WBD676 Audio Transcription
Can Bitcoin Fix Politics? With Troy Cross & Margot Paez
Release date: Monday 26th June
Note: the following is a transcription of my interview with Troy Cross & Margot Paez. I have reviewed the transcription but if you find any mistakes, please feel free to email me. You can listen to the original recording here.
Margot Paez is a Bitcoin Mining consultant & Troy Cross is a Professor of Philosophy, and both are Fellows at BPI. In this interview, we discuss the fracturing of political movements (particularly the progressives), why the left is in favour of CBDCs, how Bitcoin is a political tool, the Bitcoin Policy Summit, Bitcoin’s image problem, and the issues and strengths of higher education.
“The project evaluating the Gridless model, whether it’s sustainable under various price scenarios, whether it’s sustainable in the local environment with water resources, that is a vital research project for humanity. We’re talking about the potential for 10s of millions of people, let’s say conservatively, to get electricity who don’t have it… This is the kind of project we desperately need. And people aren’t doing it.”
— Troy Cross
Interview Transcription
Peter McCormack: Hi, Margot.
Margot Paez: Hi, Peter.
Peter McCormack: How are you?
Margot Paez: I'm good. Thanks for having me back.
Peter McCormack: That's okay. Hello, Troy.
Troy Cross: Hey, Peter.
Peter McCormack: How are you doing, man?
Troy Cross: I'm doing great.
Peter McCormack: Good. So, appreciate you coming in for the first meeting of the Woke Bitcoin Council!
Margot Paez: We need T-shirts.
Peter McCormack: People are going to take this seriously.
Troy Cross: I know.
Peter McCormack: They're going to be fucking fuming!
Margot Paez: It's okay, it's nothing new.
Peter McCormack: They're going to be fuming and they're going to be tapping.
Troy Cross: "Not only are they woke, it's also a council. Who appointed them?"
Danny Knowles: Foundation.
Peter McCormack: Foundation!
Margot Paez: It's the new world order. We can make this worse and worse!
Peter McCormack: So, we were talking about Danny's stalker, Derek.
Danny Knowles: Shoutout, Derek S!
Margot Paez: Oh, yeah.
Peter McCormack: I still think it's my brother.
Danny Knowles: I think it's Andrew Bailey.
Peter McCormack: Do you? You think it's Andrew Bailey?
Margot Paez: That's cute!
Danny Knowles: Well, he posted more than anyone.
Peter McCormack: I think it's my brother, it's the kind of the thing he would do. Do you know about Danny's talker? This guy comes on YouTube every show and says the weirdest stuff. So, have you got a stalker?
Margot Paez: A little bit, yes.
Peter McCormack: A little bit.
Margot Paez: I'd better not say anything because it's too scary.
Troy Cross: Oh, is this the screenshot you sent me?
Margot Paez: Yeah.
Danny Knowles: This is a real stalker?
Troy Cross: Good lord. No, this is real, this is not Derek S material.
Peter McCormack: An actual stalker?
Margot Paez: Yeah, on Twitter.
Troy Cross: Yeah, it's easy to forget how creepy guys can be.
Margot Paez: Yeah.
Troy Cross: Yeah, just super-creepy.
Peter McCormack: It's not just a guy that likes you?
Margot Paez: It can be very graphic, like explicit comment, very sexually explicit comment about me and also sometimes about you, Troy, and sometimes about Andrew Bailey as well, speaking of Andrew!
Troy Cross: I appeared in the screenshot.
Peter McCormack: Is it Derek S?
Troy Cross: Derek has a very distinctive style, and he's only into Danny.
Peter McCormack: Is this dude into some kind of woke Bitcoin group sex thing?
Margot Paez: No.
Troy Cross: It's just her!
Margot Paez: I don't know if I can even say this!
Peter McCormack: You can say it.
Danny Knowles: We're enabling it.
Peter McCormack: Everybody wants to hear it.
Troy Cross: It's actual harassment. It's way over any line for -- like, I would take out a restraining order on the guy.
Peter McCormack: Have you not blocked them?
Margot Paez: No, I have not blocked them because I don't want them to flip out and do something crazy. So, I just try to be nice.
Peter McCormack: Okay.
Margot Paez: But they don't like your penis, Troy!
Peter McCormack: They don't like your Penis?
Troy Cross: What? How did this get into the conversation?!
Peter McCormack: "Goddam it, Margot, I really hate Troy's penis!"
Margot Paez: Yeah, I don't bring these I don't bring these things up.
Peter McCormack: I also don't like Troy's penis! Well, I think you win the stalker wars.
Margot Paez: Thank you, yeah, I'll take that trophy now, thanks.
Peter McCormack: Well, anyway, welcome back to What Bitcoin Did. We loved having you on the show last time. It's good to see you again, good to pair you up here with Troy.
Margot Paez: Yeah, it's great.
Peter McCormack: I'm going to say this with warnings for the triggered people, but I'm enjoying this growth of this collective of, what do you say; liberal bitcoiners; progressive bitcoiners? I think it's a really good thing. I love that Jason's got his book out there now, it's done very well; I love this separate community he's building up. It feels to me like it's a community of people who are still rejecting a lot of what's coming from the state, but more from the left side of the political spectrum. I think it's a good thing, I think it's good for Bitcoin.
Margot Paez: Yeah, I would definitely say it's a subset of progressives that are attracted to Bitcoin in this way. I don't think all progressives are that opposed to the state or aspects of what the government is doing. I think it used to be part of that when, in the last ten years, there was more concern around privacy and surveillance on the left, internet freedoms, and a lot of that has been lost, I think, in amongst the progressive consciousness. So, I feel like these people are the ones that remember Occupy Wall Street and remember what the recession was about, and lived through that and are still angry about it.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, I feel like unfortunately, over the last handful of years, there has been a new subset group who up the angry about stuff, and they felt their way of dealing with that is shouting down and silencing people, cancelling people, rather than debating it through and talking it through. I don't consider them real progressives. I don't even know what I consider them, but their weapons of debate need defeating because they're stopping debate. It's not very useful and I think it's scarred the left quite badly over the last few years.
Troy Cross: Yeah, I don't identify with the left any more at all. I'm not comfortable with the label, liberal, I'm not comfortable with the label, progressive. I think I was at one point, but I don't know, maybe it's partly Bitcoin's influence, but I think mostly it's not. It's mostly about living inside of that movement and feeling like, "Wait a minute, this isn't who I am or what I believe in". So, while you're identifying a movement inside of Bitcoin and you're using this term which we ourselves use, like progressive bitcoiners, I think a lot of us who are friends and feel the same way about Bitcoin, have a range of feelings, but some of them share my sentiments about where the mainstream left is now, and don't identify with it any longer.
So, there isn't really a good term for us. We're like bitcoiners who share kind of classical values with what used to be termed the political left, something like that, or concerns. Our goals, our ambitions are similar, but just don't culturally or for various reasons identify with what's going on with the movement now.
Margot Paez: Yeah, and I want to say too that I think even within the progressive movement itself there is a little bit of an identity crisis, because I had this conversation several months ago with a friend, who is the Executive Director of one of the biggest progressive democratic organisations in the country, and he was saying that he was worried that the progressive movement was going to fall apart. I think that this has probably already happened, I think that there's a lot of just different groups splintering off, a lack of cohesiveness around where the progressive movement wants to go, what it stands for.
I think part of it is that there really was a de facto leader, which was Bernie Sanders, and Bernie has now really become very well integrated with the establishment Democratic Party and is not really showing that leadership anymore. He immediately endorsed Joe Biden for re-election, and the progressives in the House, like AOC, the Squad right there, they've also fully integrated into the Democratic Party and are going along with that overall messaging, even though every now and then you hear them push a little bit, push back a little bit.
I think that loss of leadership has left the progressive movement a bit disoriented and the splintering-offs are happening, and so some of them are moving towards this what you were describing, like a more authoritarian direction of silencing opponents of this top-down, you have to fall in line in a certain way, and if you don't agree with us you're the enemy. And then there's others who deep down sense that that is not the right direction, and I think those are the people who are really feeling lost and it's not just lost in terms of like, do you have like a home in a different particular group? And I think the Bitcoiners who came out of that movement are like us.
I mean, I feel it too, like I don't really identify with the direction this is going. And those are people also like Matt Taibbi, who was a darling of the left for a long time as an investigative journalist. Others like Katie Halper, who is associated with him. And I think these were people who were always critical of the Democratic Party, and that was really popular; it was okay to be critical. And since I think the pandemic, the feeling is very strong that you can't be as critical as you used to be. So, I think it's not just us in the Bitcoin space who are feeling this detachment or loss of, "Am I part of the progressives any more?" But I think even outside of that, there is this thing happening, this shift happening.
It's also on the right as well, there's an authoritarian shift in a different direction and these populist movements. So yeah, we're just like one part, one representation of all the stuff that's happening, especially in the US.
Peter McCormack: Well, there's two points I would raise on that, the first one being I think there's just a political trap. And I can imagine, not knowing how the corridors of DC work, but to get anything done you have to fall in line with your party. And so, Bernie probably could have become president. I disagree with a lot of his policies, I think he is a bit too socialist, but at the same time I don't dislike him. The DNC didn't give him the nod when he was probably the better candidate over Hillary Clinton, and so what does he do; fight them and get nothing done or fall in line and get things done?
Then I think the other point is, Trump threw a massive hand grenade into politics and I felt probably a lot of people just, for fear of him being re-elected, again fell in line. But I think that's just a trap of politics. I identify these left and right positions, but I think what's really good in Bitcoin is that actually, there's a lot of cohesion whether you're historically left or right if you're a bitcoiner. We're sat here, but we could equally have somebody who's maybe more from the right and we'd all have a great conversation, maybe disagree on certain points, but we have an anchor to work together on outside of that in the political world, whatever the topic is. It's like, okay, the left think this, the right think this, and we're going to fight on it.
The only thing I've actually seen some kind of bipartisan support is actually against what we do, which is ironically, they've come together to fight us, and I think people have come together to fight them, and I see that as a positive.
Troy Cross: Yeah, I think the positive is that I'm just less political than I was. Like, I don't think in terms of politics any more. I've really denied those labels. It's not because I've shifted on the political spectrum, it's because I guess I think politics is less relevant to my life, and I see it in a less hopeful light. I mean, I've been burned by politicians my entire life, so I wasn't exactly hopeful to begin with, but it's kind of like, "Okay, you're going to do your thing, the machine's going to operate. I'm busy building something else, I'm working on something else, a different system, it's better and it'll keep you in line", you know what I mean?
Bitcoin gives you a way to act in the world, influence reality, that's apart from the political channel. If you think about young people who are frustrated, like Occupy Wall Street, what can you do? Go out and hold a sign and say, "The system sucks. It's unfair", and then you have talks about what you should do next and those talks don't go anywhere. Bitcoin is a real thing that has real influence in the world, and you know it's real because we're getting pushback. We're getting fought in a way that these fringe youth groups, the protest groups, they just get pushed to over a few blocks from the banks that they're protesting or the meeting of world leaders, or whatever, you know what I mean? The riot police just kind of shove them over to the corner, life goes on like it never existed, it never happened. I mean, what came out of Occupy Wall Street; what actually came of it? Did we change any systems for real? No.
So, Bitcoin is kind of like, "Yeah, that's because they were trying the political action". And I'm not saying political action never succeeds. I mean, it obviously does, and we have lots of examples of that, you know, Gandhi! But Bitcoin is something different. It's an opt-in system you can invite other people into. You can disempower the corrupt political system, rather than entering as a player and pretending that you have influence when you don't really. And so, it just feels more honest as a way to engage the world.
Margot Paez: Bitcoin is a political act, though, so you're just not engaging in the political system, but you are being political by deciding to use Bitcoin, build on Bitcoin, create economies around Bitcoin, mine Bitcoin. I think all of that is a political act, and it's an act of defiance, it's a political statement, and you are voting with your money, in a way, so...
Troy Cross: It's a bloodless revolution.
Margot Paez: It's just a different way of getting your politics out there.
Peter McCormack: Well, one of the tricks of politics, I've been sucked into and burned by it recently and in the past, but one of the tricks of politics is that when you pick a side, you're part of the bureaucracy, and the bureaucracy is an animal that continues to grow, it continues to steal, it continues to oppress, it only gets worse as it gets too big. It's that old economic model of diseconomies of scale, it just gets too big so it can't operate well. But what we don't have is -- we have that push left to right that this thing grows, we don't have big to small push, but the big to small push is actually the libertarians and the bitcoiners.
The bitcoin thing is that, okay, this is a way, we're never going to change it within it, but outside of it, you can hopefully do the thing that kind of shrinks it again. That's my hope.
Troy Cross: Yeah.
Margot Paez: Yeah.
Peter McCormack: Great, we're done. All right, let's go!
Margot Paez: Yeah, I agree.
Peter McCormack: Good show, man!
Margot Paez: Shrink the state as much as possible, crush it.
Peter McCormack: We talk in left and right in terms of trying to appeal to people. And we majored over the last year on left-wing people, progressive, liberals, whatever character. And we did it for the reason that we didn't want Bitcoin to be something that was only understood by the right. I think it's really important, and I think it's taken a little bit longer for people from the left to understand it, but you notice they have and then they come into Bitcoin and maybe they do what you do, they're like, "Well, fuck the politics but I'm here for the Bitcoin". And so, I think that's a really good thing and now it's like, let's bring everyone together, you know, let's get Jason Maier sat down with Ted Cruz!
Margot Paez: Funny!
Troy Cross: Yeah, it'll be interesting to see how Washington calcifies. You know, it is pretty tribal there. We were at the Bitcoin Policy Summit, whatever, was that a couple weeks ago?
Margot Paez: Yeah, 25 April, I think it was.
Peter McCormack: How was it?
Troy Cross: Oh, it was amazing. Amazing event and props to David Zell, and Grant for putting together really a first of its kind event just on Bitcoin and why it matters. And with a range of policy people there, staffers, people from the agencies, people from the bureaucracy, and lawmakers, it's just what needed to happen. It's like a serious conversation, which was really just about Bitcoin with the DC establishment. Yeah, it was terrific, but it's hard not to notice, even though Biden's campaign manager was there, but the politicians who were there were Tom Nemmer, Cynthia Lummis, Ted Cruz.
Peter McCormack: The ones we already have.
Margot Paez: The Republicans. There was a former congressman, Tim Ryan.
Troy Cross: Tim Ryan was there.
Margot Paez: From the Democrat Party.
Troy Cross: That's right, Tim Ryan was there.
Margot Paez: He's part of the new Bitcoin Policy Institute Action Group.
Troy Cross: That's right. So, we did have representation, but Bitcoin Policy Institute, I feel, is fighting hard to not let it be captured and completely politicised, but they're fighting a really difficult battle, because when Elizabeth Warren is raising an anti-crypto army, then it's very hard for her colleagues to push back and say, "Actually, this thing might actually be helpful for some of our goals". It's naturally aligning left-right, and our hope is that we keep it neutral, or not neutral, but really multifaceted in its appeal, and that the people who go extremely hard against it will overextend themselves and then extend beyond where the population is and extend beyond where their members of their parties are and where the state government is, because they're out there.
But if I had to bet on it, I would say we fail and it becomes completely politicised, just because you don't bet against the culture war, it swallows everything. We're going to do what we're going to do, try to fight it. You can see the reality is that Bitcoin does not align with the current culture war in any particular way at all. It's so much, I think, bigger than that.
Peter McCormack: There isn't a natural fit in the cultural war because it's money, but what I have seen is that I think I can see where it will, because we see what DeSantis has done in Florida with regards to CBDCs. What was the law? Didn't they put a law in this, like outlawed?
Danny Knowles: Yeah, they wouldn't accept CBDCs within Florida.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, which I don't know what happens if the federal government decide to do one, what that challenge is, but I could see a scenario where multiple states push back on this. I mean, Texas would be another obvious one, Wyoming; I think they understand and see the dangers of it. Whereas I could then see maybe more from the left, they would see no, they wouldn't want to argue for CBDCs in that, "This is better way to distribute money to the poor", some kind of bullshit around that, some kind of lie. And then, as a rejection of CBDCs, the red states maybe say, "Well, no, what we need is Bitcoin, this is what we should be doing". So I could see it becoming that fight over, because the desire to win the election has become more important than the desire to serve the electorate.
Margot Paez: There is a progressive economic backing to that idea, I would say, because Yanis Varoufakis, who is an economist and was part of, I think, Syriza was the party in Greece, and he is supporting CBDCs and he legitimately thinks that they can handle the privacy concerns. But it's because he believes in a Green Keynesian solution to the economic issues, and the one that he thinks will solve both the issues around climate change and also the economic issues around income inequality and being able to provide certain services through government for the majority of people, like health care, education, housing.
So, I think you're right, I think there is a political alignment amongst progressives for CBDCs, just seeing how influential Yanis Varoufakis is, as the founder of Progressive International and DiEM25. And he's got people in his coalition like Noam Chomsky and Bernie Sanders. So, yeah, I think in that sense, you could definitely see more Republicans supporting Bitcoin than Democrats, at least on the progressive side, just because there is an economic push towards CBDCs.
Peter McCormack: It's a shame they don't understand how wrong they are, though.
Margot Paez: Yeah.
Troy Cross: I mean, I just taught this class on the philosophy of money, and so I can't help but see it in these terms. I mean, the big debate about whether money is a medium of exchange and some real thing, like a commodity like gold or Bitcoin, that really provides an accounting mechanism to facilitate trade, and therefore the ideal money would be money that maximises the efficiency of exchange. And that comes with a picture of history in which money arises naturally to solve the problem of coincidence of wants and facilitate trade. So, it's this kind of natural thing that exists in the world, even though all money is a fiction, it behaves as if it's a constraint on human behaviour and something that coordinates human behaviour.
Then, the picture of money as debt, and as originated and controlled by governments in its essence, and that's something that's a social convention made up by us, just debt, like, "You owe me one", "One what?" And when you say what, you've invented money. And that picture of money as debt and as a mere social convention just leads naturally into MMT, I think, because if it's just a social convention, then let's make it serve social ends. If the government is always responsible for creating money, by its very nature, then why not let money serve social ends rather than pretending it's some kind of natural constraint on human behaviour. And then once you're in MMT land and you think money is just debt and it's all made up and it's social conventions, then CBDC's seem completely natural as just a simple technological device to do money the best way you can do it.
To make the best money, just use the best technological solution, which would be the people who are responsible for money's existence, the government, and for its supply should just control its distribution, its exchanges, etc. So, there's a neat package here. And then that package can just get picked up and has been picked up by the left. It's not just, "Oh, it serves our aims", but it's also there's an entire philosophical history that rejects neoclassical economics, rejects the... And then you have up against that, Bitcoin is this resurgent barbaric relic of gold, but now in digital form, and it's like anathema. It's a narrative violation, it must be squashed, right, because it challenges. It's like, "Wait a minute, we thought we'd have this figured out. Money is just debt, it's created by governments. What is this medium of exchange, commodity thing coming back? That's disgusting, kill it". But it seems to threaten the powers that people who aspire to fix the world imagine themselves having. So, it sparks a fear response, and I think we're seeing that.
Peter McCormack: It threatens a lot of things. It threatens control, it threatens power, it threatens narrative, it threatens careers. It's a threat to a lot of things, but it's a really unthreatening thing that you can just leave alone.
Troy Cross: But you'll stay poor. There's a lot of that!
Peter McCormack: I think its main issue is that I think Bitcoin has an image problem. Full transparency, when people are like, "What do you do?" "I have a podcast". They're like, "What's it about?" "Oh, it's Bitcoin". I sometimes feel a bit embarrassed, not because I'm embarrassed about what I do, I know what they're going to think, "Okay, you're one of those guys".
Troy Cross: We both experience this all the time.
Margot Paez: In daily life, yeah. I hide all my Bitcoin stickers in my apartment when people come over!
Peter McCormack: I end up telling the story, so I try and reverse engineer. I say, "Well, it's an economics podcast, but I look at the economics, human rights, and politics through the lens of a fixed-limit currency". And they're like, "What do you mean?" I'm like, "Well, there's this fixed-limit digital currency, and that's really important, the most important part of it is that it's a fixed limit, because the government's printing money and that's causing inflation", and they're like, "Oh, I didn't know that". I'm like, "Yeah, it's the government printing money because they just can. If you had a money printer in your bedroom, you could just, would you?" "Yeah", "Well that's what the government does. But that essentially leads to theft from us and this thing's called Bitcoin".
Danny Knowles: No wonder we don't have more listeners if that's how you're selling it!
Peter McCormack: It's the age-old debate. They'll come a time, I don't know if it's next week, next year, but we will rename the show and we'll take Bitcoin out of it, because we want to create bitcoiners and we think we're serving bitcoiners, we want to serve future bitcoiners. And so, taking it out and talking about interesting subjects and just mentioning Bitcoin occasionally might get people interested. The same reason people harass Joe Rogan, "When are you going to have Saylor on, Rogan?" because they really want a bunch of people orange-pilled.
Margot Paez: Right.
Troy Cross: I mean, I think you're cringing for a good reason. That's your spidey-sense telling you you're not going to get anywhere. You're going to create a defensive reaction if you lead with Bitcoin. And why is that? Well, it's complicated, but it's the world we live in right now. I mean, that is the reality. It's the same for energy, the energy space. How many of these companies that Margot and I talked to are like, "Yeah, we do flexible load. We bring the load to the generation. It's flexible compute". I don't know if you saw the Crusoe ESG report recently. They mentioned Bitcoin, but it's mostly just flexible data centres and Bitcoin just sort of slides in there. And that's how they got it through the World Economic Forum, which featured Crusoe as this technological kind of breakthrough for climate.
Margot Paez: "Look what data centres are doing for the planet"!
Troy Cross: It's not just you in this field, it's me and philosophy of money. I mentioned Bitcoin just at the last part of my course. Of course it was the driving telos of the course; it was the end, but it's throughout. We know in order to speak to a broad audience, we have to hide the ball a bit, and we shouldn't have to, right? I mean, we shouldn't. That's bizarre that we do, but it's the world we live in.
Peter McCormack: Well, and again, I think there's multiple reasons for that. I think firstly, some people are like, "Yeah, well I heard about this five years ago, I didn't buy any and now I'm pissed off, so fuck your Bitcoin".
Margot Paez: Yeah right.
Peter McCormack: Or, they've seen some bullshit from the likes of de Vries, or whoever, some FUD, they've been convinced that we're melting polar bears.
Troy Cross: That's the one I face.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, and there's just all these different narratives and it's so boring, it's so boring.
Margot Paez: Well, it's so great to hear Troy give this advice now, but the advice that Troy gave me last year was the exact opposite!
Troy Cross: Oh, let's not talk about this!
Peter McCormack: Which was…?
Margot Paez: Well, Troy told me -- it's not all Troy's fault!
Troy Cross: Yeah, we had a lot of conversations about this. Pin this on me now!
Margot Paez: No, it wasn't Troy's fault. I wrote a thesis proposal around Bitcoin and then there was a section about, "Why me?" and I was talking with Troy about this. He's like, "Yeah, just tell him everything you're doing so he knows that you can do this", and so I was like, "Yeah, okay" type, type, type, all the things, "I've been around the world, I've been on podcasts, I've written all this stuff", etc. And then, that did not go well with my advisor; he hated it. Yeah, he said I could not do anything, no Bitcoin. I could only do what I was working on with him.
Peter McCormack: Why?
Margot Paez: Why?
Peter McCormack: Yeah.
Margot Paez: I don't know, but he said, "Absolutely not". Yeah, I don't know, it made him really angry.
Peter McCormack: Bitcoin does make some people angry.
Margot Paez: Yeah, it made him really angry, and then he took my funding away.
Peter McCormack: Who the fuck is this guy?
Troy Cross: Can I say, first of all, there are two people sitting in this chair. One is Margot, the other is Jyn Urso.
Margot Paez: Oh, yeah, on Twitter.
Troy Cross: And well, yeah, okay, but you are both of these people.
Margot Paez: Yeah, I'm both.
Troy Cross: They're just entirely different. You're like a superhero.
Peter McCormack: Like Eminem and Slim Shady!
Margot Paez: Yeah, except I don't know how to rap!
Troy Cross: So, I was like, the person you're telling me about, is Margot is having some disagreements with her advisor. And she's in this -- advisor/advisee relationships are complicated and can often be like this, where it's really like exploitative labour a lot of the times. Sometimes it can be literally exploitative, and sometimes it's just in that grey zone. But you're in a subservient position because you depend on your advisor for basically everything. You need a good letter, you need their support for your research and that's always abused.
So, I'm watching Jyn Urso just take the Bitcoin world by storm. I think Margot is amazing, an incredible addition to this space, but also working with Margot behind the scenes, and she's meticulous with reviewing literature and critique. I mean, she's just smart, super-sharp, super-careful, everything you want in a researcher, works incredibly hard, writes well, is kind of gifted across the sciences and the humanities, right? I'm like, "You're amazing", and the community recognises it. And Margot has a lot of fans in the UK, Margot has fans.
Peter McCormack: Actual fans.
Margot Paez: Actual fans.
Troy Cross: And I'm watching her kind of suffer under the thumb of this abusive advisor, and at the same time I'm watching her flourish and be beloved, and fighting really hard against all sides; Margot takes it from all sides, including being stalked. But I'm watching this and it's just frustrating, and my impulse, of course I was like, "Do what you want to do, Margot, do what you want to do". But it's hard to watch somebody get exploited who is this kickass in real life. And I wish you were Jyn Urso side, or just empowered, and yeah, that didn't go so well, because people who are in power don't want to give up that control.
Peter McCormack: Can't you tell this advisor to go fuck himself and then do your own thing?
Troy Cross: No!
Margot Paez: Well, I kind of did and that's kind of what happened. But it was it was really, really difficult. I mean, I basically was ready to give up everything I was doing in Bitcoin for my advisor because I really wanted my PhD. And I told him at one point, I said, "Fine, I love this but I'm going to stop doing it because what we're working on is important and I want to finish this model". And he was like, "Good". But that was before he told me he was going to take all my funding away, and he lied to me, it's my opinion that he lied to me. My sister's a lawyer. She said, "I don't want you to be sued for defamation". So, it is my opinion, it is my feeling that he did, you know, that's not a fact, it's just an opinion.
Troy Cross: Great situation. So, I think that he kind of used me to finish something to get some funding for the group and then when I succeeded at that, he didn't really have any use for me any more.
Peter McCormack: He sounds like a dick!
Troy Cross: Absolutely, that's my conclusion.
Peter McCormack: Total dick.
Margot Paez: And I was like just trying to find ways to please him but that wasn't quite working. So, yeah, in the end I had to have a meeting with him in the department and I tried to get him to agree to this contract between advisor and advisee, and he refused, and I said he was lying about something, and he was like, "You can't make me be her advisor". And he brought my thesis proposal, the Bitcoin thesis proposal, he brought it to the meeting with him. I was so shocked, like, "What did I do? What did I say in that, that offended you so much that you literally came to the meeting with this in your folder?" You know, he opened the folder, he had random papers on one side and on the other side he had the Bitcoin proposal in there. And I managed to put him in a position where he couldn't really make me look bad and so he never got to. But yeah, he was like, "You can't make me be her advisor and I want to leave, goodbye", and that was the end of my research.
Peter McCormack: So, he quit?
Margot Paez: Yeah. I mean, he quit me.
Peter McCormack: He quit you.
Margot Paez: He basically said, "I'm not going to be your advisor any more".
Peter McCormack: Sounds like the best scenario. So, then what happened?
Margot Paez: So, then I went on leave from the university very suddenly because I found out that I didn't have funding on the day that I was expecting for my stipend to be in my bank account. And I went to the finance office and was like, "Hi, I didn't get paid, I think there was an error", and it turned out, "No, he explicitly said he was not supporting you this semester". It was a total shock. And so all of a sudden I had no money, I had an apartment contract and lease and was in Atlanta like, "Oh my gosh, what am I going to do now?" and I have to go on leave because the university -- there was an error where I thought I had a GRA, and it was somehow I got all of my -- my tuition had been covered with a tuition waiver, and then it turned out that was an error, and so I was unenrolled from the university automatically overnight once they made the correction and didn't warn me. I lost my health insurance.
Troy Cross: She got rugged.
Margot Paez: Yeah, I got rugged, massively.
Peter McCormack: You got rugged hard.
Margot Paez: It was a massive shitcoin experience. I got rugged by my advisor, and so I was like, "Well, I've got to do something". So, I've been on leave and I'm still doing Bitcoin research, I'm totally focused on that now, which is really great, that makes me really happy. Starting to do some consulting work with a couple, well, definitely with one mining company, just signed a contract with them, and hopefully we'll be doing more with another company down the line.
Peter McCormack: You ain't ever going back!
Margot Paez: And I got an offer to finish my thesis at the University of Oxford, but that wouldn't be until 2024 because I still have to go through the formal application process.
Peter McCormack: Oxford, UK?
Margot Paez: Yeah.
Peter McCormack: You didn't get any help from Meltem, did you, with that?
Margot Paez: No.
Peter McCormack: I'm sure she talks there.
Margot Paez: There's a secret bitcoiner, climate scientist, secret scientist, bitcoiner.
Troy Cross: Say no more, Margot, let's not jeopardise this thing.
Margot Paez: But we don't know.
Peter McCormack: A hero. I love this person.
Margot Paez: We don't know. I mean, it's all up in the air, there's no guarantee that this will really happen, but it was nice to get that offer. So, yeah, I can't say.
Peter McCormack: But is it the funding you need to finish your PhD, or do you need a university as well? Can you finish independently?
Margot Paez: I could finish it at Georgia Tech. I need an advisor. Although, I think if I just show up to some advisor and be like, "Look, I've got these three papers outlined, I don't really need much help. And if I have my own funding, that's even better".
Peter McCormack: How much is the funding?
Margot Paez: It's like $30,000 a year.
Peter McCormack: And how many more years?
Margot Paez: Well, it depends on where I end up, but I would like to say one year to finish up to put this thesis together.
Peter McCormack: I mean, we'll give you that. This is exactly what we said in the last interview!
Margot Paez: I know, and I had to stop that because my advisor, I couldn't even do that research I wanted to do because I was trying to do my PhD.
Peter McCormack: What's the thesis of the PhD?
Troy Cross: You've got to tell them about the thesis.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, what is the thesis?
Troy Cross: It's a pretty cool proposal, this thing that was brought to the meeting.
Margot Paez: Oh, that one, yeah. So, well, there were kind of two things to that, because I gave this whole philosophical, ecological, economic background to it to build up the story. And so, that was all framed under ecological economics and basically asking the question, "Is Bitcoin a money that works within the realm of ecological economics?" And so then from there, I built out the actual thesis question, which was based off of what Gridless is doing on the African continent, like in Kenya and other places, Zambia, and trying to understand whether monetising all of this baseload is sustainable; and then, what does that look like? So, sustainable both in terms of the climate side, you know, what are the climate impacts, regional climate impacts on all those water resources, because that's hydropower and these are many hydropower plants.
Then the other is, is it monetarily sustainable, because there's a lot of variables that go into play here in terms of the hashrate, the difficulty adjustment. And the question is, "What happens if you do scale this out; can it handle increases in difficulty adjustment; can it handle decreases in price or constant price or price increases, or all this other hashrate coming on elsewhere; can it compete and sustain it over X number of years, before you then can connect all of the communities that are there? Because the idea with Gridless is that you need a way to monetise this baseload until the actual people up-takers, the residents and businesses, have refrigerators, have washers and dryers, whatever, and have the connection to the grid. Until that point, you need a buyer, right?
So, this is a really important question, you have to model the network, and it doesn't just apply to Gridless, it can apply to landfills. And that's the other thing I've been doing, is I have some preliminary results on this landfill life cycle assessment that I've been doing with Harald Rauter, which can fit into that. And that model can also answer questions around landfill mining. So, yeah, that's kind of the idea of what I had presented and my advisor hated it.
Troy Cross: Can I just stop you?
Peter McCormack: Why; did he give a reason why he hated it?
Margot Paez: Well, okay first, which was fair, he kind of said that I added on his model as an afterthought, which was true! But I told him, I said, "Look, it doesn't have to be this. This is the general idea". And, yeah, so he said that that was one reason, but then he never actually did give me reasons why in the end --
Peter McCormack: Margot, you've got to complete this. If you can't get the money, we will give you the money. I said that to you last time and I stand by that. If you can't get the money, come to us, we'll get you the money. But you've got to do it.
Margot Paez: Yeah.
Peter McCormack: But let's see what happens at Oxford. If it doesn't work out, come back to us.
Margot Paez: Okay. Well, Oxford, I have to apply in the fall. So, for now I'm enrolled for three units in the fall at Georgia Tech. I don't have an advisor, but I'm still working on my research and working in the industry.
Peter McCormack: Does the advisor have to be at Georgia Tech?
Margot Paez: I think the handbook says I need three people on my committee from the department. I'm in the Civil and Environmental Engineering department. So, I don't know. I have to go back and look and see, do I really need one of those advisors, one of those people be my advisor and in the department? I don't know. But yeah, I have to find somebody. But if I had my own funding basically to fund my GRA, then it's a lot easier, because I can just say, "Look, you just need to supervise me and I have people I'm collaborating with and I basically know what I'm talking about and you don't have to take any risk on me".
Peter McCormack: It's $30,000, that's not hard to get.
Margot Paez: Yeah.
Peter McCormack: We will get you that.
Margot Paez: It's like 1 bitcoin.
Peter McCormack: Yeah.
Margot Paez: Yeah, per year.
Peter McCormack: We will get you that. You just tell us when you need it and we will make that happen.
Margot Paez: Okay.
Peter McCormack: But I said this to you a year-and-a-half ago and you didn't come back to me, which is cool.
Margot Paez: I know, because for one thing, I was trying to make sure the data was there, and there are issues with the data that I need for ERCOT because of the way miners participate. You know they're not all participating in the demand response programme, some of them are just doing price response and they're not actually enrolled. So, that data is not publicly available. You have to go to each of those mining companies to do that, and we made some progress on that. But then the other thing was that I was really trying to make my advisor happy. So, I was trying to focus on my research with him and do the things he asked me to do. And it didn't work out.
Peter McCormack: It doesn't sound like that should be what the role between an advisor and advisee is, it shouldn't be you making them happy, it should be them supporting you in delivering your thesis.
Troy Cross: You're so naïve, Peter!
Margot Paez: Yeah, Peter!
Peter McCormack: I know I'm naïve, but that's how I imagine you would be.
Margot Paez: I'm a slave.
Troy Cross: Of course I would, and that's also why I'm very unusual in the Academy. I mean, it's a system of ring-kissing. It's so fiat, I hate to say that, but it's true. I mean, I don't mean the entire Academy, I mean the structure of labour.
Margot Paez: It's like a feudal system.
Troy Cross: It's a feudal system, right. It's the opposite of a free market, because if you have problems with your advisor, you don't actually have a lot of alternatives. You have to convince somebody to work with you, and it's very difficult to switch. And so, these stories are not uncommon because of the structure. I think what Margot has just described, the project, evaluating the Gridless model, whether it's sustainable under various price scenarios, whether it's sustainable in the local environment with water resources, that is a vital research project for humanity.
Peter McCormack: Of course.
Troy Cross: We're talking about the potential for tens of millions of people, let's say conservatively, to get electricity who don't have it. And we need to ask the question, like, "What would that entail? Is that realistic?" And we need modellers. I don't have modelling skills, I'm just a philosopher, you know? This is a project we desperately need and people aren't doing it.
Peter McCormack: We had Erik Hersman in here yesterday, right?
Troy Cross: Oh, yesterday.
Peter McCormack: 600 million people, he said, in Africa alone. Was it 1.2 billion people don't have electricity worldwide? And he said about 600 million in Africa. My numbers might be slightly wrong, but it was something along those lines. Of course, that is an important project.
Troy Cross: Important is an understatement.
Peter McCormack: The problem is, it's the leap from magic internet money to small-scale mining operations connecting to mini-grids in Africa, to provide electricity by being the last resort. You've got to go on a long journey to go from one to the other, and some people just don't want to take that first step. There's like a force field at Bitcoin. They're like, "I'm not stepping beyond it".
Troy Cross: I know.
Peter McCormack: And it's like every time now somebody says to me, "Is now a good time to buy Bitcoin?" I constantly say, "No, just go and learn about it, that's all you need to do. Just go and read a book, go and listen to a podcast, learn about it. You'll figure out the right time, just go and learn about it". And he obviously didn't want to learn about it. Is he like some old fuddy-duddy?
Margot Paez: I had told him about it before and he was like, "Well, what's the point? I can just use Western Union". He is a boomer.
Peter McCormack: He doesn't want to learn. Some people don't want to learn.
Margot Paez: He did kind of say he didn't want to learn.
Troy Cross: That's fine. Bitcoin is not for him.
Margot Paez: It's not for him, but he can't see that. It was unfortunate because he did a lot of work. He has done a lot of work on the African continent, 30 years of work, and it was a missed opportunity for him. And I told him, I could bring money. I could find a way through the industry to bring money to fund us, because he's excellent and has excellent research skills, an excellent CV. I mean, he would be an excellent asset to what miners are doing on the continent there.
Peter McCormack: But he isn't, so he's gone.
Margot Paez: He's gone.
Peter McCormack: See you later, find the next one.
Troy Cross: I mean, this is kind of the big picture, is we need studies to help people cross that bridge. At the base level, we need modelling that shows what the pace of rollout of new generation of electricity is, with and without Bitcoin mining, and what the impacts are on the local environment; we precisely need that kind of work. And then we need ways to make that work accessible and available to policymakers, I mean particularly policymakers across Africa, right? But also aid organisations and other people who are working on energy poverty.
So, I think of it like a stack. I think that the academic work is at the bottom of the stack. That's the most rigorous investigation of the truth that we have. We need rigorous modelling, it goes through peer review, etc. People don't believe it when it comes from a business. A business says like, "We're doing this". "Yeah, businesses say a lot of things", and people have been burned by promises, particularly in the crypto world of, "We're going to solve X problem with crypto. In Africa, we're going to fix X environmental problem with crypto". And they're so leery of being pitched for raising, that if you give them information that's coming from a company, they just discredit it, even if it's real, they're just conditioned to.
So, we need that base layer. On top of that base layer, we've got things like BPI and then other forms of communication. But yeah, I think it's essential. We don't have a lot of people doing it because of the reputational risk that exists around it. And Margot is one of the very few, but also it kind of reinforces the reputational risk problem, right? You can see why other people aren't working on it when you hear this story.
Peter McCormack: So, this whole way the -- you call it the Academy?
Troy Cross: Yeah.
Margot Paez: Yes, the Academy.
Peter McCormack: Why is it called the Academy?
Troy Cross: I don't know, maybe it's after Plato's Academy. I don't know, it's a good question. I've never thought about it.
Peter McCormack: But the whole kind of higher education institution seems to me when I talk to you, and I did an interview with Bret Weinstein once about what happened at Evergreen, and I've noted a lot of different things going on. But it seems to be an institution of radicalising people into doing the opposite of what they should be doing, which is thinking, debating, testing, learning and delivering an answer. It seems to be now radicalising people around doing the opposite, not thinking, not challenging and following a very strict set of incentive models to qualify as morons. That's what it feels like.
Margot Paez: There are smart people.
Troy Cross: Very smart people.
Peter McCormack: Trapped.
Margot Paez: But I think the Academy, the university system, is not designed to make people feel comfortable with dissent. I think that you're specifically chosen and hazed and tortured because they want people who will put up with so many horrible things just because they want to find a person who isn't going to speak up against things that they don't like. At least, that has been my experience and that's been very difficult for me because I'm not really good at that.
Peter McCormack: Fuck them, burn it all down, burn all this shit down!
Margot Paez: Yeah, I basically became a scientist because of Carl Sagan. So, when you go from thinking science is this romantic concept, that it's a way of thinking, it's a way of living, it's a way of understanding the world, and then you go to the university graduate school, and it's not like that. It's a bunch of hoops and there is science, there is good science happening, but there's this politics that overlays on top and permeates it, and I think that is what makes it a really difficult environment for a lot of, I think, creative people and different outside thinkers.
Peter McCormack: Burn that shit down!
Troy Cross: I disagree, I wouldn't burn it down.
Peter McCormack: I mean, look, I saw it with my kids at school. We've got Connor here, I'll tell you a little story about him. He was doing drama and he had to do a monologue, and he found this piece he wanted to do, it was a historical piece. And he was told he couldn't do it because it might offend black people in the audience, because it was from an era of racism. But it was a story talking about the era of racism, so the monologue reflected the period of time. It's a piece of art history and he liked the monologue because there was an actor who had done it, what was his name Sherman? But anyway, whatever it was, it was almost like these people were like, "You can't tell this piece of history now because if you do, you're going to tell a story about racism". But it's like, this is real and what happened. I turned around to Connor and I was like, "Just tell him, 'Fuck you, I'm not doing anything then', challenge them", and he didn't want to and I understand why, because you're not taught any more now to dissent and challenge.
When I was there, we used to have debating classes, you know, we were given that opportunity. It's all gone.
Troy Cross: Well, there is still vigorous debate in the Academy. Let me just defend the Academy and also back up what you're saying in a way. I mean, there's still vigorous debate in the Academy. It's within prescribed limits.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, of course.
Troy Cross: And those limits have definitely shrunk. I think we all recognise where debates cross a line and become just hateful. At some point, you have this refrain, which is like, "Why are you debating my right to exist?" and that has certain applications. I don't think we would tolerate a debate on slavery right now, for instance. So, we all have some line and that line has just been compressed. But no, the Academy is full of smart people and let me just make a case for why we need it. We need the Academy.
Peter McCormack: Why can't you burn it down and rebuild it?
Troy Cross: Well, I think that's not going to be easy. I guess I've found myself -- okay, there are weird parallels here with other fiat institutions that I would feel very comfortable burning down, but this one I'm inside and maybe I don't quite want to light it on fire just yet.
Peter McCormack: But you just got out, man.
Troy Cross: But I'm not really out.
Margot Paez: He's starting to go back in!
Troy Cross: I'm teaching in the fall.
Peter McCormack: "Once I get out, they pull me back in!"
Margot Paez: Can't escape.
Troy Cross: Totally. But let me just tell a little story here. Economically, how have we gotten to this point; why do we live in the modern world we live in here? It's because, and even Plato says this, and Aristotle says this, we learn to specialise in trade. And this is Adam Smith, too. It's the basis of economic development. You don't do everything yourself. You specialise in one thing, you become very good at it, you trade for everything else. Collectively, wealth explodes. I asked one of my econ colleagues a long time ago, "What are the results in your field?" And she was like, "Well, we have one result that's really solid, and that is that everybody is better off doing the thing they're best at and pretty much nothing else, and trading, and that goes for individuals and it goes for nations". I'm like, "Well, I see the same thing for knowledge". We don't try to know everything. I mean, I know you kind of do on the show.
Peter McCormack: No, I don't.
Troy Cross: There's only so deep you can go with each subject. You have subject matter experts come in here do go deep, and then you talk to them and synthesise and make something out of it. But that's how we got here. Everybody's specialising and learning something, like quantum mechanics, or how fruit flies reproduce, or how computers work, or how to make chips. Imagine trying to do all this shit yourself; it's just freaking impossible. So, the method of dividing knowledge and trading for it is the Academy. That's what the Academy does. It's the kind of formalisation of that specialty and trading. It's a certification of the kind of expertise that is institutionally given where you can trust it. It's kind of like the FDA saying, "We've inspected this food, it's okay". It's not just bullshit artists. This is why we have medicine rather than just people passing down like, "Hey, this worked for me".
So, the Academy is supposed to be this kind of institutionalisation of both the production of knowledge, it's a big knowledge factory, you've got a bunch of knowledge workers producing knowledge widgets, which are then stamped with quality control and traded, and that is a really efficient way for humanity to progress rather than us doing it on our own. What I see happening with the breakdown of trust, which comes from the politicisation of a lot of intellectual life in the Academy, that makes people mistrust it who aren't part of that political tribe, or even who are, they don't believe the certification anymore. They think the certification just means, "I approve it for my political purposes", rather than, "I approve it because it's legitimate knowledge".
Then they have to do the equivalent of onshoring. Basically, we're de-globalising in production because we don't trust supply chains any more and because we're worried about war breaking out, or disruptions from whatever climate events or whatever weather events. In the same way, we're onshoring knowledge epistemically, because we're losing faith in these institutions that produced it. And in both cases, you lose massive amounts of efficiency. It's like a step backwards in terms of progress when you go from specialising in trading to having to do everything and inspect everything yourself, because you don't have an FDA, so you've got to hunt down the person you trust and ask them, "Well, what do you think about this?" That's the equivalent of making everything in America or making everything in your backyard. Suddenly we're all survivalists, but on an epistemic level.
So, these institutions are vital because they allow us to be most efficient with our investigation of the world, right? And that's how we got here. We wouldn't be living in this world if we didn't have these institutions of trust. And that's why I think they've got to be reformed. Maybe they have to be burnt down, but I think that's kind of like saying, "Let's just cut off all trade ties and demolish the institutions of trade and make everything here". That's a radical move.
Peter McCormack: I think if the reform comes, it comes from the fact that people will just naturally stop going to university. I mean, there is a real big discussion and debate around AI. Lots of new things come along and you jump on the bandwagon and talk about it for a while. But AI now is blowing my mind constantly.
Troy Cross: It's awesome.
Peter McCormack: And I look at my daughter, she's a 13-year-old at school, and I'm thinking, "The next five, six, seven years of your schooling might be wasted, because we're teaching you for a world that won't exist in seven years, and we should be teaching you for that world". What are the tools and skills she's going to need in seven years in a world which is dominated by AI and automated systems?
Troy Cross: Now you're speaking my love language, because I think this is exactly the question. I mean this is why I love AI really because it is forcing us to de-bullshit-ify education, because these are exactly the questions we need to be asking, "Well, why weren't we training people all along in a way that answers to this question?"
Peter McCormack: Dude there was a TED talk years ago. Sadly the guy's died now. He went on, he was a teacher and he talked about dance. Have you ever seen this guy?
Troy Cross: No.
Peter McCormack: Do you remember this guy?
Danny Knowles: I think you've shown me.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, it's the most amazing TED Talk. You should watch it after we've done this, right? And he says, "Some kids want to dance; we should teach them to dance, we're going to need dancers". He said, "Look how much the world has changed in the last ten years. It's going to change so much in the next ten years and we're teaching kids to remember facts". He was right then and I swear it was about ten years ago, this TED talk. It's even worse now. At best, just say, "Do what you want to do. Just do sports or dance or play with computers", but why are we teaching?
The maths that she does now, I don't use any of that in my life, and I need to use less now. English. There's so many different skills they don't need any more. But the kid that comes out who's been fucking around with AI for five, six years or playing with computers, or has some other kind of decent skill will be set up. I mean, what's going to happen to all these university courses, accountancy practices, when you're accounting someone by AI?
Troy Cross: I know, I love it.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, I love it, but...
Troy Cross: Disrupt away.
Peter McCormack: So, it might completely disrupt universities, "There's no point going to learn this because there's no job at the end of this for me".
Troy Cross: So much of universities are not about learning. This is what you learn on the inside of these institutions, is that the teaching and learning is a very small part of the institution.
Peter McCormack: What is it then?
Troy Cross: Well, take the big institutions, they have endowments, they're basically hedge funds that get tax breaks because they are educational. But you take something with like a $30 billion endowment; that's an educational institution, they've only got a few thousand students, come on! No, but they're also big grant machines. They're taking in grants from the government or from private sources, producing research, it's sometimes in collaboration with industry, right? So, all that stuff just cranks away. So, many people in the Academy are not teaching anyone. And then you realise tuition doesn't really pay the bills for most major institutions. That's not what's funding them.
So, no, they're hedge funds. They're invested in Bitcoin. Like Harvard and Yale are in Bitcoin and Ethereum. They're going to survive, they're going to continue providing an education that certifies people as the cool people. A lot of what education does is just, it's admissions. If you get in, you match some profile of appropriate person for leadership and jobs.
Margot Paez: And management.
Troy Cross: And management. So, the degree is really just certification of your admission. And maybe that system will also collapse, but it's still very powerful, right? Just the branding, you're just like, "Okay, you're Ivy League, or whatever, and that means you're a safe bet". And a lot of that just has nothing to do with them actually learning anything. So, you can go through all this busy work in four years that doesn't really matter for your prospects, but it shows that you show up, turn papers in, and most of all, you got accepted by that place.
Peter McCormack: Comply.
Troy Cross: If you think of this as all wasteful from an economic perspective, like if that just went away, would anybody be worse off? You would just have to do a little more work at HR in recruitment, you'd have to do a little more research yourself and do a better job interviewing, right? So, it's two societies, one of which carries this whole baggage, and one of which just has a little bit more beefed-up front office of their corporations. That one's going to do better in the long run if it's just bullshit, but it'll still carry on for a long time because of the endowments.
Peter McCormack: Burn it down, burn it all down!
Troy Cross: I'm not really defending it, am I, I'm just kind of piling on --
Margot Paez: It creates an additional class of people, I think, that are designed to maintain the status quo even I think across society. And there's been people who have studied this and it was called the professional-managerial class, and there was this really great physicist who wrote about it and I can't remember his name, unfortunately, but it's just this idea that you go through the academic system and you get through graduate school, you become a professor, or whatever, and you're part of the system in a sense that because your training is basically not to make waves, not to challenge things, you're going to be one of those people that's going to ensure that society doesn't change.
Peter McCormack: I mean Karl Marx had names for the two groups of people.
Troy Cross: The same thing holds true at like Goldman. You have to kiss the ring of the people in upper management, and it's true of any large organisation. Tenure is the big breaking point, well there are many. You have to get a job. In order to get a job, you have to please your advisor. Your advisor writes a letter for you that's very important for you to get interviews.
Margot Paez: That's the only person who can say whether you can graduate or not. Literally, if they're not happy with you, they will keep you forever until you give up.
Peter McCormack: Fuck them, get out of this. You're already a superstar, we already love you, everybody loves you in Bitcoin pretty much, apart from the ones who are reticent to agreeing to some ideas. But it just seems like this is a sunk cost and this is a waste of time. I think you could go and write the exact same thesis and it just means you won't get some letters after your name, but it's still out there, it's still useful to everyone. I think you just get on with it, and we'll give you the money to get on with it, and we will support you to do that. Just do what you want to do. I mean, I'm a terrible advisor, by the way!
Troy Cross: Yeah. She's going to blame you in a later podcast!
Margot Paez: I will!
Peter McCormack: Blame me in a later podcast, but we would support everything you want to do, emotionally, financially, however much you need, but just fuck this shit.
Margot Paez: Yeah, it's torture.
Peter McCormack: All right, I'm calling this because we're going to do another one tonight. Troy, listen, love you both, great to see you, this was awesome. I didn't even look at my notes once, great conversation. Done!
