Learn more about BPI Senior Fellow Troy Cross in the latest installment of our Meet the Fellows series.
What do you do for work?
I'm a Professor of Philosophy and Humanities at Reed College
How did you wind up in your current role?
A long and winding road! Discovering philosophy, grad school, discovering I liked teaching, moving around the world until I found a small liberal arts college that really fit.
How did you become interested in researching Bitcoin?
It's just interesting! I have been fascinated by all things bitcoin since 2011.
What are your most significant intellectual interests aside from Bitcoin?
The basic questions of philosophy--what is real, how we should believe, how we should live--are always on my mind in some way. Teaching in the humanities program at Reed has given me the opportunity to think about these questions from other cultural-historical points of view. The questions never get old... nor do they ever get answered!
Have your views on Bitcoin and cryptocurrency broadly changed over time?
YES. I look back on earlier versions of myself and I'm glad my musings are not public. Bitcoin is a new phenomenon. No one gets it at first, and even now, most of us are probably wrong about a lot. As an academic and as a philosopher that sounds like exactly where I need to be, though.
What misconception about Bitcoin do you hear most from your colleagues?
Oh gosh, where to begin???? Most of my colleagues' beliefs are misconceptions! That's not true for any other topic. Bitcoin has become, at least in my circles, politically polarized, and it has always attracted alarmist stories in media -- those stories get eyeballs -- so I think my colleagues are mostly mystified about why a useless thing that wastes more energy than most countries use and only attracts criminals would continue to re-inflate instead of popping like the bubble it has always been, once and for all. None of the sources feeding into my colleague's knowledge has predicted bitcoin's actual history. I think it's a bit of a headscratcher for them.
Because my colleagues know I'm an environmentalist--I cycle to work, and have advocated for divestment--they're especially puzzled about why I'd associate myself with this stuff.
But I'm also really lucky to have colleagues and students who are curious, and who have engaged me in good faith over the years on these issues. I'm truly lucky at Reed.
What misconception about Bitcoin or the subject of your research do you hear most from Bitcoin enthusiasts?
Well, I have seen many narratives come and go. Right now? We're beyond simple price extrapolations, thank heaven. And we are beginning to appreciate the nuance in the relationship between bitcoin and the dollar, and bitcoin and Wall St. Some of those narratives in the past were very simplistic. (I'm guilty of this sort of thing myself!)
It seems to me that a lot of bitcoiners are very cavalier about proof of work security a couple of decades from now. I'm much more cautious. And while the quantum threat is not a pressing concern, it's also casually brushed aside by bitcoin enthusiasts, whereas I think the migration to a quantum-resistant algorithm will be difficult and messy when it happens. Many in the community are also too cavalier about scaling, in my opinion. Many are too complacent about privacy.
Bitcoin thinking has always been adversarial. That's what got us here. And we have to think through all of these worries with the zeal of anti-coiners.
I don't think of myself as an advocate but a truth-seeker, first and foremost. I will do what I can to help this open-source, community-governed project succeed. But for me, that begins with intellectual honesty, even if it seems like it is helping ill-intentioned critics in the short term.
Bitcoin is not just another political narrative or another investment thesis. It's a battle-hardened protocol guided by a hypervigilant community that is disrupting the most powerful systems on the planet. Our minds want to relax, and especially when the price of bitcoin is skyrocketing, it is tempting to settle into the posture that everything will take care of itself. That's... maybe that is the biggest misconception: that bitcoin is perfect and done and boring already, and that it doesn't need the paranoid freedom nerds that launched it. While bitcoin doesn't need any of us in particular, it very much needs all of us.
What are your hopes for the future of BPI?
I'm excited. We're entering a profoundly transformative period in history. Value can be stored digitally, without debasement. Value can be sent from anyone to anyone, without passing through a trusted intermediary. That wasn't true 15 years ago. And it's going to disrupt--or at least check the power of--systems that have controlled the flow of value and the supply of money for a very long time. It's also going to improve things in ways that we can hardly anticipate, much like the internet did.
How will that transition go for us in the USA? I want to say, "Will it be the easy way? Or will it be the hard way?" BPI can help things go a lot more smoothly for us.
But more broadly, not only politicians, but the culture as a whole will need to come to terms with what is happening. Most people still think of bitcoin as something they should have bought 10 years ago, rather than seeing it for what it is: a technology that fundamentally transforms systems of human value.
BPI isn't just going to be a place where policymakers can get informed about bitcoin and make wiser decisions based on genuine understanding. It will also be a place where public intellectuals grapple with the significance of this technology. At this moment in history, I hope BPI leads the way. We are doing our best to envision this new world with as much clarity and rigor as we can.
I'm confident BPI will deliver. We have a truly talented group of experts across the academic disciplines and professions. We're all veterans of a tough public discourse. We're highly motivated. We're independent thinkers. And the organization is now scaling and maturing. We're up for this challenge and we're going to meet it.
Favorite novel?
I don't know. Probably the Brothers Karamazov
Favorite U.S. President?
Jefferson
Who is your biggest intellectual influence?
Aristotle
