Odd Lots - He Rode The Bitcoin Boom All The Way Up, And Down
Episode Date: January 7, 2019The last two years have been an extraordinary ride for Bitcoin. It exploded in 2017, with the price nearing $20,000 per coin. Then in 2018 it totally collapsed. On this week's episode, we speak with P...eter McCormack, a bitcoin trader, who bought in at the bottom, rode the boom all the way to the top, and then proceeded to lose almost everything. He shares with us what he learned along the way.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Thanks for listening to Odd Lots. Follow the show on Amazon Music for more future episodes or just ask Alexa play the podcast, Odd Lots on Amazon Music.
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots podcast. I'm Joe Wise and Paul.
And I'm Tracy Allaway. Happy New Year, Tracy.
Oh, you're going to make me say it. Happy New Year.
Wait, is that something you hate saying?
I hate saying it. Oh, really? Okay, I'm sorry. But, no, it.
I hate saying it like beyond the first day after New Year. No, that's fair.
Because it just goes on and on and on for weeks.
That's fair.
It just felt like it's been a long time since we've recorded one together because we had the holiday disruptions and stuff.
I was just very excited about getting back into the rhythm and doing another episode with you.
Right.
We got the band back together.
Exactly.
I'm also really excited about this one because we're going to return to one of our favorite topics, a recurring theme throughout Odd Lots.
And that is Bubbles, which I think we would both agree is just an endless.
supply a rich load to mine for topics to discuss in markets.
Absolutely.
And a fascinating experiment in human psychology and how people react to making a lot of money
and then losing a lot of money as well.
Exactly.
I mean, there are so many bubbles throughout history and each have their own sort of distinct
element.
But it seems like the psychology element of how humans react to huge price swings on the way
up to people making a 14.
in a short period of time is very consistent throughout basically every bubble we talk about.
And in fact, you even see charts that are sort of like the cliche bubble of, you know,
fear of missing out and optimism and then people buy back in at the top.
And there's a steady psychological component or cycle to every bubble that basically is identical.
Absolutely.
So which particular bubble are we going to be discussing today?
So today we're going to not only be talking about one of the recent most sort of extraordinary topical bubbles of our time. We're going to be talking, of course, about Bitcoin and crypto more broadly. We actually, rather than talking to some historian or some academic who's done a study, we actually have the good fortune of talking to someone who participated in the bubble on the upside and the downside, someone directly involved.
with it so we can hear, you know, straight from the source what it's like to ride an extreme
bubble. Our guest today recently did a tweet storm in which he talked about starting with a very
small amount of money and making an absolute fortune in crypto and most of it made in 2017 and then
seeing much of it deteriorate in 2018. So we get to go right for the source, I would say,
on this one. So I'm really excited about this one.
particularly since it's Bitcoin. And Bitcoin, it's not just a bubble, right? It's almost a belief system.
So I'll be really interested to hear what our guest has to say about whether or not he still believes in all things Bitcoin slash crypto.
I agree. And I suspect he still does because with us today, we have Peter McCormick. If you follow him on Twitter, he tweets a lot about Bitcoin still. He's also the author of his own podcast called What Bitcoin did. So I'm confident on that last part.
Peter, Peter, thank you very much for joining us and telling us about your experience.
No worries. Thank you for having me on. And happy new year, Tracy.
Oh, God.
So, Peter, tell us, how did you first get into Bitcoin?
So really a couple of times. I first found it in 2013. I was, worked in tech.
So I heard about it on, I can't remember the website, checked it out, looked kind of interesting.
rode that bubble for kind of about a week or two.
I was trading CFDs on plus 500
and made and lost a small amount of money
in comparison to the last year
and then kind of forgot about it.
And then in December 16,
it's quite a sad story, sorry,
but my mother was dying from cancer
and we wanted to get a certain treatment for her
that was only available for purchase with Bitcoin.
So I said to my dad,
I can do this.
So I went on to Google, did a search, found Coinbase, bought a Bitcoin, bought the treatment.
Sadly, she passed away.
But my parents lived in this, like in the middle of nowhere in Ireland.
So I was out there for a week.
And I just kind of went back on Coinbase, transferred the leftover Bitcoin back.
And there was this Ethereum thing.
So I was in between, I was out of work.
I used to have an advertising agency that fabulously collapsed at one point.
but I had money left over from that.
So I thought, you know what?
I'm going to check this out.
So I checked out Ethereum and Bitcoin.
And a whole journey started.
Then I put 23,000 pound in.
I think that's about $32,000, which by the way, I don't think is a small amount of money.
And just went on this epic ride for what's two years now.
Well, I'm sorry to hear about those misfortunes.
So you said $32,000 roughly.
How much did you end up making at the very top?
Well, it's funny. It's funny you say that. So I guess I didn't end up making any because I didn't cash in. But the portfolio value at its peak was over $1.2 million. So if I was looking in my portfolio, that was the value. And that was about January 17. Now, talk to us about the psychology on the way up. Because one of the things that I find really interesting about bubbles is it feels good to make a lot of money and see your.
net worth on a screen continue to go up. But what I'm always curious about is like, did it stress you out also on the way up? Like did you get upset with yourself for not buying more in the beginning? Did you start to stress out about timing the top? Like talk to us about what that was like from this sort of, you know, not a nothing investment, a modest investment to an extraordinary amount of money that sort of just the, let's talk about the psychology of the way up a bit.
I wasn't really stressed out. I mean, a couple of times I thought, you know, I should have put some more in. You know, I had more money available at the time. But I didn't really worry about that because, you know, when you're at 1.2 million, you're kind of, it doesn't really matter, does it? You're just like, oh. And it wasn't stressful at all. It was just a lot of fun and open a lot of fun and open a lot of fun. I opened a lot of doors for me. I've met a whole bunch of people. I've launched this podcast and it's great a whole life for me. So, no, it wasn't stressful. It was a lot of fun. I was very careless with money. You know, I bought a very experienced.
expensive watch. I bought a new car. I gave a lot of money away. I mean, at Christmas last year,
I gave my brother and sister each like, like a $5,000 a pound each. I bought my dad a brightling.
I paid for the hospital where my mum worked before she passed. They needed £6,000 for a garden.
So I paid for that. So I kind of paid for all this stuff, just being frivolous, but I was paying for
it out on my savings, not out of my crypto. So that was kind of stupid. But no, look, it was.
just it's been so much fun. It's been a hell of a ride and no, there was no real stress on the
way up. And strangely enough, it hasn't been stressful on the way down either. I definitely want to
ask you more about that. But before we do, I just want to sort of back up a little bit. What was
the bull case for you when it came to Bitcoin, you know, a little over a year ago? Like, what was it
that you thought was happening here? And what made you want to stay in Bitcoin and I guess some
other crypto coins versus going into more traditional investments. It was just innovation, right? There was
this whole wave of innovation around cryptocurrencies and crypto networks and it just felt like the start
of something new. A bit like, you know, I was part of the dot com era when it first started. I worked at a
dot com and I spent 20 years in digital advertising. So I experienced that and it kind of had similar
feelings. Not exactly the same, but, you know, I don't ever believe the crypto networks would ever be
as big as the internet itself, but it did feel like a new way of, you know, transacting, sending
money, building things. So at the time, I kind of bought into all of it. You know, my opinion over
time has changed, but I did buy into all of it because I just thought this was something new,
something cool. But I didn't invest the money at the time thinking I was going to make a lot of money,
right? You know, when I first invested, I just, I just, I just,
thought, yeah, there's an opportunity to make something here.
But in no way did I think what was going to happen.
I think my prediction at the start of 2017 was that wouldn't it be great if by the end
of the year Bitcoin hit $2,000 and ended up hitting $20,000.
So, you know, it was a very strange ride, but nothing played out exactly as I thought it would.
One of the things you said in your tweet storm that I think was interesting, which is that on the
way up. Well, you know, for people who sort of maybe don't remember the history, it's as Bitcoin
sort of peaked in December and was still pretty high in January of 2018, we saw an even
crazier explosion in a lot of altcoins, other cryptocurrencies, many of them of extremely
dubious quality, half-baked projects, things that were sort of like mediocre to anyone
who looked at them, but that's something you see in bubbles in which the real trash really
surges at the end. I think you said in your tweet storm that on the way up, you started buying
other non-Bitcoin assets more and more. Tell us about the decision to do that. Well, at first,
there was no strategy around it. I was just learning about things, reading about things, and just
wanted to try it out. So I bought Dash because that seemed like a different kind of Bitcoin.
It seemed kind of interesting. I bought Ethereum because it was like this world computer that sounded
interesting. I bought Monero because it was a private coin. I bought ripple coin because it was a banking
coin. I just kind of bought everything. Just went for it. And then over time, I started to consider
maybe more kind of fundamental analysis. So I started looking at things to see if they kind of had value
or they had a purpose and then kind of refined my strategy. But still, up until the end of 2017,
I believed in, you know, most of these networks and most of these coins as being an opportunity.
I had an expectation lots would fail, but it was kind of like the dot-com era, you know,
webvan sounded great at the time, boo.com sounded great at the time.
They just weren't ready or just weren't built in the right way.
And I just thought, you know, spread my investments and things that will be successful,
I'll make money from and the things that fail, I won't.
But with a diverse portfolio, you know, I should be okay.
It's only since, like, I think a bear market is very good for get you to get you to be a bit more rational
and look at things and a bit more detail.
I've kind of like my opinions changed a lot.
So with that background in mind, when you saw all these coins plus Bitcoin sort of going up
together, did you at any point kind of think this is weird or this is too easy?
Yeah, definitely. I definitely thought this was too easy. But you know, I just rode it.
I just, you just went with it. It was it was continual the whole year. There were three or four
crashes. I remember once I was flying out to L.A. and I'd gone into the airport lounge and
I'd always wanted to have a brightly watch, right?
Something I could never normally afford.
And I just bought it.
And I got on the plane, and when I got off the plane, the market had dropped 30%.
And I was like, whoa, okay, that was a lesson.
And exactly the same happened when I bought the car.
I bought a Mercedes, right?
And when I was in the garage picking up the keys, the market dropped again.
But each 30% drop, the market always rebounded.
So when it dropped again January of this year, I expected it to come back.
You mean January 2018, right?
Yeah.
I want to hear more of what you bought.
Just give us with things that you bought.
Just like everything.
You know, I took my kids on loads of amazing holidays to America, to Florida.
As I said, I gave a lot of money to my family.
I bought my dad a watch.
I bought a car.
I flew first class for the first time.
Something I've never done.
It's nothing I could ever normally afford.
And I was flying back from L.A.
And I had a date booked with a girl in London.
And I was on a flight which meant I would be landing in the afternoon.
I knew I'd be tired.
I thought, you know what?
I'm a millionaire.
I'm just going to get myself a first-class flight, which I did as well.
Like, not in an idiotic way.
It's just the way I always think about money is, you know, use it and enjoy it.
You might not have it tomorrow.
So, funny enough, it's turned out.
And I'm glad I did.
You know, I got to experience a bunch of things and do a bunch of things I could never normally do.
same for my kids my kids got to experience and do a lot of things they couldn't normally do
and yeah it's been it's just been a lot of fun the news doesn't stop on the weekends
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Do you, in your mind on the way up, have some number for your portfolio that you thought,
okay, if it hits this, I'm going to sell half?
Or if it hits this, I'm going to sell everything.
Because at some point you had to maybe worry, I think, that it was all going to crash.
So did you have some sort of exit stress?
that you thought or some sort of plan to get out?
Well, I used to take 25% out.
So every time my portfolio kind of was, at the end of the month,
I used to take 25% of the profit out.
But as I got towards the end of the year,
I was thinking, gosh, if this carries on for another six months,
I'd always had this goal in life.
I wanted to buy my local football club.
I know it sounds stupid.
But I live in a very small town called Bedford, right?
It's just a nothing town.
Our football club is in the lowest of the low divisions.
They're not in the football league.
about 100 people go and watch them each week.
So I had this kind of price in my head.
If I could make $5 million, I could buy the club.
And I was working through it with one of my friends,
and we figured out that would be enough money to buy the club
and get them in the football league.
So I was like, right, if I can hit that by middle of 2018,
I'll cash out the majority of it, go and buy the football club.
I know it sounds so stupid on reflection.
No, it doesn't.
I know someone else who has a dream to own a small town football club.
And it is possible in the UK.
Look at Swansea, right?
Anyway, when did it all start going wrong?
Because it's great to listen to the list of stuff that you bought,
but in the end, the portfolio kind of evaporated in value.
So it's funny, I don't see as it going wrong.
I see it as losing portfolio.
But I actually, on reflection, I think 2018 has been a great year for the crypto category.
personally myself of you know it's a real lesson I've never had it in life like we have securities
laws which stop people investing who aren't accredited investors but if you don't invest you won't
learn so 2018 has been a huge lesson in money for me you know conserving capital and protecting
capital um you know so from about January I started it started happen but I thought it would
be another a bounce you know I thought it will drop and bounce back I would say from about
March, I was thinking, okay, this isn't coming back. And my biggest mistake is I invested around
$400,000 into mining because, you know, I wanted to have another way of growing my capital.
So I bought all these different A6s. And that's where I've lost the majority of my money,
because the equipment isn't worth hardly anything now. And I was locked into power contracts,
which were costing more than the Bitcoin I was mining. So across the year, you know, it's just
been something that's happened over the whole year, but again, I don't reflect on it in any kind of
negativity. I'm not bothered by it. I'm actually, I'm still very positive about Bitcoin in the
future, and I'm glad it's all happened in a kind of weird way. I mean, obviously, I wish I had
cashed out, but I haven't. And, you know, we always make the best decisions we think are at the
time. And every time I've considered caching out and I haven't, that I believe was the right
decision. So I don't have any regrets. When you think about, say, going back in March and realizing that
something was different, that this bounce was not going to be like one of the plunges,
or that this drop was not going to be like one of the plunges in 2017. Was it harder to sell,
or do you think it was harder to make wise trading decisions because you had hit a high water
mark of $1.2 million and you felt like that is sort of like where you should get back to? Because
I do think this is a phenomenon of all traders and not just even in bubbles, where somehow
like their portfolio hits a certain level and then psychologically they sort of find it very
hard to sell anything below that level.
And even if all the other data points and charts and their brain sort of tell them that
they should still cash out and take profits.
I think one of the difficulties we're selling is there was so much good news and so many good
think things happening in 2018.
Right.
There was,
especially for Bitcoin,
there was,
you know,
real Wall Street adoption in terms of,
you know,
futures and other derivative products.
You know,
there was the news of potential ETS.
There was so much good news happening that I was,
I kept,
every time it kind of hit another low price,
I was thinking,
well,
it's not going to go lower than that.
I think that was my problem.
It wasn't that I was looking to get back higher.
I just never thought it would go lower.
And each time it went lower,
I was like,
okay,
You know, I'm not a trader. I've got no experience with this. I think pretty experienced traders would
have recognized this pattern, right? And then you know what? In a year, two years, if the same happens,
I'll probably be better prepared than I was this time. I have a really boring question, but I think in your
tweet storm, I seem to remember you mentioned something about, you know, after taxes, you didn't
have much left. How did you actually calculate taxes on your crypto investments?
So I have an accountant for all of this.
What I did at the start is I registered everything I do as businesses, and I've used the same
accountant for years.
So that's something that's completely handled by them.
I wouldn't even want to get into the writing my own tax return for crypto, because it's hugely
complex.
So yeah, I just use an accountant for that.
So talk about where you are today.
You started, I think you said, with $32,000, wrote up to $1.2 million.
You spent $400,000 on mining equipment.
equipment, crypto mining equipment, that's now worthless, as you put it. You got into all these
long-term contracts. You paid taxes. Are you just back to square one? No, I'm not, you know,
some people wrote to me thinking I was completely wrecked and broke. So I'm not broke. I have a,
I wouldn't tell you the amounts now, but I have a very small amount of Bitcoin, which I've got
left over. So what I ended up doing, I just sold all my altcoins, cashed out a certain amount,
just to give me a bit of breathing room, because I'm a single-fired.
with two children. So I have to, you know, be responsible. So I cashed out a certain amount to give
myself a few months breathing room and retained a small amount of Bitcoin. And I've got some
Manero as well. But the mining operation is still there. I'm still paying those bills, which is
frustrating. But at the same time, I guess one of the other reasons I'm not too worried is
my podcast has been really successful. I think last month I went over 100,000 downloads for the
first month. It's profitable. You know, I'm selling adverts each month.
I think revenues for this month is around $10,000.
So, you know, I've got a sustainable business that's come out of the back of this.
So I think that's probably one of the other reasons I'm not too worried.
It's not been hugely upsetting.
A question I meant to ask earlier.
So you had all this Bitcoin in your portfolio.
It's surged.
And then the other things you did were sort of de facto doubling and tripling down on Bitcoin just through different ways.
So obviously you mentioned the huge outlay for the mining and the power contracts.
and you've started this successful podcast about Bitcoin.
Did it ever seem concerning to you that you were sort of unhedged,
that you had essentially all these different eggs,
but they were really the same egg and it was all in one basket?
No, not really.
I didn't think about it too much.
I've always been entrepreneurial.
I've always run businesses.
I've always kind of thrown mud at the wall and see what sticks.
So, no, I was perfectly comfortable doing it.
I mean, I fundamentally believe in Bitcoin, especially, you know, over a long enough time frame.
I fundamentally believe in it.
And I have a curiosity with other parts of crypto, although I would say I'm heading down the maximalist route at the moment.
But no, I was never worried.
And I'm not worried now.
I'm still invested.
I'm still, you know, essentially in some ways I'm still doubling down on Bitcoin because, you know, I don't do anything else.
This is still my full-time job.
And it looks like I may have survived the bear market.
So I should come out the other end of this.
Okay.
So you've touched on this at various points, but one of the remarkable things about Bitcoin is sort of the community that exists around it and the fact that you have a bunch of people who are commenting on, you know, Bitcoin itself or new coins, the underlying technology or just the basic price movement.
And when it comes to that price movement, it can be really volatile.
You know, Bitcoin, it's a digital currency, it's moving every day.
There's a lot of excitement around the way it trades.
Do you think any sort of traditional or historic financial investments are ever going to be able to match the excitement that has come with cryptocurrencies over the past few years?
I mean, maybe. Who knows, right?
I mean, you can't predict this.
But one thing I would say is I think the reason the bubble was so accelerated,
and it was, you know, it was such a quick, fast, crazy bubble is that cryptocurrency is essentially
broken down the walls of, sorry, they've broken some of the rules down. So it's so easy to trade.
You know, trading shares and stocks is quite difficult, right? You know, there's certain rules you have to
follow, certain companies you have to go through. Trading gold is equally, to me, appears hard. I've
never done it. I mean, if you want to buy gold and silver physically, you've got to order it and have it
delivered. So technology seems to make trading easier and easier over time. And crypto just seems to be
the easiest thing to trade. You know, you're buying digital assets from any internet connected
device from anywhere in the world. So it just became very easy for everyone to just get on board
and get involved. There was very little regulatory framework around it. I only see technology
becoming more advanced. So perhaps there will be something in the future which is similar.
Who knows? But it's very hard to predict that, right? Yeah. I wish we could.
could predict it. I think we all wish we could. I have another question and it's sort of dovetails
with what Tracy asked about community. So you have your podcast, you have 45,000 people who follow
you on Twitter talking about Bitcoin. You have, you've made your identity around it. Do you think
that publicly putting oneself forward associating themselves with an investment or movement or a trade
makes it harder to change your mind? Like if you sort of decided one day,
or you came across evidence in your mind that, okay, Bitcoin is not going to be as big as you
think it is or for whatever reason you thought the price had further to go down.
When you have that much of your identity and public identity wrapped up in the success of this thing,
does that make it harder to sort of make a rational investment decision to get out when the going is good?
Not for me. I think it does for a lot of people.
I think if you look across crypto, there are a lot of people who've probably got doubts.
who are not admitting it.
Like people who've raised money in an ICO on a project,
they're probably thinking,
do you know what?
Maybe this isn't a goer anymore.
It's kind of strange because most people don't want to admit they're wrong,
because they're worried about the impact on their credibility.
But usually if you're kind of honest and transparent and open and admit mistakes,
people respect you for it.
The tweet storm I did, you've seen it, right?
Yeah.
I mean, I expected a response, not the response I did.
You know, it was like 8,000 likes and 3,000 retweets.
amongst that I think there must have been like one or two negative comments where people are like
oh you're an idiot you know you don't know what you're doing blah blah blah of the hundreds and
hundreds of other comments everyone was like positive everyone was grateful people said thank you for
doing that it needed saying you know it's good that you did that i've had you know yourself get in touch
i've had the guardian get in touch uh various other news networks you know i think what people actually
appreciate is honesty it just doesn't happen enough because it's it just feels wrong right
it's really hard to admit you're wrong, but usually when you do it, it's like the weight
off your shoulders. So I'd say you're right. Most people are scared to do it, but I'm not.
You know, if I'm wrong about Bitcoin, so be it. I don't think I am wrong about Bitcoin
because I'm not really talking about price anymore. I'm talking about the technology.
The technology in what's being trying to achieve with Bitcoin, I fundamentally believe in.
Even if it fails, I won't change my opinion that it was a right thing to support.
I just won't get behind prices anymore because price predictions are so hard.
You know, that's where you can really come and stuck.
Peter, I think that was a great conversation.
Really appreciate you your perspective.
And I do think it's very commendable that you sort of put yourself out there like this
because there have to be a lot of people in your shoes who wrote it all the way up and
wrote it all the way down.
I mean, there's the whole crypto Twitter community.
And I don't think most of them would have come forward and talk about the money that they
gained on paper and then lost afterwards. So I really do think you've done people a favor and I
appreciate you coming up. So let me just tell you one story. So I had, I reckon I had over 300 DMs on
Twitter from people saying thank you, telling me about their experience. And it was the same story
over and over again, just different amounts. You know, it might be somebody invested 100 who made,
who got up to like 30,000, I lost it all. There was one person who invested, I think it was 6,000,
very, very early, wrote it up to eight figures, so somewhere over 10 million and lost the lot.
So I think it's happened to way more people than other people realize.
And, you know, I think therefore it is something that he's talking about, especially I don't
want another ball market to come and everyone think, oh, I'm going to make a load of money and
not be aware of the risks because most of these crypto networks are zero-sum games.
Most of them are going to disappear.
So you've got to be either a very good trader or half.
to dump your bags onto somebody else.
And I think if it opens the conversation, then it was definitely worth doing.
Well, we really appreciate you joining us.
Peter McCormick.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thanks so much.
Tracy, I found Peter's story to be really interesting because I do think that there's
so many people in his shoes and nobody, you know, as I was saying at the end,
not many people are willing to admit it.
I think most people either psychologically just don't want to say they've lost so much
money or maybe they want to be smarter than everyone else and say they sold some at the top.
But we know that the vast majority of people can't have sold at the top and that a lot of people
lost a ton of money over the last year on crypto. So it's kind of great that someone would just
come out and admit it. Oh, absolutely. And I thought, you know, Peter clearly has a very optimistic
attitude about his experience and, you know, he says that he's learned a lot from it. One of the
interesting things that I find about the Bitcoin.
bubble if you know we can call it that is that um we can yeah one of the more interesting things is
about just because we basically live our lives on the internet now and people were so vocal about
cryptocurrencies and you kind of alluded to this in your question you know people built up these
big communities people built new careers like blockchain experts and specialists out of this
i i do think it makes the interest in crypto kind of harder to let go because if you
think back to the tech bubble. Yeah, you had a lot of people, you know, working in tech around the early
2000s in various ways. But I don't think we had like such an online presence where it became so
visible. I mean, totally right. I mean, there were obviously message boards, but there are so many
people associated with crypto who went from, say, no one heard of them in 2017 or the beginning of
2017 to regular TV stars by the end of the year.
And their entire identity is wrapped up essentially in this one trade.
So how do you get off that trade if for some reason you're like, whether it's for technical
reasons or just price reasons you think it's over?
You know what I think about a lot is an interesting parallel is remember, and we still
have them from time to time, like when hedge fund managers would announce a new longer short
position and get up on stage at a conference and deliver like a.
200-page slideshow.
We definitely still have those.
It's like, yeah.
Yeah, I think they've gone down a little bit, but it's like, how do you get up on
stage and tie your identity to some trade and then get out of it at the right time when
you've invested so much publicly into it?
I think that makes it even harder to essentially trade rationally or trade smartly.
Yeah.
And there's another thing that we've talked about on this podcast before, which kind of feeds into
this.
but this idea of echo chambers existing on the internet.
So, you know, if you lose money, you can sort of go on a message board and find a bunch of like-minded people in crypto who are telling you just to, you know, huddle or hold on for dear life or whatever.
I think it's very easy to keep telling yourself the bull narrative in that environment.
Oh, totally right.
And I think like, you know, in the end, it's kind of all the same.
all the data confirms your priors, and it's really hard to fight that tied psychologically
when everyone is so excited, as I think Peter's story and countless others tell.
But yeah, with social media and all of this stuff, echo chambers, it kind of, it probably
just makes it even harder.
Yeah.
So I guess it's, it's suitable that that digital currency was sort of the bubble for the digital age,
I guess.
Yeah, totally right.
All right.
Well, this has been another edition of the Odd Lots podcast.
I'm Tracy Allaway.
You can follow me on Twitter at Tracy Allaway.
And I'm Joe Wisenthall.
You can follow me on Twitter at The Stallwork.
You should follow our guest, Peter McCormick, on Twitter.
Definitely check out his tweet storm.
He has it pinned to the top of his thread where he talks about his whole experience.
He's at Peter McCormick.
And you should follow our producer, Tofer Forehead.
He's at ForgesT on Twitter, as well as the Bloomberg head of podcast, Francesco Levy, at Francesco today.
Thanks for listening.
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