The PhD Data Bitcoin's Critics Don't Want to See w/ Dr. Margot Paez
Show Notes
🔗 Dr. Margot Paez:
X (Twitter): https://x.com/jyn_urso
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/margotpaez/
BPI Profile: https://www.btcpolicy.org/authors/margot-paez
📄 PhD Thesis: https://github.com/dmrobotix/phd/blob/main/dissertation.pdf
In this episode of HashrateUp, Jesse sits down with Dr. Margot Paez, PhD researcher and fellow at the Bitcoin Policy Institute, to dig into the first empirical study of Bitcoin mining load flexibility across North American facilities.
Dr. Paez collected hourly energy consumption data from 21 Bitcoin mining facilities and built a full network simulation model to study how miners respond to real-time price signals, curtailment incentives, and grid conditions. The conversation covers what the data actually shows about miner flexibility, why Texas facilities outperform the rest, what grid operators in other regions are getting wrong, and how the ongoing shift of public miners toward AI workloads threatens to permanently reduce one of the grid's most valuable flexible loads.
The episode also explores the parallels between Bitcoin mining energy FUD and the emerging AI narrative, why academic research on data centers keeps getting it wrong, and what policymakers on Capitol Hill actually need to understand about this industry.
0:00 Introduction & what a BPI fellow does
2:04 How BPI shaped Bitcoin policy in the US
4:42 How Margot got into Bitcoin from climate science
8:43 Why academics keep getting Bitcoin mining wrong
18:17 The PhD thesis: goals, data, and methodology
20:46 Load flexibility findings: Texas vs the rest
25:27 Why some miners are not flexible and what to do about it
27:21 Bitcoin vs AI: why grid flexibility doesn't transfer
37:45 AI pivot, hashrate decline, and what it means for the grid
42:05 Rapid fire: hardest data, biggest misconceptions, what miners should stop claiming
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