Environmentalist Margot Paez describes her own Bitcoin journey and how inclusion is not just “wake up ideology”.
As Bitcoiners, we often repeat the “Bitcoin fixes this” mantra, and indeed, it solves a lot of problems. The problem with this sentence is not whether Bitcoin fixes things, but asking “for whom?” If we find ourselves in an echo chamber, we are monitoring the benefits of Bitcoin and what it can do for everyone.
Margot Paez is a brilliant environmentalist and outspoken Bitcoiner. Paez received master’s degrees in physics and ethnomusicology and is currently completing a doctorate in civil engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. She has proven to be one of the MVPs in Bitcoin due to her extensive research on the intersection of Bitcoin mining and energy use. She continues to generously donate her time and resources to provide an intricate framework to influence bipartisan Bitcoin policy.
Paez offers a unique perspective that is unmatched in the Bitcoin space. In October 2022, Páez spoke on a panel appropriately titled, “Can Bitcoin help save the planet?” at the UK Bitcoin Conference in Scotland. He not only contributed amazing facts related to Bitcoin mining and the environment, but he did so in an eloquent and accessible way. She is a passionate Bitcoiner in a community where various subcultures can sometimes obscure important truths. Paez does an amazing job helping make Bitcoin for everyone.
She and I had the opportunity to discuss some hot topics, such as Bitcoin mining and energy consumption, whether Bitcoin is really as bad as many progressives think it is, and whether or not there is a male-dominated bias in Bitcoin.
How did you first learn about Bitcoin and what specifically drew you to it?
I first learned about Bitcoin in early 2010′. It was a Slashdot post or when WikiLeaks decided to use Bitcoin after (Julian) Assange was banned from the banking system. There were Bitcoiners at the “Audit The Fed” rally that took place in Occupy Los Angeles. There are two things from that event that I remember. First, someone had a Bitcoin tag on their belongings, which I photographed, and second, people burning dollar bills, which I also filmed.
Occupy brought together people from very different backgrounds through their mutual hatred of banks. Sometime before 2014 I actually tried to mine bitcoin but didn’t really get the point and thought it was just another random open source project. I was interested in hardware and mesh networking at the time and didn’t think there was much more to money than some people not having enough of it.
This all changed in 2018 when I saw content creators being removed. Some were creators I sympathized with and others were people I didn’t like. I quickly learned that in order to accept payments online, I really only had two options: PayPal or Stripe. If you lose access to any of these, you could be completely locked out of the payment processing network. Once it’s on the bad list, it stays there for about five years and the credit card companies manage these lists. In response to this, I built a content creation platform that incorporated BTCPay Server. This forced me to really understand how to send and receive money using bitcoin and that’s when I really started taking Bitcoin seriously. It was a long journey, but part of it was that I had no foundation in economics or monetary history to build on from the start. I was just a naive computer nerd who loved the freedom and openness of the internet. Bitcoin, for me, helps keep the internet free.
As an environmentalist, what is your perspective on how Bitcoin, specifically bitcoin mining, positively or negatively affects the environment?
Bitcoin is a technology. You can do good things, you can do bad things. What we decide to do with it is what determines its positive or negative effects on the planet and humanity. Some miners chose to grow too fast without considering their environmental impact. Fortunately, the way Proof of Work works is that it has a built-in mechanism to keep this high time preference in check. So while we have seen miners make bad decisions in the past, I think miners are starting to realize that they will perish if they grow too fast. As a result, there is hope that Bitcoin can have a positive impact on the environment. Our current monetary and economic system does not work this way. The existing system only prioritizes the present over the future. It promotes rapid growth and profit maximization at all costs. There is no mechanism to kill players who didn’t think long term or took too much risk. More importantly, with proof of work, there is no bailout for failing miners.
Due to the fact that bitcoin miners are forced to find the cheapest electricity, they feel downward pressure due to difficulty adjustment and the near-perfect competition market dynamics of mining, they are driven to waste energy. This turns out to be very helpful for the environment because many of these energy sources are biomethane, like in landfills, livestock waste, etc. Anthropogenic methane is the number two source of global warming, second only to carbon dioxide. If we are trying to avoid tipping points, then it makes sense that we want to try to buy some time and reduce the warming potential in the short term. Bitcoin miners are very flexible and location independent. They can monetize the initial phase of a methane capture system that takes methane gas and converts it into electricity.
In a market economy, referring to solar and wind generators having to compete with each other when they produce power, how are they going to survive if the price of their product drops to zero or even negative value in some markets? ? Bitcoin miners can help support these renewable energy generators as a secondary source of income that increases ROI. Some companies are already trying to do this. The problem is educating the energy industry on the use cases of bitcoin mining and that takes time. The anti-bitcoin political environment and cryptocurrency scams like FTX make potential partners wary of getting involved with miners. This is unfortunate because this is a missed opportunity to meet our decarbonization goals.
Electricity grids that are transitioning from conventional thermal power generators, such as coal and natural gas, to renewable energy sources, such as solar and wind, need flexibility on the demand side. Bitcoin miners are useful and can help stabilize the grid so more wind and solar power can be connected.
How do you normally respond to those who disdain Bitcoin? How do you concisely present the case for Bitcoin from a progressive point of view?
I have had very little success in my own circle of friends. They are all too dogmatic in their beliefs about the economic system to think that Bitcoin could be of any use to them. In fact, I still hide all my Bitcoin stickers and copies of Bitcoin Magazine when a non-Bitcoin friend comes over. He’s probably a wimp, but I don’t have that many friends in real life, I can’t afford to lose them over Bitcoin. The best argument I can make is for people who are not as emotionally invested in our economic problems and are willing to listen to a different opinion: Bitcoin has social value for anyone who has ever been left out of the banking system or had their bank . deposits frozen and stolen from them. It has the ability to run on wasted energy, which means it can help us mitigate methane emissions and save time. If you don’t like what you see, you should at least know that, fundamentally, Bitcoin has no ideology and anyone can participate. As more people use bitcoin who care about climate change and the environment, it means that the likelihood that Bitcoin is good for the climate and the planet in general increases. Bitcoin is for everyone, Bitcoin is for enemies.
In your opinion, why is it important to close the gender gap in interest and adoption of Bitcoin?
I think when Bitcoiners come out saying, “Bitcoin is for everyone! It’s inclusive! It’s for the people of the Global South!” and the people you are trying to convince see a room full of white American and European men, it raises questions about whether Bitcoin is really for anyone. Part of this is a messaging problem. Part of this is that finance and technology are, unfortunately, male-dominated spaces.
However, if Bitcoin is truly for anyone or everyone, then we need to see more people representing Bitcoin who are women, people of color, LGBTQ+, disabled, etc. I know some people are offended by this and think it’s “awakened ideology” but it really isn’t. Bitcoin adoption is going to struggle if we don’t have the right ambassadors. They are just facts. The facts hurt fragile egos, sometimes, but that doesn’t make them any less true.
This is a guest post by Becca Bratcher. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.