20-Year Tech Veteran Spent 15,000 Hours Trying to Kill Bitcoin, What Did He Find?
Jeff Booth spent about 15,000 hours making an attempt to kill Bitcoin. He failed. The Canadian entrepreneur says the try left him extra satisfied the community can’t be damaged.
Booth is a founding companion at Ego Death Capital and a director at Core Scientific. He wrote the 2020 e book The Price of Tomorrow. His conclusion is that he was the weak hyperlink, not the code.
Why a 20-Year Tech Veteran Set Out to Kill Bitcoin
Booth didn’t begin as a believer. He co-founded the net constructing provider BuildDirect in 1999 and ran it for 18 years. When his e book landed in January 2020, Bitcoin (BTC) received a single paragraph.
The downside was not the mathematics. It was the facility he anticipated to come after it. At that stage he doubted the community might keep decentralized and safe towards a decided state.
So he tried to break it. He ran a node. He modeled the assaults a authorities, a rival, or a big miner would use.
“I spent about 15,000 hours making an attempt to say, ‘How do I kill Bitcoin? What does that appear like?’” Booth said in an interview with the Wolf of All Streets, Scott Melker.
The timing of that verdict issues. BTC presently trades near $63,000 with a market worth round $1.27 trillion. That is roughly 50% beneath the document $126,198 it set on October 6, 2025.
Booth argues worth and safety are separate questions. One strikes each day. The different has not moved in any respect.
What 15,000 Hours of Attacks Actually Found
Every state of affairs bumped into the identical wall. Blocks stored arriving on schedule, and each price actual power to produce.
“…each 10 minutes there was a brand new block bounded by power decentralized and safe and it might emerge precisely just like the web…”
The comparability is deliberate. Early web protocols stayed slender, so anybody might construct on high with out asking permission. Booth reads Bitcoin the identical manner.
The rulebook backs him up on one level. Roughly 24,000 reachable nodes implement the identical consensus guidelines at present, and the 21 million provide cap survived one other public spherical of debate this month after Adam Back rejected a proposal to carry it.
“Do I believe Bitcoin is decentralized and safe proper now? Yes, I do.”
His cash follows the conclusion. Booth helped discovered Ego Death Capital in 2022, a fund that backs software program firms constructed on Bitcoin moderately than miners or tokens.
It closed a $100 million second fund in July 2025. He has additionally sat on the board of Core Scientific for the reason that mining agency left Chapter 11 in January 2024.
The Risks Booth Still Names
He doesn’t declare the community is completed or flawless.
“Mining swimming pools are a danger. Centralization mining is a danger.”
Both dangers are measurable. Three swimming pools produced about 61% of all blocks over the previous month. Roughly 80% of reachable nodes run one shopper, Bitcoin Core, which leaves a single codebase carrying many of the community.
Booth expects competitors to grind these numbers down with none protocol change. His argument is that costly miners merely go bust.
The math helps the strain. Riot Platforms spent $90,631 per coin final quarter as soon as depreciation is counted, far above the present market worth. Hashrate has fallen about 22% from its October 2025 peak as miners leave the network or hire their energy to AI tenants as an alternative.
Core Scientific reveals the shift in a single line of accounts. It drew 83% of second-quarter income from colocation and solely 13% from mining its personal cash.
Where Other Voices Disagree
Not everybody reads the identical knowledge the identical manner. Venture investor Chamath Palihapitiya has referred to as the energy shift toward AI a structural downside for miners moderately than a wholesome cleanout. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong disputes that studying.
The governance combat can also be dwell moderately than settled. A gaggle of builders pushed BIP-110, a brief softfork that may have pressured blocks to sign assist or be rejected. The chain break up at block 961,632 on August 8.
That breakaway BIP-110 fork has since discovered 4 blocks. Bitcoin has discovered greater than 1,100. Mining pool OCEAN nonetheless runs a separate endpoint for the minority chain, carrying 1.15 exahashes per second towards 19.22 on its most important endpoint.
Users have taken actual losses within the meantime. The Coldcard wallet hack and a BTCPay Server exploit each drained funds this summer season. Neither touched consensus, which is the excellence Booth retains drawing.
That leaves one failure case in his framework, and it’s human moderately than technical. Booth argues Bitcoin solely fails if folks collectively maintain pouring their money and time into the system he says takes from them.
He nonetheless expects broad adoption, and he refuses to put a date on it.
“I believe it’s inevitable. It’s only a matter of timeline.”
The subsequent check arrives quickly. BIP-110 backers have floated September 1 for a proof-of-work change and a separate coin. Whether anybody follows them will say extra about Bitcoin’s governance than 15,000 hours of principle ever might.
The put up 20-Year Tech Veteran Spent 15,000 Hours Trying to Kill Bitcoin, What Did He Find? appeared first on BeInCrypto.