Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Joe Wise and Paul and I'm Tracy. Allowit Happy
Speaker 1: New Year? Tracy. Oh, you're gonna make me say it
Speaker 1: Happy New Year? Is that something you hate saying? Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, but I hate saying it like beyond the
Speaker 1: first day afternoon. That's fair because it just goes on
Speaker 1: and on and on for a week, That's fair. It
Speaker 1: just felt like it's been a long time since we've
Speaker 1: recorded one together because we had the holiday disruptions and stuff.
Speaker 1: I was just very excited about back, getting back into
Speaker 1: the rhythm and doing another episode with you. Right, we
Speaker 1: we got the band back together, exactly. I'm also really
Speaker 1: excited about this one because we're going to return to
Speaker 1: one of our favorite topics, a recurring theme throughout Odd Lots,
Speaker 1: and that is bubbles, which I think we both agree
Speaker 1: is just an endless apply, a rich load to mind
Speaker 1: for topics to discuss and markets, absolutely and a fascinating
Speaker 1: experiment in human psychology and how people react to uh
Speaker 1: making a lot of money and then losing a lot
Speaker 1: of money as well. Exactly. I mean, there are so
Speaker 1: many bubbles throughout history and you each have their own
Speaker 1: sort of distinct element, but it seems like the psychology
Speaker 1: element of how humans react to huge price swings on
Speaker 1: the way up to people making a fortune in a
Speaker 1: short period of time is very consistent throughout basically every
Speaker 1: bubble we talk about, and in fact, you even see
Speaker 1: charts that are sort of like the the cliche bubble
Speaker 1: of you know, fear of missing out and optimism and
Speaker 1: then people buy back in at the top and this
Speaker 1: sort of there's a steady psychological component or cycle to
Speaker 1: every bubble that basically is identical. Absolutely, So, which particular
Speaker 1: bubble are we going to be discussing today, Well, today
Speaker 1: going to not only be talking about one of the
Speaker 1: recent most sort of extraordinary topical bubbles of our time.
Speaker 1: We're gonna be talking, of course about bitcoin and crypto
Speaker 1: more broadly. We actually rather talking to some historian or
Speaker 1: some academic who's done a study, we actually have the
Speaker 1: good fortune of talking to someone who participated in the
Speaker 1: bubble on the upside and the downside, someone directly involved
Speaker 1: with it, so we can hear, you know, straight from
Speaker 1: the source, what it's like to ride an extreme bubble.
Speaker 1: Our guest today, recently, uh did a tweet storm in
Speaker 1: which he talked about starting with a very small amount
Speaker 1: of money and making an absolute fortune in a crypto
Speaker 1: and most of it made in and then seeing much
Speaker 1: of it deteriorate in eighteen So we get to we
Speaker 1: get to go right for the source, I would say
Speaker 1: on this one. So I'm really excited about this one
Speaker 1: parta cularly since it's bitcoin and bitcoin it's not just
Speaker 1: a bubble, right, It's almost a belief system. So I'll
Speaker 1: be really interested to hear what our guest has to
Speaker 1: say about whether or not he still believes in all
Speaker 1: things bitcoin slash creep. I agree, and I suspect he
Speaker 1: still does because with us today we have Peter McCormick.
Speaker 1: If you follow him on Twitter, he tweets a lot
Speaker 1: about bitcoin still. He's also the author of his own
Speaker 1: podcast called What Bitcoin Did. So I'm confident on that
Speaker 1: last part, Peter. Peter, thank you very much for joining
Speaker 1: us and telling us about your experience, no worries, Thank
Speaker 1: you for having me on. And Happy New Year, Tracy.
Speaker 1: Oh god, So, Peter, tell us, how did you first
Speaker 1: get into a bitcoin? So really a couple of times.
Speaker 1: I first found it in two thousand thirteen. Um, I
Speaker 1: was worked in tech, so I heard about it and
Speaker 1: I can't remember the website, checked it out. Look kind
Speaker 1: of interested in roade that bubble. For a kind of
Speaker 1: about a week or two, I was trading CFD s
Speaker 1: on plus five and you know, made and lost a
Speaker 1: small amount of money in comparison to the last year,
Speaker 1: and then kind of forgot about it. And then in
Speaker 1: December sixteen. It's quite a sad story, sorry, but my
Speaker 1: mother was dying from cancer and we wanted to get
Speaker 1: a certain treatment for her that was only available for
Speaker 1: purchase with bitcoin. So I said to my dad, I
Speaker 1: can do this. So I went on to Google, did
Speaker 1: a search, found coin base, UM, bought a bitcoin, bought
Speaker 1: the treatment. Sadly she passed away. UM. But my parents
Speaker 1: lived in this like in the middle of nowhere in Ireland,
Speaker 1: so I was out there for a week and I
Speaker 1: just kind of went back on coin Base, transferred the
Speaker 1: leftover bitcoin back and there was this ethereum thing. So
Speaker 1: I was in between. I was out of work. I
Speaker 1: used to have an advertising agency UM that fabulously collapsed
Speaker 1: at one point, and but I had money left over
Speaker 1: from that, so I thought, you know what, I'm going
Speaker 1: to check this out. So I checked out a theoryum
Speaker 1: and bitcoin and the whole journey started. Then I put
Speaker 1: twenty three thousand pounding. I think it's about thirty two
Speaker 1: thousand dollars, which I don't by the way, I don't
Speaker 1: think is a small amount of money. But and just
Speaker 1: went on this epic ride for what's two years. Now. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry to hear about those misfortunes. So you said, um,
Speaker 1: thirty two thousand dollars roughly. How much did you end
Speaker 1: up making at the very top. Well, it's funny, it's
Speaker 1: funny you say that. So I guess I didn't end
Speaker 1: up making any because I didn't cash in. But the
Speaker 1: portfolio value at its peak was over one point two
Speaker 1: million dollars, you know, so what if I was looking
Speaker 1: in my portfolio, that was the value and that was
Speaker 1: about January sev. Now, talk to us about the psychology
Speaker 1: on the way up, because one of the things that
Speaker 1: I find really interesting about bubbles is it feels good
Speaker 1: to make a lot of money and see your net
Speaker 1: worth on the screen continue to go up. But what
Speaker 1: I'm always curious about it is like, did it stress
Speaker 1: you out? Also? On the way Up, Like, did you
Speaker 1: get upset with yourself for not buying more in the beginning,
Speaker 1: did you start to stress out about timing the top? Like,
Speaker 1: talk to us about what that was like from this
Speaker 1: sort of you know, not a nothing investment, a modest
Speaker 1: investment to an extraordinary amount of money. That's sort of
Speaker 1: just let's talk about the psychology of the Way Up
Speaker 1: a bit. No, I wasn't really stressed out. I mean
Speaker 1: a couple of times I thought, you know, I should
Speaker 1: have put some more in. You know, I had more
Speaker 1: money available at the time, but I didn't really worry
Speaker 1: about that because you know, when you're at one point
Speaker 1: two million, you kind of it doesn't really matter, does it.
Speaker 1: You're just like um. And it wasn't stressful at all.
Speaker 1: It was just a lot of fun and opened a
Speaker 1: lot of doors for me. I've met a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of people. I've launched this podcast and it's created a
Speaker 1: whole life for me. So, you know, it wasn't stressful.
Speaker 1: It was a lot of fun. Um. I was very
Speaker 1: careless with money. You know. I bought a very expensive watch,
Speaker 1: I bought a new car. I gave a lot of
Speaker 1: I gave I gave a lot of money away. I
Speaker 1: mean at Christmas last year, I gave my brother and
Speaker 1: sister each like like five thousand pound each. UM, I
Speaker 1: bought my dad a brightly. I paid for the hospital
Speaker 1: where my mom worked before she passed. UM they needed
Speaker 1: six thousand pounds for regard and so I paid for that.
Speaker 1: So I kind of paid for all this stuff, just
Speaker 1: being frivolous, But I was paying for it out on
Speaker 1: my savings, not out of my crypto, so that was
Speaker 1: kind of stupid. But no, look, it was just it
Speaker 1: was It's been so much fun. It's been a hell
Speaker 1: of a ride. And no, there was no real stress
Speaker 1: on the way up, and strangely enough, it hasn't been
Speaker 1: stressful on the way down either. I definitely want to
Speaker 1: ask you more about that, but before we do, I
Speaker 1: just want to sort of back up a little bit.
Speaker 1: What was the ball case for you when it came
Speaker 1: to bitcoin, you know a little over a year ago, Like,
Speaker 1: what was it that you thought was happening here and
Speaker 1: what made you want to stay in bitcoin and I
Speaker 1: guess some other crypto coins versus going into more traditional
Speaker 1: and sms. It was just innovation, right, There was this
Speaker 1: whole wave of innovation around cryptocurrencies and crypto networks, and
Speaker 1: it just felt like the start of something new, a
Speaker 1: bit like. You know, I was part of the dot
Speaker 1: com era when it first started. I worked at a
Speaker 1: dot com and I spent twenty years in digital advertising,
Speaker 1: so I experienced that and it kind of had similar feelings,
Speaker 1: not exactly the same, but you know, I don't ever
Speaker 1: believe the crypto networks would ever be as big as
Speaker 1: the Internet itself, but it did feel like a new
Speaker 1: way of you know, transacting, sending money, building things. So
Speaker 1: at the time I kind of brought into all of it.
Speaker 1: You know, my opinion over time has changed, but I
Speaker 1: did buy into all of it because I just thought
Speaker 1: this was something new, something cool. But I didn't invest
Speaker 1: the money at the time thinking I was going to
Speaker 1: make a lot of money, right, you know, when I
Speaker 1: first invested, I just I just thought, yeah, there's an
Speaker 1: opportunity to make something here. But in no way did
Speaker 1: I think, um, what was going to happen happened. I
Speaker 1: think my prediction at the start out of two thousand
Speaker 1: and seventeen was that wouldn't it be great if by
Speaker 1: the end of the bit coined hit two thousand dollars
Speaker 1: and ended up hit in twenty thou dollars. So you know,
Speaker 1: it was just it was a very strange ride, um
Speaker 1: but nothing played out exactly as I thought it would.
Speaker 1: One of the things you said in your tweet storm
Speaker 1: that I think was interesting, which is that on the
Speaker 1: way up, well, you know, for people who sort of
Speaker 1: maybe don't remember their history, it's um as Bitcoin sort
Speaker 1: of peaked in December and it was still pretty high
Speaker 1: in January. We saw an even crazier explosion in a
Speaker 1: lot of alt coins, other cryptocurrencies, many of them of
Speaker 1: extremely dubious quality, half big projects. I think things they
Speaker 1: were sort of like mediocre to anyone who looked at them,
Speaker 1: But that's something you see in bubbles in which the
Speaker 1: real trash really surges at the end. I think you
Speaker 1: said in your tweet storm that on the way up
Speaker 1: you started buying other non bitcoin in assets more and more.
Speaker 1: Tell us about the decision to do that. Well, at first,
Speaker 1: there was no strategy around it. I was just learning
Speaker 1: about things, reading about things, and just wanting to try
Speaker 1: it out. So I bought Dash because that seemed like
Speaker 1: a different kind of bitcoin. It seemed kind of interesting.
Speaker 1: I bought Ethereum because it was like this world computer
Speaker 1: that sounded interesting. I bought Minero because it was a
Speaker 1: private coin. I bought ripple Coin because it was a
Speaker 1: banking coin. I just kind of bought everything, just went
Speaker 1: for it. And then over time I started to consider
Speaker 1: maybe more kind of fundamental analysis, so I started looking
Speaker 1: at things to see if they kind of had value
Speaker 1: or they had a purpose, and then kind of refined
Speaker 1: my strategy. But still up until the under two thousand
Speaker 1: and seventeen, I believed in, you know, most of these
Speaker 1: networks and most of these coins as being an opportunity.
Speaker 1: I had an expectation lots would fail, but it was
Speaker 1: kind of like the dot com era. You know, web
Speaker 1: Van sounded great at the time, Boo dot Com sounded
Speaker 1: great at the time. They just weren't ready or just
Speaker 1: weren't built in the right way. And I just thought,
Speaker 1: you know, spread my investments, and the things that always
Speaker 1: successful I'll make money from, and the things that fail
Speaker 1: I won't. But with a diverse portfolio, yeah I should
Speaker 1: be okay. It's only since, like I think a bear
Speaker 1: market is very good forget you, to get you to
Speaker 1: be a bit more rational and look at things and
Speaker 1: a bit more detail. Now I've kind of like my
Speaker 1: opinions changed a lot. So with that background in mind,
Speaker 1: when you saw all these coins plus bitcoin sort of
Speaker 1: going up together, did you at any point kind of
Speaker 1: think this is weird or this is too easy? Yeah, definitely,
Speaker 1: I definitely thought this was too easy. But you know,
Speaker 1: I just rode it. I just you just went with it.
Speaker 1: It was. It was continual the whole year. There were
Speaker 1: three or four crashes. I remember once I was flying
Speaker 1: out to l A and I'd gone into the airport
Speaker 1: lounge and I'd always wanted to have a brightly watch, right,
Speaker 1: That's something I could never normally afford, and I just
Speaker 1: bought it and I got on the plane, and when
Speaker 1: I got off the plane, the market dropped thirty. I
Speaker 1: was like, whoa, Okay, that was a lesson and exactly
Speaker 1: the same. And when I bought the car, I bought Mercedes, right,
Speaker 1: And when I was in the garage picking up the keys,
Speaker 1: the market dropped again. But each thirty drop, the market
Speaker 1: always rebounded. So when it dropped again January this year,
Speaker 1: I expected it to come back. You mean January. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I want to hear more of what you bought things
Speaker 1: that you bought just like everything. Um, you know, I
Speaker 1: took my kids on loads of amazing holidays to America,
Speaker 1: to Florida. As I said, I gave a lot of
Speaker 1: money to my family. I bought my dad a watch,
Speaker 1: I bought a car. UM. I flew first class for
Speaker 1: the first time, something I've never done. It's nothing I
Speaker 1: could ever normally afford. And I was flying back from
Speaker 1: l a and I had a date book with a
Speaker 1: girl in London, and I was on a flight which
Speaker 1: meant I would be landing in the afternoon. I knew
Speaker 1: i'd be tired. I thought, you know what, I'm a millionaire.
Speaker 1: I'm just going to get myself a first class flight,
Speaker 1: which I did as well. Uh like, not in a um,
Speaker 1: not in an idiotic, idiotic way. It's just the way
Speaker 1: I always think about money is is you know, use
Speaker 1: it and enjoy it. Um you might not have it tomorrow.
Speaker 1: So funny enough, it's turned out, and I'm glad. I
Speaker 1: did you know, I got to experience a bunch of
Speaker 1: things and do a bunch of things I could never
Speaker 1: normally do. Saying for my kids, my kids got to
Speaker 1: experience and do a lot of things they could normally do.
Speaker 1: And yeah, it's been it's just been a lot of fun.
Speaker 1: Did you in your mind on the way up have
Speaker 1: some number for your portfolio? They got Okay, if it
Speaker 1: hits there's I'm going to sell have or if it
Speaker 1: said hits this, I'm gonna sell everything, like because at
Speaker 1: some point you had to maybe worry I think that
Speaker 1: it was all going to crash. So did you have
Speaker 1: some sort of exit strategy that you thought or some
Speaker 1: sort of when to get out? Well, I used to
Speaker 1: take out um so every time my portfolio kind of
Speaker 1: as I at the end of the month, I used
Speaker 1: to take the profit out. But as I got towards
Speaker 1: the end of the year, I was thinking, gosh, if
Speaker 1: this carries on for another six months. I've always had
Speaker 1: this goal in life. I wanted to buy my local
Speaker 1: football club. I know it sounds stupid, but I live
Speaker 1: in a very small town called Bedford, right, It's just
Speaker 1: a nothing town. Our football club is in the lowest
Speaker 1: of the low divisions, are not in the Football League.
Speaker 1: About a hundred people go and watch him each week.
Speaker 1: So I had this kind of price in my head.
Speaker 1: If I could make five million, I could buy the club,
Speaker 1: and like I was working through it with one of
Speaker 1: my friends and we figured out, you know, that would
Speaker 1: be enough money to buy the club and get him
Speaker 1: in the football league. So I was like, right, if
Speaker 1: I can hit that by middle of two thousand and eighteen,
Speaker 1: I'll cash out the majority of it, go and buy
Speaker 1: the football club. I know it sounds so stupid our reflection,
Speaker 1: No it doesn't. I know someone else who has a
Speaker 1: dream to own a small town football club and it
Speaker 1: is possible in the UK look at Swansea. Right. Anyway,
Speaker 1: when did it all start going wrong? Because it's great
Speaker 1: to listen to the list of stuff that you bought,
Speaker 1: but in the end the portfolio kind of evaporated in value.
Speaker 1: So it's funny. I don't see is it going wrong.
Speaker 1: I see it as losing portfolio. But I actually, on reflection,
Speaker 1: I think two thousand and eighteen has been a great
Speaker 1: year for for the crypto category personally myself. Of you know,
Speaker 1: it's a real lesson I've never had it in life.
Speaker 1: Like we have securities laws which stop people investing who
Speaker 1: aren't the credited investors, but if you don't invest, you
Speaker 1: won't learn. So two thousand and eighteen has been a
Speaker 1: huge lesson in money for me, you know, conserving capital
Speaker 1: and protecting capital. Um. You know, so from about January
Speaker 1: I started it started happening, but I thought it would
Speaker 1: be another a bounce, you know, I thought it would
Speaker 1: drop and bounce back. I would say. From about March,
Speaker 1: I was thinking, Okay, this isn't coming back. And my
Speaker 1: biggest mistake is I invested around four thousand dollars into
Speaker 1: mining because you know, I wanted to have another way
Speaker 1: of growing my capital, so I bought all these different
Speaker 1: A six and that's where I've lost the majority of
Speaker 1: my money because the equipment isn't worth hardly anything now,
Speaker 1: and I was locked into power contracts which were costing
Speaker 1: more than the bitcoin I was mining. So across the year,
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's just been something that has happened
Speaker 1: over the whole year. But again, I don't reflect on
Speaker 1: it in any kind of negativity. I'm not bothered by it.
Speaker 1: I'm actually I'm still very positive about bitcoin in the future,
Speaker 1: and I'm I'm glad it's all happened in a kind
Speaker 1: of weird way. I mean, obviously I wish I had
Speaker 1: a cashed out, but I haven't. And you know, we
Speaker 1: always make the best decisions we think are at the time.
Speaker 1: And every time I've considered cashing out and I haven't,
Speaker 1: that I believe was the right decision. So I don't
Speaker 1: have any regrets when you think about, say, going back
Speaker 1: in March and realizing that something was different, that this
Speaker 1: bounce was not going to be like one of the plunges,
Speaker 1: or that this dropt was not going to be like
Speaker 1: one of the inges. In twenty seventeen, was it harder
Speaker 1: to sell or do you think it was it was
Speaker 1: harder to make wise trading decisions because you had hit
Speaker 1: a high water mark of one point two million, and
Speaker 1: you felt like that is sort of like where you
Speaker 1: should get back to. Because I do think this is
Speaker 1: a phenomenon of all traders, and not just even in bubbles,
Speaker 1: where somehow like their portfolio hits a certain level and
Speaker 1: then psychologically they sort of find it very hard to
Speaker 1: sell anything below that level, and even if all the
Speaker 1: other data points and charts and their brains sort of
Speaker 1: tell them that they should still cash out and take profits.
Speaker 1: I think one of the difficulties was selling is there
Speaker 1: was so much good news and so many could think
Speaker 1: things happening in two thousand and eighteen, there was especially
Speaker 1: for bitcoin, there was you know, real Wall Street adoption
Speaker 1: in terms of um, you know, futures, another derivative products.
Speaker 1: You know, there was the news of potentially ts. There
Speaker 1: was so much good news happening that I was I
Speaker 1: kept every time we kind of hit another low price,
Speaker 1: I thinking, well, it's not going to go lower than that.
Speaker 1: I think that was my problem. It wasn't that I
Speaker 1: was looking to get back higher. I just never thought
Speaker 1: it would go lower. And each time it went lower,
Speaker 1: I was like, Okay, maybe that's the base. But you know,
Speaker 1: I'm not a trader. I've got no experience with this.
Speaker 1: I think pretty pretty experienced traders would have recognized this pattern, right.
Speaker 1: And you know what, in a year, two years, if
Speaker 1: the same happens, I'll probably be better prepared than I
Speaker 1: was this time. I have a really boring question, but
Speaker 1: I think in your tweet storm, I seem to remember
Speaker 1: you mentioned something about, you know, after taxes, you didn't
Speaker 1: have much left. How did you actually calculate taxes on
Speaker 1: your crypto investments? So I have an accountant for all
Speaker 1: of this. UM, what I did at the start is
Speaker 1: I registered everything I do as businesses, and I've used
Speaker 1: the same account of for years, so that's something that's
Speaker 1: completely handled by them. I wouldn't even want to get
Speaker 1: into the right in my own tax return for crypto
Speaker 1: because it's hugely complex. So yeah, I just used an
Speaker 1: account of for that. So talk about where you are today.
Speaker 1: You started, I think you said, with thirty two thousand dollars,
Speaker 1: wrote up to one point two million dollars. You spend
Speaker 1: four hundred thousand dollars on mining equipment, crypto mining equipment
Speaker 1: that's now worthless as you put it. You got into
Speaker 1: all these long term contracts, you paid taxes. Are you
Speaker 1: just back to square one? No, I'm not. You know,
Speaker 1: some people wrote to me thinking I was completely wrecked
Speaker 1: and broken. So I'm not broken. I have a I
Speaker 1: wouldn't tell you the amounts now, but I have a small,
Speaker 1: very small amount of bitcoin which I've got left over.
Speaker 1: So what I ended up doing I just sold all
Speaker 1: my old coins cashed out a certain amount just to
Speaker 1: give me a bit of breathing room. Because I'm a
Speaker 1: single father with two children, so I have to be responsible.
Speaker 1: So I cashed out a certain amount to give myself
Speaker 1: a few months breathing room and retained a small amount
Speaker 1: of bitcoin, and I've got some minera as well, but
Speaker 1: the mining operation is still there. I'm still paying those bills,
Speaker 1: which is frustrating. But at the same time, I guess
Speaker 1: one of the other reasons I'm not too worried is
Speaker 1: my podcast has been really successful. I think last month
Speaker 1: I went over a hundred thousand downloads. For the first
Speaker 1: month's profitable. You know, I'm selling adverts each month. I
Speaker 1: think revenues for this month is around ten dollars, so
Speaker 1: you know, I've got a sustainable business. Let's come out
Speaker 1: of the back of this. So I think that's probably
Speaker 1: one of the other reasons I'm not too worried. It's
Speaker 1: not been hugely upsetting. A question I meant to ask earlier.
Speaker 1: So you had all this bitcoin in your portfolio, it's surged,
Speaker 1: and then the other things you did were sort of
Speaker 1: de facto doubling and tripling down on bitcoin, just through
Speaker 1: different ways. So obviously you mentioned the huge outlay for
Speaker 1: the mining and the power contract, and you've started this
Speaker 1: successful podcast about bitcoin. Did it ever seem concerning to
Speaker 1: you that you're sort of unhedged that you had essentially
Speaker 1: all these different eggs, but they were really the same
Speaker 1: egg and there was all in one basket. No, not really.
Speaker 1: I didn't think about it too much. I've just I've
Speaker 1: always been entrepreneurial. I've always run businesses. I've always kind
Speaker 1: of thrown mud at the wall and see what sticks.
Speaker 1: So No, I was perfully, perfectly comfortable doing it. I mean,
Speaker 1: I fundamentally believe in bitcoin, especially you know, over a
Speaker 1: long enough timeframe. I fundamentally believe in it, and I
Speaker 1: have a curiosity with other parts of crypto, although I
Speaker 1: would say I'm heading down the maximalist route at the moment.
Speaker 1: But no, I was never worried, and I'm not worried now.
Speaker 1: I'm still invested, and I'm still you know, essentially some ways,
Speaker 1: I'm still doubling down on bitcoin because you know, I
Speaker 1: don't do anything else. This is still my full time job,
Speaker 1: and it looks like I may have survived the bear market,
Speaker 1: so I should come out the other end of this. Okay,
Speaker 1: So You've touched on this at various points. But one
Speaker 1: of the remarkable things about bitcoin is sort of the
Speaker 1: community that exists surround it, and the fact that you
Speaker 1: have a bunch of people who are commenting on you
Speaker 1: know bitcoin, it's health or new coins, the underlying technology,
Speaker 1: or just the basic price movement, and when it comes
Speaker 1: to that price movement, it can be really volatile. You know, bitcoin,
Speaker 1: it's a digital currency, it's moving every day. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of excitement around the way it trades. Do you
Speaker 1: think any sort of traditional or historic financial investments are
Speaker 1: ever going to be able to match the excitement that
Speaker 1: has come with cryptocurrencies over the past few years. I
Speaker 1: mean maybe who knows, right, I mean, you can't. You
Speaker 1: can't predict this. But one thing I would say is
Speaker 1: I think the reason the bubble was so accelerated and
Speaker 1: was you know, it was such a quick, fast, crazy bubble,
Speaker 1: is that cryptocurrency is essentially broken down the wolves of Sorry,
Speaker 1: they've broken some of the rules down, so it's so
Speaker 1: easy to trade. Trading shares and stocks is quite difficult, right,
Speaker 1: you know, there's certain rules you have to follow, certain
Speaker 1: companies you have to go through. Trading gold is equally
Speaker 1: to me, appears hard. I've never done it. I mean,
Speaker 1: if you want to buy gold and silver physically, you've
Speaker 1: got to order it and have it delivered. So technology
Speaker 1: seems to make trading easier and easier over time, and
Speaker 1: crypto just seems to be the easiest thing to trade.
Speaker 1: You know, you're buying digital assets from any Internet connected device,
Speaker 1: from anywhere in the world, So it just became very
Speaker 1: easy for everyone to just get on board and get involved.
Speaker 1: There was very little regulatory framework around it. I only
Speaker 1: see technology becoming more advanced. So perhaps there will be
Speaker 1: something in the future which is similar. Who knows um,
Speaker 1: But it's very hard to predict that, right, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: wish we could predict it. I think we all wish
Speaker 1: we could. I have another question, and it's sort of
Speaker 1: dovetails with what Tracy asked about community. So you have
Speaker 1: your podcast, you have forty five thousand people who follow
Speaker 1: you on Twitter talking about bitcoin. You have, you've made
Speaker 1: your identity around it. Do you think that publicly putting
Speaker 1: oneself forward, associating themselves with an investment or a movement
Speaker 1: or a trade makes it harder to change your mind?
Speaker 1: Like if you sort of decided one day, or you
Speaker 1: came across evidence in your mind that okay, bitcoin is
Speaker 1: not going to be as big as you think it is,
Speaker 1: or for whatever reason, you thought the price had further
Speaker 1: to go down when you have that much of your
Speaker 1: identity and public identity wrapped up in the success of
Speaker 1: this thing. Does that make it harder to sort of
Speaker 1: make a rational investment decision to get out when the
Speaker 1: going is good. Not for me, I did, I think
Speaker 1: it does for a lot of people. I think if
Speaker 1: you look across crypto, there are a lot of people
Speaker 1: who probably got doubts who are not admitting it, Like
Speaker 1: people who have raised money and an I c O.
Speaker 1: On a project, they're probably thinking, do you know what,
Speaker 1: maybe this isn't a goer anymore. It's kind of strange
Speaker 1: because most people don't want to admit they're wrong, but
Speaker 1: because they're worried about the impact on their credibility. But
Speaker 1: usually if you're kind of honest and transparent and open
Speaker 1: it amit mistakes people respect you for it. The tweet storm,
Speaker 1: I did You've seen it? Right? Yeah? I mean I
Speaker 1: expected a response, not the response I did. You know?
Speaker 1: It's like eight thousand likes and three thousand retweets. Amongst that,
Speaker 1: I think there must have been like one or two
Speaker 1: negative comments where people are like, oh, you're an idiot,
Speaker 1: you know, you don't know what you're doing, blah blah, blah.
Speaker 1: Of the hundreds and hundreds of other comments, everyone was
Speaker 1: like positive, Everyone was grateful. People say thank you for
Speaker 1: doing that. It needed saying, you know, it's good that
Speaker 1: you did that. I've had you know, yourself get in touch.
Speaker 1: I've had the Guardian get in touch various other news networks.
Speaker 1: You know, I think what people actually appreciate his honesty.
Speaker 1: It just doesn't happen enough because it's it just feels wrong, right.
Speaker 1: It's really hard to admit you're wrong. But usually when
Speaker 1: you do it, it's like the weight off your shoulders.
Speaker 1: So I'd say you're right. Most people are scared, scared
Speaker 1: to do it, but I'm not. You know, if I'm
Speaker 1: wrong about bitcoin, so be it. I don't think I
Speaker 1: am wrong about bitcoin because I'm not really talking about
Speaker 1: price anymore. I'm talking about the technology, the technology and
Speaker 1: what's being trying to achieve with bitcoin, fundamentally believing even
Speaker 1: if it fails, I won't change my opinion that it
Speaker 1: was it was the right thing to support. I just
Speaker 1: won't get behind price prices anymore because price predictions are
Speaker 1: so hard. You know, that's where you can really come
Speaker 1: come and stuck. Peter, I think that was a great conversation.
Speaker 1: Really appreciate your perspective, and I do think it's very
Speaker 1: commendable that you sort of put yourself out there like this,
Speaker 1: because there have to be a lot of people in
Speaker 1: your shoes who wrote it all the way up and
Speaker 1: wrote it all the way down. I mean, there's the
Speaker 1: whole crypto Twitter community, and I don't think most of
Speaker 1: them would have come forward and talked about the money
Speaker 1: that they gained on paper and then lost afterwards. So
Speaker 1: I really do think you've done people a favor and
Speaker 1: I appreciate you coming up. So let me just tell
Speaker 1: you one story. So I had I reckon. I had
Speaker 1: over three hundred d m s on Twitter from people
Speaker 1: saying thank you, telling me about their experience, and it
Speaker 1: was the same story over and over again, just different amounts.
Speaker 1: You know, it might be somebody invested a hundred who
Speaker 1: made who got up to like thirty thousand and lost
Speaker 1: it all. But there was one person who invested I
Speaker 1: think it was six thousand, very very early, road it
Speaker 1: up to eight figures, so somewhere over ten million and
Speaker 1: lost the lot. So I think it's happened to weigh
Speaker 1: more people than than other people realize and you know,
Speaker 1: I think therefore is something that he's talking about. Especially
Speaker 1: I don't want another ball market to come and everyone thinks, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm going to make a load of money and not
Speaker 1: be aware of the risks. Because most of these crypto
Speaker 1: networks are zero sum games. Most of them are going
Speaker 1: to disappear, so you've got to be either a very
Speaker 1: good trader or happy to dump your bags onto somebody else.
Speaker 1: And you know, I think if it opens the conversation,
Speaker 1: then it was definitely worth doing. Well. I really appreciate
Speaker 1: you are joining us. Peter McCormick. Thank you, thank you,
Speaker 1: Thanks so much, Tracy. I found peter story to be
Speaker 1: really interesting because I do think that there's so many
Speaker 1: people in his shoes and nobody. You know, as I
Speaker 1: was saying at the end, not many people are willing
Speaker 1: to admit it. I think most people either psychologically just
Speaker 1: don't want to say they've lost so much money, or
Speaker 1: maybe they want to be smarter than everyone else and
Speaker 1: say they sold some at the top. But we know
Speaker 1: that the vast majority of people can't have sold at
Speaker 1: the top and they had a lot of people lost
Speaker 1: a ton of money over the last year on crypto,
Speaker 1: so it's kind of great that someone would just come
Speaker 1: out and admit it. Oh, absolutely, And I thought, you know,
Speaker 1: Peter clearly has a very optimistic attitude about his experience,
Speaker 1: and you know, he says that he's learned a lot
Speaker 1: from it. One of the interesting things that I find
Speaker 1: about the bitcoin bubble, if you know, we can call
Speaker 1: it that, is that we can. Yeah, one of the
Speaker 1: more interesting things is about just because we basically live
Speaker 1: our lives on the Internet now and people were so
Speaker 1: vocal about cryptocurrencies, and you kind of alluded to this
Speaker 1: in your question, people built up these big communities, People
Speaker 1: built new careers like blockchain experts and specialists out of this.
Speaker 1: I do think it makes the interest in crypto kind
Speaker 1: of harder to let go, because if you think back
Speaker 1: to the tech bubble, Yeah, you had a lot of people,
Speaker 1: you know, working in um tech around the early two
Speaker 1: thousands in various ways, but I don't think we had
Speaker 1: like such an online presence where it became so visible.
Speaker 1: I mean totally right. I mean, there were obviously message boards,
Speaker 1: but there are so many people associated with crypto who
Speaker 1: who went from say no one heard of them in
Speaker 1: seventeen or the beginning of two regular TV stars by
Speaker 1: the end of the year, and their entire identity is
Speaker 1: wrapped up essentially in this one trade. So how do
Speaker 1: you get off that trade if for some reason you're like,
Speaker 1: whether it's for technical reasons or just price reasons, you
Speaker 1: think it's over. You know what I think about it?
Speaker 1: A lot is an interesting parallel is remember, and we
Speaker 1: still have them from time to time, like when hedge
Speaker 1: fund managers would announce a new longer short position and
Speaker 1: get up on stage at a conference and deliver like
Speaker 1: awe slide show. We definitely still Yeah, I think they've
Speaker 1: gone down a little bit, but it's like, how do
Speaker 1: you get up on stage and tie your identity to
Speaker 1: some trade and then get out of it at the
Speaker 1: right time when you've invested so much publicly into it.
Speaker 1: I think that makes it even harder to essentially trade
Speaker 1: rationally or trade smartly. Yeah, And there's another thing that
Speaker 1: we've talked about on this podcast before which kind of
Speaker 1: feeds into this, but this idea of echo chambers existing
Speaker 1: on the internet. So you know, if you lose money,
Speaker 1: you can sort of go on a message board and
Speaker 1: find a bunch of like minded people in crypto who
Speaker 1: are telling you just to you know, hoddle or hold
Speaker 1: on for dear life, for whatever. I think it's very
Speaker 1: easy to keep telling yourself the bowl narrative in that environment. Oh,
Speaker 1: totally right. I And I think, like you know, in
Speaker 1: the end, it's kind of all the same. All the
Speaker 1: data confirms your priors, and it's really hard to fight
Speaker 1: that tied psychologically when everyone is so excited as I
Speaker 1: think of Peter's story and countless others tell. But yeah,
Speaker 1: with social media and all of this stuff, echo chambers
Speaker 1: it kind of it probably just makes it even harder. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So I guess it's it's uh, it's suitable that that
Speaker 1: digital currency was sort of the bubble for the digital age.
Speaker 1: I guess, yeah, totally right. All right, Well, this has
Speaker 1: been another edition of the ad Thoughts Podcast. I'm Tracy Alloway.
Speaker 1: You can follow me on Twitter at Tracy Alloway and
Speaker 1: I'm Joe Wisenthal. You can follow me on Twitter at
Speaker 1: The Stalwart. You should follow our guest Peter McCormick on Twitter.
Speaker 1: Definitely check out his uh tweet Stormy has it pinned
Speaker 1: to the top of his bread, where he talks about
Speaker 1: his whole experience. He's at Peter McCormick, and you should
Speaker 1: follow our producer tofur Foreheads. He's at for heads Tea
Speaker 1: on Twitter, as well as the Bloomberg head of podcast,
Speaker 1: Francesco Levie at Francesco Today. Thanks for listening.