the things to protect yourself
and your family but there's a burden that comes with it like we should be telling everybody about
this and helping them escape from this and we should be holding um our political leaders
accountable i was in the coffee shop this morning when i say i was writing i was writing an article
called the age of confiscation and i stole the title from some reply somebody put to a tweet
this morning from bellagy about what's happening the like failure of keynesianism and i think back
to Bastiat's law and what he said with regards to legal plunder. When the state goes from defending
property to distribution of property, you invert the morality. So I think the story of decay is a
story of the decay of the financial systems of this world, which is decaying everything else.
And my lesson from that is that we collectively are cowards to allow this to happen.
we're cowards because we vote for narrative i say we i don't think a lot of people really
truly understand what's happening how they can stop it i think if people really understood
why the role of the government should be the defense of life liberty
and pursued happiness and defense of property
because if you don't defend that you will ultimately lead to the destruction of a society
collapse of currencies collapse of social order i think people will see short term and think well
it's not great but if i just vote for that party that one's going to fix it and they don't realize
it it is a feature not a bug it is how the system of incentives works and i feel a burden
to try and do whatever I can to teach people about this and influence change.
Me too. But do you think you can help people that are not ready to listen?
You can try. You can just try. Sometimes people have to feel it. Argentina had to go through
decades of inflation and hyperinflation before they got Malay, before they were willing to go,
I just cannot take this anymore.
Give me something else.
And Malay came with something else.
The only other answer is to become political,
but I don't want to be part of a political party who won't fix this.
And this is why I don't vote.
And I won't vote.
I say to everyone, I'm not voting.
I'm not voting in the next election because I refuse to vote for decay.
That's why I always say I refuse to vote for decay.
And all we're offered right now is decay
because no one wants to change the mechanics of the system
that is designed to extract upwards to make the rich richer off the poorest middle class.
Can you work with your enemies?
Enemies? I don't know if I have enemies anymore.
I can't think of a couple.
Yeah, but who would it be and what's the scenario?
People would say Craig Wright is my enemy.
But if somebody came to me and said,
look, we want to make a film about what happened between you and Craig Wright,
would you work with Craig on that?
Sure.
if my enemy is the government and they offer me a job within the government and i want to do it
say it's say i'm offered bitcoin head of bitcoin for the uk government and the government is my
enemy because i detest the government would i work with them well if i was given free reign to create
the policy i thought were correct then fine but if i had to compromise myself in a way which was
net negative for society and no i couldn't work with them so i can't i can forget and forgive
almost anything i don't need to hold on to grudges and if one of my enemies still is an enemy and
they want to work with me and the output is something that is net good then i would do it
i wouldn't work with them to do something that's net negative but i wouldn't work with a friend to
do something negative so i don't really i don't really think about enemies and if i have enemies
I'm always happy, have a beer, shake hands, say, what's the issue?
Should we figure it out?
Yeah.
Because, I don't know, there's too much conflict at the moment.
Do you worry a lot?
Yes.
But not to the point of it damaging my life.
More, I would say worry is the wrong term.
I think about the bad things that might happen and what can be done about it.
I think if you worry too much
You can end up in paralysis
And not be able to do anything about it
I mean I worry about
The future for my kids
And I fear God
Probably more than I believe in him
Why do you fear him?
Because if there is
I fear
His judgement
Because perhaps I haven't
Lived my life
In the best way
Does that make sense?
Yeah, it does make sense.
What does the perfect Friday night look like for you?
Perfect Friday night for me would be,
I would pick up my daughter and her boyfriend from school.
I'd go home.
That would be about four o'clock.
We'd probably book somewhere nice for dinner, somewhere locally,
maybe a little Terezza, my friend Naz's restaurant.
We'd head down there, we'd have dinner as a family.
I'd have a couple of old fashions
we'd have a good couple of hours together
and then we would go home
and find a good film to watch
and fall asleep on the couch
that's a good Friday night for me
what's something you still haven't forgiven yourself for?
this really does make sense now
I don't think there is anything
yeah
because you know when you ask me about working with my enemies
I said, I don't really have enemies.
I'm willing to make up with anyone.
I think you have to do that with yourself first.
If you don't forgive yourself, you're living in the past
and you're allowing depression to come into your life.
And I've had depression.
I don't want that back.
It was a long time ago.
It was hard to beat it.
But I did.
I regret things, but I can forgive myself for everything.
My forgiveness comes through just trying to make amends for things, for people.
I don't have anything I'm forgiving myself for.
Great.
You've caught me a really funny time in my life.
This interview was two years ago.
It'd be so different.
It'd be all my ego out there.
So thanks, Pete.
Those were my 21 takes on you.
Okay.
Next up.
I followed you since before what Bitcoin did.
Before?
Yeah.
Back when you were like a trader with an attitude.
I still remember that beach video in Thailand,
phone in selfie mode,
like the beach behind you.
What was the most naive thing you actually believed back then?
Oh, God.
I mean, that government was good and necessary.
I've micro-dosed on red pills since.
And it's taken a lot longer than people hoped it would for me to be fully red-pilled,
and then orange-pilled, and then black-pilled.
But I believed government was necessary.
I don't know.
I believe it's inevitable just because of the way power works
and the way humans organize themselves, but I don't think it's necessary.
And I believed government operated with good intentions
because I believe politicians had good intentions, which is so naive
because you can have politicians with all the best intentions in the world.
The incentives of the system are such that the road to hell is paved
in those good intentions.
Yeah.
from beachside trader to podcast skin what would that guy mock you for if he saw you now
god these are such good questions what would he mock me for now um probably call me a bit of a
pussy say you've got soft come on man you're gonna take on the world you're gonna be famous
and rich what are you doing i think you're mocking me for that in 2018 i read reread and
bootmarked that thread of yours about the i know what you're about to tell me but i made and lost
all the money about the 2017 bull run and everything that came after i call it your best of times
worst of times thread you hit seven figures for the first time and for the first time you flew
first class you bought a good watch some great clothes and you told us for the next cycle buy
some good experiences and nice things because those would be the only souvenirs left after the
crash your mom died you overdosed what made you share all of that pain so openly
oh i don't know i don't know why i shared it probably
did you write that thread for us or for yourself probably both probably both i mean it's hard to
really remember the intentions at the time yeah um i tend to write when i have thoughts and i just
tend to write whether it's a thread a tweet or an article i think you said something like you went
from around 120 to 80 bitcoin um buying shit coins before realizing what you were doing slightly
different so what happened was i um so this was after the year of running yeah and so it was just
before my mum died so just about i don't know nine years ago that would have been to start of 2017
i had about 35 000 pound left uh and and then i would then i'd be cooked that's it all i had my
advertising agency had failed my marriage had collapsed my mum was dying all of that stuff and
and I've been coming off the drugs. So I bought something like seven Bitcoin and then a load of
ETH and then loads of shit coins. And then 2017, I just traded through that whole year and I peaked
up. I don't know. It was, I used to have this spreadsheet where at every shit coin, it's value
in pounds, dollars and Bitcoin. And it was about 186 Bitcoin, which I wish I had now. And, uh,
I think it peaked over a million. So 1.2, 1.3 million. And I was like, this is amazing. I'm a
genius. When really it's just like anything you bought would go up. That was it. You go to bed,
you wake up. It's like, I made another 50 grand. I'm such a genius. You weren't a genius.
And I remember I took the kids to a place called Center Parks at Christmas and my dad came
and my dad was saying, look, sell some of those and buy some property, anchor it in. I was like,
yeah, yeah, no, I'll do that. And I was sitting there on my laptop. My daughter came running
over at a glass of wine she knocked it over she was only four and it fried my laptop i was like
i'll do it when i get back and anyway we get back in january and there was that big crash
and then eventually the i had to sell some bitcoin all the shit coins went to
and then i had to pay my tax i had to sell some bitcoin and i think i ended up with about 18
bitcoin or something at that point no other money and my net worth was like under 60 grand
and I was like I've gone from 35 to there back to 60 but you know what's so weird there was no
I never had like I never felt bad about losing the money there was no part of me that was like
oh my god I've lost all this money this is awful because I don't think it ever felt real like I
bought the watch I bought a car I flew business class I was having a great time I can't explain
it but there was never like a i think some people when they lose a lot of money it can really affect
them i think some people take their lives well we know they do i mean the big crypto crash recently
i don't know i just like all right so be it yeah i'll make it again that's what you said yeah i'll
make it again and i started the podcast back in i'd done my first interview in november 2017 and
so i'll just do the podcast and yeah i mean if i think back to the thread because the thread just
blew up yeah it was really personal yeah but i think it was useful because i clearly wasn't the
only one i mean every not everyone but like the vast majority of people wrote it up and then wrote
it down and i think sometimes when you write something like that you are given a gift to
other people to go i'm not the only one this has happened but yeah i i can't really remember the
intentions it was funny the best of times the worst of times it's always called isn't that um
best of times the worst is that dickens yeah chance yeah is there anything you wish you had
included or something you wish you hadn't yeah so overdose is is the probably the wrong word to use
i had something called an svt maybe at the time i thought i had but what i triggered is something
called an svt i was probably just being dramatic uh i triggered something called an svt it's where
the electrical pulses in your heart uh just start firing so my heart rate went up to 200
beats per minute and then ended up in hospital and got a teleno for a doctor.
And then I had multiple SVTs over the next few months and that's why I had to deal with
all the mental health issues.
What did you learn about people and about yourself during those hardest days?
Drug addiction sucks.
I know what rock bottom is like.
I remember the moment where I knew I was at rock bottom It a really strange experience I remember one evening i was at home on my own called up my dealer got some coke i was drinking and i used to just sit there and do coke all night
on my own night after night like a loser and i remember one night i was doing the coke and
when you do cocaine you have a buzz so you say you're here you go up here and when you come down
you go below there right and there's like this agitated horrible feelings you do another line
you get above and above it was the only time i ever had it where i did cocaine i never got above
the line i only felt crap and every time i did a line i just got back to normal and i was like i
don't even feel high i feel shit i feel terrible i feel shit and i was like and then i was got in
the shower trying to calm myself down try to get into bed to sleep but my heart was racing
and I was like this is awful I didn't know I was going to get through the night
it was definitely one of those ones I thought is this is this how someone dies I remember
laying there thinking is this how someone dies like someone's just going to find my body tomorrow
and some cocaine residue and I'm just some loser who died doing cocaine on his own
um so i can reflect upon that time and what a pathetic loser i'd become um terrible person
um yeah i there's a lot of they talk about with addiction a lot of there's a lot of shame
there are stories i will never tell that i know of which are very shameful
about my behavior that time as an addict it's funny because i've been watching this dope sick
series about the opioid crisis and you see certain behaviors of yourself in that and i'm so glad i
got away from it all but it could have gone it could have really got bad like a lot worse than
it did because when you're an addict you're very selfish you're not really thinking about you're
just thinking about yourself and i would go to work get through the day go home get high it's
just this cycle of crap but i can't honestly tell you what i learned about other people during that
period because that period was just about me being a loser people are willing to help but but the
other thing is people have got their own shit going on as well you know i haven't talked about
this for a long time and it feels almost doesn't feel real because it was so long ago yeah my life's
so different now like I haven't done drugs in I can't even remember years and years and years
uh and I used to be an animal for drugs for cocaine and I just even the thought of it just
just I just like think it's gross and so I don't recognize that anymore but it was just a very
it was there was a two-year period which was truly awful maybe longer 2014 to yeah no 2014
2016 it was just dreadful um i know people were there for me of course they were family friends
but also sometimes they just they have to give up on you like i've had to give up on some people
who just cannot be helped you kind of have to go and find it yourself this episode is brought to you
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Could you tell me a story about your mom?
hmm when we were kids my mom my mom's incredible woman when when we were kids she wanted to teach
us to swim um and she didn't have a car my dad had the car to go to work and we used to live
in kempston down the road and swim pool was up here so it's a good two three miles away
and she used to take us every saturday swimming i would be on the little basket on the back
my sister was sat on my front and my brother on a little bike next to him she used to take us all
the way there teach us to swim because she insisted on us learn to swim and take us all the way back
and at the time you don't think about it now at the time you don't think about it but right now
you think about it it's like if i take my kids to swim we get in our ranger over and we would
drive to the pool there was a different kind of hardship then when we'd go shopping my mum had a
budget and that was it it was 50 pounds it was 50 pounds she filled the trolley she said that's done
we'll go home when we go we just get what we want and buy it my mum just she just always just got on
with things she didn't complain she didn't expect anything she didn't want anything she wanted time
with my dad actually i will tell you a funny story about my mum she didn't have a filter
okay that was our only problem big problem my dad tells me at this time they were on a cruise
yeah because my my my dad's aircraft engineer won't fly figure that and um my mom wanted to
see the world when they retired so they did two world cruises and when you go to dinner apparently
i've not been on one but you go to dinner it's the same people every night you get to know them
Anyway, they got there this first night.
My dad says, the couple next to them, the wife was a big woman.
And apparently as they sat down to eat, this big woman started talking to my mum.
She said to my mum, she said, oh, yeah, this cruise is going to be difficult
because, you know, I've been on a diet and I've lost a lot of weight.
And my mum turned around to her and said, well, how big were you?
And that's the kind of thing my mum would say because she just didn't understand.
She didn't have a filter.
That's why dad's like dying inside.
But yeah, she just got on with life.
After she died, I went down to the hospital where she worked.
She worked in the children's ward.
And I offered to volunteer.
I don't know why.
I just felt like I needed to do it.
So I volunteered in the hospital for three months, going two, three times a week,
and just play with the kids or get the parents cups of tea and stuff i remember i was there one
time one of the nurses said come on let me show you something she took me to the back room which
is where the for the families of the parents and she said oh we wanted to redecorate this room but
we didn't have any money and so your mum just came in one weekend and did it and it was like it was
all painting there was like a stencil around the top and said yeah your mum just went around and
stenciled this all around the top that's just typical mum most people would just be like oh
there's no budget i'm not doing it my mom was like okay she went and got some paint and just did it
that's that's who she was yeah what are the non-negotiables in your life today what won't
you compromise anymore oh what non-negotiable i mean outside of the obvious ones like which we
would all have i listened to a podcast recently chris williamson and naval and naval was saying
if he doesn't want to reply to an email he doesn't anymore it's like you've come into my space
I just don't have to reply and so when I go through my emails I get a lot of requests especially
locally I just delete stuff now it's just like I don't I don't need to reply to this I don't owe
your reply I don't owe you an apology for not being able to help with whatever it is you need
So I guess my non-negotiable right now is my time.
Like, there's two scarce things in life, time and Bitcoin.
In that order.
But there's a Chinese adage, which is an inch of time is worth an inch of gold.
An inch of gold cannot buy an inch of time.
Like, I heard that years ago, and I think about it a lot.
and I think about it in context of somebody like Steve Jobs
richest guy in the world gets cancer
he has a ticking time clock there
he had all the money in the world
it did not matter his cancer could not be cured
and so if time is so valuable
but you cannot buy more time
you should really treasure every minute of every day
so so i try now to only do the things i want you sent me a lovely email i was like i'm doing this
you want to come to my town all the way here of course i want to give you this time and and
i'm even more glad i've done it now we've done even though this is going to be so embarrassing
people could take make fun of me if i'm i'm like really glad i did it this is quite therapeutic and
It's a lovely conversation.
And I'm not entirely there, but my non-negotiable,
my only ambition left is to have every minute of every day non-negotiable.
I still have to commit to things I don't want to do because, you know, commitments.
But I want to get rid of all those commitments and make my time my non-negotiable.
Sounds great.
Yeah.
How good are you at admitting when you're wrong?
I'm a lot better now.
I think of pretty much this is what this has been about um I actually think admitting you're wrong
is a superpower it's a real superpower because you completely disarm somebody when somebody comes
at you I go yeah I was wrong he can't get an argument from me it's like well where do you
want to go from here I was wrong I did it wrong I'm sorry he either has to like go okay
well do you want a beer or he has to find something else to be angry at me about
and so i think admitting you're wrong is a superpower it comes along with ego death
and kind of like a stoic approach to life that you cannot let anyone they can throw barbs at you
and they just they can't stick onto you and it's a real superpower it comes with that kind of living
in the present but i also think if you are certain you're right you should defend your position
but it's really good to start from a point is could i be wrong like could i be wrong in this
scenario and so like with general life stuff i try and i try and be better at admitting i'm wrong
i'm actually really bad at it with my son my son that's a weird thing you go through like my son's
like in his 20s now and he is much better at reading parts of life than i am and he comes to
me as a dad like he calls me out and i'm like and i have to i've had to get a lot better at
recognizing that you know he's right he's he calls me out my bullshit and he's right
and i've had to become better at that but generally speaking with life stuff i think i'm a lot better
at it when it's like i don't know economic political arguments on twitter i i don't know
if I'm as good at admitting I'm wrong or questioning whether I could be wrong. But I would say to most
people, most of us are wrong about a lot of stuff all the time. Try admitting it. It's a superpower.
Looking back, would you agree that some of your sponsors turn out to be bad actors
and that people who trusted you might have lost money because of it?
Yeah, good questions because I've got a lot of criticism from this.
so I never took a sponsorship where I thought they were a bad actor or it was a bad product
BlockFi was my most known one John Carvalho warned me early on I was like you're wrong
I had money in BlockFi I thought it was great I was getting my interest I was like what do you
want about and then they raised I think they got to their e-round um I believed in it yeah there
was this minor company I can't remember it was yeah I remember I can't remember their name but
But they failed because of the CEO of the business.
BlockFi could have continued.
Look at Ledin.
Ledin is doing great.
BlockFi failed because of the way they generated their yield, which was quite opaque.
But they were doing well for years.
That mining company, again, failed because of their CEO.
It was a good business.
It failed because the CEO was useless.
And in the Bitcoin world, we're in a niche community of products and things.
But companies fail all the time.
Products fail all the time.
i never once accepted a sponsorship from a product i wouldn't use myself and so i use blockfi i use
that mining company i bought five of their s19 pros i think it was the wallet i had that where
the guy went to jail i i use that wallet but perhaps i didn't heed the warnings enough i think
the main one's blockfi i didn't heed the warnings enough and yeah i got that wrong but i accept no
responsibility for people who've lost money because we all have agency um and i think when
you blame this a podcast host for selling an ad more than you blame the ceo of a company
i mean i took way more shit than the ceos of these companies because i took an ad sponsorship
from a legal company a regulated company so i always rejected that you have agency
when you go and use a product you have a choice to research it yourself and say whether you want
to use it you have agency you can look up the risks so no i i don't accept any responsibility
because i don't want to take agency away from people it's true but but it doesn't mean i don't
i'm sad about it i don't have regret if anyone who lost money on blockfi do you know the worst
thing on blockfi was is that they pulled their sponsorship just a few months before
they did the deal with Sam, what's his name, went to jail.
Oh, yeah.
Sam Bachman-Cred.
Yeah.
And so what happened was Ledham wanted to take over the sponsorship.
So I was like, okay, so Ledham became the sponsor.
So I moved my Bitcoin out of BlockFi and into Ledham.
And then they went into administration.
And from the outside world, it looks like, ah, inside knowledge, hey, Pete.
Yeah, you moved yours out and didn't warn anyone.
because people they default to assume the worst but no it was i always use the products of the
companies i accept sponsorship from uh i met with zach they couldn't afford the sponsorship anymore
they asked a poll i've spoken to mau at leden he said yeah i'd love to sponsor you so i just moved
and then it turns out the deal with sam was a complete fraud for them to steal the remaining
bitcoin and money and people got screwed but yeah i think it's really important to blame the people
who were the architects of what went wrong,
not the guy who was asked,
can I advertise your product?
Yeah, you can advertise my product.
I think it's an unfair way people shift blame.
What is the responsibility of a podcaster?
Should I have known that BlockFi was going to go administration?
Well, the knowledge I had from the company is,
no, we're fine.
uh now we're not fine we can't sponsor you oh now we've done a deal with sam we're going to be fine
like i you have to you know i don't know i'm not i don't have access to their p&l or their
cash flow i don't know i'm our relationship is can we have an ad yeah we can have an ad and
here we'll pay your invoice so but it doesn't it does mean like people don't know about all the
ads i rejected my god i've rejected in terms of value more ads than i've taken on yeah the shit
coin sponsors the money those people have the deals i got offered seven figure deals for shit
coins i could have made a fortune but i didn't because one i don't believe in shit coins and two
they weren't right for the audience i took the ones i think will write but i rejected a lot i
I remember you posted your first and second year numbers for what Bitcoin did until I think American HODL and a few others told you to stop sharing your finances.
At the time, I thought that's Pete, your transparency.
Yeah, transparent.
I think it was a very big part of your success.
I think the other part was really hard work.
Well, I used to share the finances every month, the income, the outgoing, to be fully transparent.
And when I started it, I wasn't really making any money.
And then it got to the period where I was like, oh, this looks like good money.
And American Hodel said, you've put a target on your back.
Do you want some crazy numbers?
So at its peak, when the podcast was seven people working on it, because it was me, Danny, Ben, my brother, my assistant, somebody else.
And then we were traveling in the world as a team with a camera crew.
it cost 1.5 million dollars to run the show yeah you mentioned that so you'd have to make more than
1.5 million to make a profit at its peak its peak year it generated over 3 million in revenue
so there was i mean with there was a couple of years where it did really well but the first year
i ran it i lost money i didn't have a sponsor for the first year i lost money because i flew
everywhere all at my own cost probably i don't know a couple hundred thousand dollars or a hundred
thousand i can't remember the numbers we're talking nine years ago and then when i got my
first sponsor i was nearly broke um my i was about to lose my house uh i needed renewing my mortgage
i didn't have any money i did i did a job interview with i think kraken and another company in america
and i turned them down and then i got a phone call i got offered a sponsorship contract
and so and then it started making money but that year like it brought revenue in but again it didn't
make a profit for i don't think it's first three years maybe then a little bit then some more then
a couple years we did very well um but i was in a lawsuit with craig wright and so all those profits
yeah well not all of them a lot of them went into paying the legal fees i got some support from some
other people um and it was making good money at the point i decided not to do what bitcoin did
anymore and so it's a complicated business model it's very hard to make money of it and you have
to work very hard um yeah for a few years you trolled and got trolled heavily on twitter i
still troll at one point it even sent you to the emergency room if i recall correctly is there
anyone you genuinely regret going after i can regret general behavior but i don't know if i
regret going after anyone i have like a weird relationship with twitter and then i
each troll post it's like having a cigarette i don't smoke anymore but i remember when i
wanted to stop smoking i still had the odd cigarette i didn't have the cigarette enjoy
and then afterwards i'd feel dirty i feel like that with twitter sometimes like there's a pleasure
in the moment of owning somebody um and then you feel dirty afterwards and i'm you have taken
holy this yeah i have and i have these battles with it where i'm like just are you doing good
you know it is what you're doing is the way you tweet at people sometimes i try and be more
constructive i see a reply and try and give it like an intellectual answer to it and then other
times i just call people a fucking moron and then afterwards i'm like oh why did you do that like
what have you gained from this and how have you let people other people in the world perceive you
uh i think my my twitter behaviors there's there's like a uh a gap between who i am in real life and
who i am online but i think it's kind of the same i just don't think the britishness of how i tweet
comes across it looks really hostile really i'm just it's the way i would talk to my mates in the
Some people have come after me in a very nasty, threatening way before.
I've had death threats.
I had one guy troll me about my mother after she passed.
the most dreadful way. And then, you know, if you start to do well, some people build their
status on attacking you. And so you get reply guys who come after you. And I've been a reply
guy as well. I'm never sure how healthy it really is. But I can't think of I've...
I don't think I've gone after anyone in a malicious way. I don't think I've looked
something like, I'm coming after you. Tell us how you experienced the COVID era
and what made you rethink things?
Yeah, I mean, it's a great question.
I think that was my black pill moment.
So when it first happened, I started making documentaries
and there was like a news report in Turkey
that Erdogan was sending refugees to the border with Greece
because there's so many refugees in Turkey,
so many immigrants because Turkey is the gateway to Europe.
And Erdogan had enough of it.
and I was like I think I need to go and see what this is so I phoned up a sponsor said I need to go
can you give me 10 grand to go make a film they said yes and it looked like we were just about to
close down from COVID I was like I've got to go today so I booked the flight went out went out to
these refugee camps made the film and I came back into the first lockdown so and I think I got COVID
because I was so ill when I got back I was in such a terrible way it felt awful one of the most ill
I've ever felt but you can get tested they were only at that point testing people who'd been to
China or Italy because they were the two hot spots so I couldn't get tested so I got here when I got
better and then I had this second podcast called defiance I interviewed a doctor I know this friend
of mine I went to school with and he was telling a story and he got emotional he was crying during
it but he told this story of how they had some people come in with COVID it was a trickle and
then it was a flood and then they had to declare emergency and people couldn't breathe and they
were dying and so at the point the government announced their the lockdown i was fully supportive
i put this tweet that on reflection looks stupid i was like i support draconian measures you know
we need to stop the spread and blah blah blah i fell for the whole thing without thinking about
it critically and at the point when the uh vaccines came out i was like yeah give me that vaccine
absolutely didn't didn't think about it i even went when i get went to get the vaccine i thought
everyone was being ludicrous i mean every time i go on holiday i have vaccines and so i didn't
think much but i had i didn't have this like skepticism of the medical establishment because
the nhs is is a little bit different than profit-driven markets um and my mum wasn't there
so I went and got it and I was making fun of people who were scared of us I'm really scared
of it's just a vaccine and then what happened was after the first lockdown they wanted to do the
second lockdown I was like this is ridiculous this doesn't work the lockdowns haven't worked
what's going to happen is if you keep people locked down every time you open up
it's clearly going to spread again so you can't stop a virus and then I wanted to take my daughter
to New York for her birthday and I booked the flights the hotel and tickets to go and see Billie
Eilish at Madison Square Gardens because I think she liked her and we didn't have to get a vaccine
to travel because she was 11 and it was 12 that you acquired it but in New York she needed a
vaccine to get into Madison Square Gardens I was like there is I started looking into the vaccine
I was like there's no way she's getting this and then the information was coming out
and then uh then it just over a period of time i was like shit i got this all wrong i the whole
thing and it's not that i think government was malicious just malicious i think it was incompetence
lying and then malicious sections of both the government and the medical establishment
that enriched people through this it kind of became that moment i was like lifted the veil
and everything i was like yeah these people you just you cannot trust the individuals and you
cannot trust the system the incentives again are in such a way that it was only natural that the
medical companies would find a way of profiteering off this and now i have to live knowing i've had
this vaccine which i fully regret i'm so glad i didn't allow my daughter to have it but i'm very
glad that i didn't do it and then since then i've just i've had zero trust in government politicians
the mechanics of the state since and it's it's been a very painful thing to walk through because
even now i mean we're years down the line and i'll tweet about something and there'll be a reply and
a picture of me getting my vaccine or didn't you weren't you a COVID guy and I was like yeah I was
I got it wrong I apologize I made a mistake and to anyone I made fun of I sorry because I made a mistake it I owning my mistake but I can go and undo it so like if somebody wants to hate me for the rest of my life because
of that so be it that's their choice that's their life all I can do is recognize a mistake I made
and own it and apologize for it. But when I was making the podcast I think that's something people
can't appreciate is that I didn't start the podcast as like a libertarian or an anarchist
I started as just a normie, like a normie from Bedford who was getting over a drug addiction and a separation from his wife who discovered Bitcoin because of his drug addiction, not because he was against the Bank of England.
and just started a podcast and then lived in a bubble for years where I would go and meet
Danny and would get a hotel or an Airbnb and we'd make shows and I'd go home I wasn't really
living in that place where I was like fully skeptical of the state and understanding the
state what happened was after the podcast when I decided to no longer do what Bitcoin did and I
came back here to the UK and Bedford and to embed myself in the community and try to make change
that I just came up against obstacle after obstacle after obstacle
and then really started to understand the problems with the state.
But I lived in a bubble.
And look, there's a lot of normies out there like me
who fell for all this shit.
And it's really sad that that happened, but it did.
Can't undo it.
That's part of whatever my journey, the cringe term journey is.
It's part of my journey.
what's the most important thing you've learned through osmosis on what bitcoin did from all the
ogs it's not just via osmosis it's via direct experience but i've just learned that we have
a financial system that and a set of incentives that extracts money from the poorest and the
middle class upwards. And that comes from a weakness in the political system in that we
aren't constitutionally protected from this. It goes back to what I said about Bastiat and the law
in that the state's purpose is to defend life, liberty, property. And if it's the American
constitution and the pursuit of happiness, which is tied to those, that's their job.
to defend your life, your freedom, and your property.
And the minute that government goes beyond that
and becomes a mechanism for distribution, morality is inversed.
And at that point, you will always have a uniparty
because the uniparty's job is to win the levers of power,
which is the levers of money creation, the levers of regulation,
and the levers of infringement upon all your rights.
which is essentially an infringement on life, liberty and property.
And so that's what I've learned.
And the only world I want to live in in the future
is one where a government defends those three principles
and we don't have that.
And that's what I've learned.
And it's by osmosis, it's by people directly telling me,
it's by the experience of coming up against that system.
You learned about libertarianism in Austrian economics,
life on air in front of thousands of people and never pretended otherwise.
Yes.
What's the most embarrassing, I used to believe,
this moment you are willing to admit right now?
There's just not one.
There's so many moments.
There's moments of being told.
There's moments of reading.
There's moments of experience.
COVID was one of them.
Trying to hear, just in Bedford,
trying to make Bedford a more economically prosperous and safer place.
I came up against the machine of the state and it's not just the state itself it's those who do
its bidding all those people who defend the the mechanics of the state now the people who
vote for a party because they believe it's virtuous and that party's intentions are good
and they're going to fix the problems in society um coming against that that that's been the biggest
lesson because unless we get the mechanics right we're going to be stuck forever in this
doom loop of extracting money up to the richest and most powerful people because legally we've
engineered it to be that unless we engineer it to be the opposite then i refuse to be part of that
and vote within that system.
I'm very direct now and determined in my views.
I used to think about libertarians,
people like Eric Voorhees and say,
oh, it's just fucking bullshit.
Like, it's never gonna be that.
A little bit of welfare's good.
You're so, and I'm like, no,
you have to hold an absolute firm ground now You cannot give an inch on this The minute the state goes from defending life liberty and property to distribution you are setting a country and a society on a path of decay And so my position won be moved I will not become an MP and I will not support a party that doesn restore those basic principles of what the state should do
the Craig Wright lawsuit
dragged on for six years
I remember you were 40
when you wrote that open letter to Craig
and you signed it
Peter McCormack 40
he had an army of lawyers
and you had yourself
what a mistake
it hospitalized you a few times
and it almost bankrupted you
what did you learn from that period?
a lot
the being right
and honest uh doesn't matter with lawfare um yes ultimately i won but i got very lucky
um that money and power uh is sometimes how do i put this you can be more successful with money
and power than you can be with uh being truthful honest and moral um that the good guy doesn't
always win um but again this is downstream of a system that doesn't defend life liberty and
property because if you defended life liberty and property you defend free speech and therefore
I would never have been in this legal position. You can weaponize the law legal system to drain
somebody into defeat. So you win by virtue of having enough money to drag a process on that
you bankrupt somebody, but you don't win the argument. You just win the process. And the law
shouldn't be about winning the process. It should be about winning the argument. And that's why the
surface area of what litigation should cover should be as small as possible it should be
contract disputes fraud um violence those things which we as individuals can do to others which
harm their lives and words are not violence anyone who says they are a moron um so it's funny
everything we talk about here it all just comes back to the same points it's all coming back to
the role of the state and what the state enables and the state now is just a behemoth of corruption
immorality greed manipulation because it has a large surface area i mean what we've seen in
Minnesota with daycare centers. That is downstream from a state with a large surface area,
which provides distribution systems that can be grifted. If that distribution system didn't happen,
there would be no free daycare centers that could exploit that system and extract money out
by corruption, which is theft from the taxpayer. Life is an irony. Roger Beer once believed Craig
right was Satoshi. Yes. Then publicly split from him during the Bcash Satoshi Vision fiasco.
Later, he offered to pay you your legal settlement against Craig.
Not my settlement. He offered to pay towards my legal fees.
Your legal fees.
I made a settlement offer to Craig. So a few months before the final judgment,
it looked like I was going to lose. And it would have bankrupted me. And we went through what the
bankrupting procedure would mean which would be all my businesses sold my house would have been
sold after a year i wouldn't have been able to be in a director for a company for seven years i
would have been bankrupt it would affected me deeply and my kids so i made him an offer which
was all the money i had said take everything just let me keep my house and my kids because that's
what we need to yeah so i can be a father um he said no he wanted to destroy my life who else would
you like to thank for stepping up there are three people specifically who helped financially
but i wouldn't name them publicly but at the very start two people helped me out and then there was
a point where i was gonna have to pull i was just gonna have to admit defeat one person specifically
i reached out uh and they know if they listen to this they'll know exactly who they are and without
Without them, I would have been bankrupted and lost and Craig would have won.
But because we could carry the case on, it got me through a tough period.
We were able to defeat him.
So that was not only important to me and my family, but to the wider Bitcoin community.
So I'm not going to name them.
Then but there loads of other people who supported me like Danny Danny was like my hero during it because he absorbed a lot of the pressure that I was under It was rough and he absorbed so much of that pressure for me
And so I thank him deeply for that.
Who shocked you by staying silent?
I think that there were a lot of people who were affected by this,
who were facing lawsuits, who were being pressured and having their lives destroyed.
I was able to get through it because I had the podcast. I had the income. So when I was making
all that good money, it was fine. But when I was getting, you know, I was getting invoices for 50
grand, 80 grand, a hundred grand from the lawyers I had to pay. And so I could do it. I just,
I just never had any money. There are other people who didn't,
but there are people in the world of Bitcoin billionaires. They've made phenomenal amounts
of money and I think they could have stepped up and helped people, but for whatever reason,
and they chose not to.
And that's their choice.
But I'd like to think if I was in that scenario, I would have.
I mean, I've done things.
I've donated money and helped people in lots of different ways when I can,
and I would like to think I would have.
Yeah.
What do you feel when you think of Craig Wright today?
I don't feel much anymore.
Like, have I forgiven him?
I think so.
Like, despite everything,
I think I've forgiven him, which is why I don't care anymore.
Like, I don't...
Like, he's cost me financially a lot of money.
I never got back.
It cost me a lot of stress.
I ended up in hospital, I think, three times
just with those SVTs that were triggered by stress from this.
It affected my family, my son, certainly,
my dad deeply um and that was his choice based on a lie to go out and try and destroy my life
whatever it is he wanted to do that um but i don't want to hold on to that anymore i haven't
for a long time so i've forgiven i guess but i don't i i mainly have pity for him like you know
When you make decisions in life where you know you're lying and in the act of that lie you are damaging someone's life severely.
You go home at night and you have your dinner and you look in the mirror and you go to bed and you live with that lie knowing you're affecting somebody's life.
What has become of you to be that person?
And so I don't know if he's a psychopath or he's got deep trauma.
he's just narcissistic whichever version that is but like I'm free as a human I live a free life
I'm content I'm happy I've got everything I could possibly want in the world I'm so lucky
I'm not running towards anything anymore and I'm not running away from anything I am
after this I'm gonna go and play tennis and it's great and he doesn't get to live that life
he's running away from whatever he's running away from and trying to run towards something else
and he just he's never going to have that peace if he's a narcissist he'll never feel true love
because you can't love if you're a narcissist it's not within you like you're you are you're
functionally unable to feel and give love and i've loved and been loved and it's the most
beautiful thing right and he can't do that so he's punished for the eternity of life without
the ability to experience love he faces a a life of purgatory outside of the world of love that
other get to experience and that sounds really kind of soppy but it's true you know if you don't
get to experience real love in life life i've experienced it and i've lost it and it's something
to treasure when you have it if you don't get to experience that that's really sad so i don't hold
any deep feelings towards him beyond pity like what a sad existence that is i don't know i don't
think about it much anymore it's it's a uh it's a chapter in the history of bitcoin i don't know
chapter six is craig right uh and how ultimately he just lost he lost we beat him we collectively
beat him and he's done and he's gone and that's it that's where i left off with peter but wait
until you hear what he admits in part 2 dropping february 11th make sure to subscribe and hit the
bell so you don't miss it