The Breakdown - Peter McCormack On A Defiant New Era For Bitcoin

Episode Date: December 23, 2019

Peter McCormack is one of the most prominent podcasters in the space. In 2019, he added a new podcast called “Defiance” and focused on the intersection of bitcoin, human rights, and political activism to complement his “What Bitcoin Did” podcast. In this special end of year episode of The Breakdown, Peter discusses why the past year represents an inflection point for citizen action and sovereign protest around the world, and why 2020 is likely to see a continued bloodletting among non-bitcoin cryptoassets.   

Welcome back to The Breakdown, an everyday analysis breaking down the most important stories in Bitcoin, crypto, and beyond, with your host, NLW. The Breakdown is distributed by CoinDesk. Welcome back to the breakdowns' end-of-year extravaganza. So every day between now and New Year's, instead of a normal episode, I'll be posting at least one interview with an interesting thinker, doer, operator, investor, etc., in the crypto or Bitcoin space. asking them two questions. One, what was the most important story or narrative of 2019? And two, what's one prediction for 2020? It's an amazing group of people that we have here.

And I think a really fun way to think back and look back on the year that was and maybe look forward to the year that's about to start. And so today, we're going to kick it off with Peter McCormick. Most of you know Peter McCormick. He's a very successful podcaster behind the What Bitcoin Did podcast. This year he launched the Defiance podcast, which is a lot of what we talk about is the emergence and really the crescendo of citizen action and the fight for sovereignty and how that overlaps with Bitcoin.

So it's a really, really fun little interview. I hope you enjoy it. And if you like it, subscribe so you don't miss out on any of the upcoming end-of-year breakdown episodes as well. With that, let's kick it over and let's start the interview with Peter McCormick from what Bitcoin did. All right. I am talking with Peter McCormick, the undisputed podcaster of 2019, I think. It's got to be said. You had a monster year, man. Yeah, thank you. Yeah. Yeah, it's been a very good year. I feel very blessed, actually, with it all. It's kind of a weird one, actually, the way it's everything's kind of planned out because, well, there was no plan. You know, this was all an accident. So, yeah, no, thank you. And it's good to get to know you of the last kind of, I don't even know how long it is now, what year or two?

Yeah, a couple years, couple years. I mean, I think one of the thing that's been my favorite to see with you as well, Peter, is like the, you know, when we, when we first talked, part of what we connected around was, I think the ideas that have now been turned into what you're doing with defiance, right? It was a lot of the caring about the bigger picture stuff and not the smaller stuff. So it was super exciting for me to see you actually get that up and running and have crack and supported and be able to really go at it in a big way, not just kind of as a sideshow thing. Yeah, that's been very cool. And that's been, you know, one of the most interesting things for me is trying to position myself or consider myself beyond just, you know, the best way to say it is that having this imposter syndrome, which I still have. Yeah, it's a very weird place to be in. But also then trying to take myself a little bit more seriously and say, okay, there's something going on here and I can I can really work at this, really enjoy it. And I am finding that with defiance now.

It's kind of like it's given me this new, this new kind of sense of kind of belief in what I can actually go out and create. So yeah, thank you for recognizing that. Yeah, I love it. Well, let's, let's have in. So as I was saying to you, one of the ways that I'm celebrating the end of the year is I'm asking people whose opinions I respect two questions, right? So it's kind of like a micro interview. And the first one is, what do you think was the narrative or the story of 2019? What was the big thing that when the history books are written about this industry, they'll point to for this year?

Well, so I thought about this a lot. and it would be very easy to just say bear market. But the problem we're just saying bear market itself in itself is a kind of a dull story. So, you know, it's a little bit cliche for me to do this, having defiance as the show, as a show that I do. But for me, I think one of the defining stories of 2019, and I'll tie it back into Bitcoin, is actually, if you remember, I can't remember the actual year of the Arab Spring, but a few years back we had the Arab Spring. who were kind of the uprising on Twitter, which we followed on Twitter across a number of other countries. I kind of feel like this has been almost like the global version of that this year.

You know, we've had everything that's happened in Hong Kong, everything that's happened in. You have the yellow jackets in France. We've seen, you know, we've seen things happening in Libya. We've seen things happening. Even in Iraq now, we've had it in Chile. We've had it in Bolivia, where I'm off to in a few days. You know, we've seen this uprising from people who've kind of fed up, kind of fed up at the status quo, not trusting their governments, not trusting, you know, the institutions of their own country. And that for me, potentially, I think when you talk about looking back when the history books are written, looking back, if we're tying this back into Bitcoin, you know, we often talk about Bitcoin as this opportunity as a kind of escape from the state to separate money from state. It's kind of a vote out.

you know, this decentralized world. I think perhaps if over the next year's Bitcoin does continue to grow and does actually deliver on what people have said in terms of separating money from state, we might look back at 2019 and say, well, this was the start. This was the start of it. This was when we had negative yields, negative interest rates. This is where we had, you know, crazy amounts of borrowing from Western governments. This is where we had, you know, the rising up of the people. And I, I, think perhaps this could be the start of it all. I think over the next, I don't know what's going to happen next year, but I think over the next five to 10 years, it's going to be

particularly interesting. But I think in 20 years' time, this is going to be a very different world we live in. Amazing. Yeah. I mean, I couldn't agree more. I think for me, that's, I think we talked about this actually when I was on your podcast, but I was a history major. And so I spent a lot of my time looking at those big patterns. And I do think that we're, it feels like a crescendoing moment in a pattern of history that does go back a ways, right? And it's one of the things that makes Bitcoin so fascinating, even just from the kind of historians' perspective, is how it maps to that growing sense of unease and actually provides an exit path, you know, or at least an alternative. So couldn't agree more. And I guess with that, that's the second.

Yeah, absolutely. I just want to throw in also an unsung hero. I mean, a lot of people do know him and recognize him, you know him. And he's a friend of mine is Alex Gladstein, but I feel like he is the connection that's going to make a lot of this happen. He is the, you know, he is possibly the best speaker I know within, certainly within the space. You know, as people talk about Andreas Antonopoulos watching every one of his videos, I watch every single presentation Alex Galstein does. The conviction he has in his presentations where his disdain for kind of totalitarian regimes and dictatorships, while at the same time pushing forward the power and the benefits of Bitcoin and Lightning Network.

For me, it's really incredible. And whilst a lot of us know him, I think we will look back and see him as one of the unsung heroes. I mean, Unsung might be not the right word, but I think you know where I'm getting that, because he is the bridge between both of these worlds. Yeah, I think the thing that's interesting about Alex is that he's one of the few people who has come into Bitcoin specifically. over the last couple years from an orthogonal related space,

but found something that he needs for his work, right? He doesn't care about crypto a priori because he was interested in it or because he was an economist or he doesn't come into it for professional interests except in so far as that in his interest in his professional work regarding human rights, he found this thing that he thinks can be a powerful tool. And I think that gives him a really unique perspective, because there's a lot of us who are interested in some parts of the same world that he is, right? Like, again, you and I talked about this.

This is my background as well in some ways is more in the human rights, global impact space than it is even in technology. And I find my way into into crypto as well. However, I was still coming from a tech perspective and I was still looking at it through a technology lens. He really exists to advance this kind of global mission and found that Bitcoin and can be a tool. And I think that that's really, it's unfortunately unique. But I think right now, I think it's maybe the first of something that we're going to see a lot more. Yeah. So one of the interesting things there is that, you know, me and Alex have spent a lot of time with each other at different events over the last year.

And, you know, when we're at a Bitcoin event, you know, he's come into that with his kind of viewpoint from the world of human rights and censorship and, you know, dictatorships and oppression and censorship. And he comes with that perspective. and I don't think people often in the Bitcoin world can really understand truly how these tools should help people. They understand it can, but they don't understand how to actually deliver it. And then Algoos who say I went to the Oslo Freedom Forum with him in Norway and also another one of their events in Taiwan. And I can come at it with a bit more of kind of experience and understanding of Bitcoin and see how these people will need it, but they don't fully understand why they need it. And there's like I say, there's this kind of bridge in the middle where I think this is why an Alex, and I have spent so much time together.

I mean, I don't know how much you know about him, but he pretty much helped me craft defiance. He wrote the manifesto, and I feel like for me, that's been a really important relationship that I've built with him. So, I mean, let's go, that does that, what does it make you think about 2020? Do you think we're going to see more of that bridges?

So, you know, the patent question that I was asking people is, what is, you know, what's one prediction for 2020? But, you know, even if you have that and it's something different, like it feels like that bridge building is something that we're seeing more of now. And I hope that that continues. But what's your perspective on that? So, again, so my original 2019 kind of narrative for you wasn't about the human rights side of things.

It was actually, it was a maximalism versus multi-coin world, which itself, I find really fascinating in that there's this group of people who fundamentally believe and can argue in a very rational and technical way why Bitcoin is the only accessible use of a blockchain. and it's entirely rational. And yet you have this other group of people who fundamentally believe that the blockchain technology can do so many other things and can offer a rational and reasonable explanation why.

And I find that really fascinating these two worlds go at each other. But it wasn't the beginning enough narrative for me, but it does carry through to what I think will happen in 2020, whereas I do think we are going to see a massive bleed out and dying of most of these projects because one of the big problems they have,

let's say with smart contract platforms, is that there really isn't much desire, need or adoption. And I think that's down for a number of reasons. I don't think the use case is there for programmable money yet. I just don't think there is a need in the big money corporate world. And I think eventually what's going to be a problem for most of these projects is they're going to run out of runway. They're going to run out of the money and the ability to deliver these things. And the other thing is I don't think there is this massive demand for decentralization. Whilst we can understand and rationalize the benefits of decentralization, there really isn't a massive human demand for it. And that's what I think one of the problems is. So what I think

will happen, for me, the big prediction of 2020 is that we will continue to see Bitcoin grow. And I think we'll continue to see, I think the bear market for the alts will be a lot longer. I mean, it might have a spurt supported by Bitcoin. But I still think most of these alts, going to struggle with adoption. And that's going to be a good thing for Bitcoin, because Bitcoin will just continue to go from strength to strength. I mean, if you compare like just the currencies, you know, Bitcoin has institutional grade products. It has institutional custody. It has derivatives. You know, it's fully embedded within the kind of legacy world. No other cryptocurrency even managed to do that. And I think that's very telling. So for me, 2020, and it's kind of a hope as well,

And I don't mean to just be a negative, maximumist, you know, I hate everything. I kind of want a lot of this stuff to bleed out because most of it's unnecessary. Most of it's actually a massive distraction. I mean, I get distracted by it myself, Nathaniel. I get into the war zone and the battles about it, which is a total waste of time. But I just kind of want it all this use of stuff to go away and people to focus on building stuff that actually will make the world a better place. You know, it's interesting. So in middle of this year, when the price of Bitcoin surged, W. Wan said that it was a Bitcoin bull disguising an alt-coin bear, which stuck with me. I thought that that was a really interesting way to put it. And I think that we've seen a little bit of that. I mean, you could even get into dissecting, I think, where different alt-coins are and what's happening there. But I think that, you know, the practical reality, I think that almost regardless of your philosophical position on this,

I do think that we will see more of the question of actual resources running out, right? You have a lot of projects who are able to raise money in 2017 and early 2018, who by virtue and dint only of good treasury management, have been able to keep building, you know? And that's fine. You know, that's great. But at some point, they'll either have to go back to the well or it'll go on. So it's going to be interesting. I think there's also regulatory questions that could come.

But so just to sum up, though, I think further, it sounds like your prediction is further separation of Bitcoin from everything else and perhaps, you know, more troubled waters for the everything else. Yeah. And the way you talk about that separation is very interesting because one of the things I've been wrestling with, Nathaniel, is that, you know, my show went Bitcoin only for a number of reasons. And I'm really glad it did because I really had a focus. I've actually considered to the point or so one of the interesting things about getting into the trenches and our. with people this year is that a bunch of people have unfollowed me. And actually, I'm starting to think it would make a lot more sense to me if my feed was really only with Bitcoin people, and I really could just cut out all this Ethereum and Alcoin and crypto nonsense, you know, because it's just, it is a total distraction. I would much rather my feed now is dominated by Bitcoin, human rights, censorship, freedom, maybe a little bit of rock and roll. Well, you know, it's interesting. I think that one of the weird things about this industry right now is that

it is a bunch of things that are nominally related, but potentially have their own path that are, they're still kind of all lumped together. And, you know, it's not a perfect analogy, but one thing that I do find, so I was, I was deep in the social entrepreneurship, social impact movement around 2006 to 2010, call it. And social entrepreneurship as a concept, this idea of business for good has been around for a lot longer than that, but it was popularized as this term where instead of building nonprofits, people were going to build social enterprise. And that really had another one of these crescendo moments at that time. But it's interesting because what happened is that all of these different things were lumped together, every different thing that social business could impact. But you started to see things really break out and become their own areas, right? So microfinance was such a huge portion of activity as compared to, you know, random other things. Education technology just became its own subcategory of, you know, technology that had viable business models than that people liked. And then, of course, there was, you know,

global climate change type stuff and just, you know, energy technologies and alternative energy. And so all of a sudden you had this social entrepreneurship in quotes movement that really wasn't a movement. It was a bunch of now like totally immature industries plus a bunch of areas that had matured into their own things. And it really kind of stopped making sense as its own category. Now, it's come back 10 years later as ESG is what the investing term. They used to call it like double bottom line, triple bottom line back then. So it's reconnected a little bit of in the world of finance. But it reminds me of this industry only in so far as you're going to start to see, you know, at least Bitcoin as this separate, separate thing that has broken out in terms of

its viability, in terms of, you know, whatever. We don't have to rehash the arguments. And the question is which of these other things, if any, will also break out. But as they do, they'll probably mature into their own thing as well, right? If defy actually turns into what everyone hopes and it doesn't crater and it doesn't kind of have some systemic implosion, well, it's not going to want to be associated with Tezos either, you know what I mean? And if Tezos breaks out and becomes actually this thing where, you know, real estate platforms can tokenize themselves, well, then it's not going to want to be associated with, you know, and so on the list goes on. So I think part of, we're in kind of like this accident of history moment where we're all lumped together in the same room because it's the

only room we've been allowed. But now a lot of people are trying to go go off and have their own meetings. And I don't think that's about that. No, I agree. And actually, I think it will make everything a little bit healthier. You know, I constantly battle with myself and my own kind of use of time and use of resources and energy, you know, getting in the trenches and discussing Bitcoin versus, you know, Ethereum, et cetera. And actually, you know, I often come to the conclusion. This is just a complete waste of time and energy.

So I guess my own personal narrative for next year will be just more focus. I like it. Well, listen, if you focus on what you've been doing and more of what you've been doing, particularly with Defiance, I'm very here for it. So thank you so much for all the work that you do and for your time today. Anytime, Nathaniel. You've become a good friend over the last couple of years. So if I can ever help you, just let me know.

Appreciate it.