by Coinstrooper Crypto Articles
Quick Take
  • Jeff Booth spent about 15,000 hours trying to kill Bitcoin.
  • The Canadian entrepreneur says the attempt left him more convinced the network cannot be broken.
  • Booth is a founding partner at Ego Death Capital and a director at Core Scientific.
  • His conclusion is that he was the weak link, not the code.

What Happened

Jeff Booth spent about 15,000 hours trying to kill Bitcoin. He failed. The Canadian entrepreneur says the attempt left him more convinced the network cannot be broken.

Why a 20-Year Tech Veteran Set Out to Kill Bitcoin

Booth did not start as a believer. He co-founded the online building supplier BuildDirect in 1999 and ran it for 18 years. When his book landed in January 2020, Bitcoin (BTC) got a single paragraph.

Market Context

Booth is a founding partner at Ego Death Capital and a director at Core Scientific. He wrote the 2020 book The Price of Tomorrow. His conclusion is that he was the weak link, not the code.

The timing of that verdict matters. BTC currently trades near $63,000 with a market value around $1.27 trillion. That is roughly 50% below the record $126,198 it set on October 6, 2025.

Booth argues price and security are separate questions. One moves daily. The other has not moved at all.

The rulebook backs him up on one point. Roughly 24,000 reachable nodes enforce the same consensus rules today, and the 21 million supply cap survived another public round of debate this month after Adam Back rejected a proposal to lift it.

His money follows the conclusion. Booth helped found Ego Death Capital in 2022, a fund that backs software companies built on Bitcoin rather than miners or tokens.

The math supports the pressure. Riot Platforms spent $90,631 per coin last quarter once depreciation is counted, far above the current market price. Hashrate has fallen about 22% from its October 2025 peak as miners leave the network or rent their power to AI tenants instead.

Why It Matters

The problem was not the math. It was the power he expected to come after it. At that stage he doubted the network could stay decentralized and secure against a determined state.

The comparison is deliberate. Early internet protocols stayed narrow, so anyone could build on top without asking permission. Booth reads Bitcoin the same way.

The Risks Booth Still Names

“Mining pools are a risk. Centralization mining is a risk.”

Both risks are measurable. Three pools produced about 61% of all blocks over the past month. Roughly 80% of reachable nodes run one client, Bitcoin Core, which leaves a single codebase carrying most of the network.

Booth expects competition to grind those numbers down without any protocol change. His argument is that expensive miners simply go bust.

Details

So he tried to break it. He ran a node. He modeled the attacks a government, a rival, or a large miner would use.

“I spent about 15,000 hours trying to say, ‘How do I kill Bitcoin? What does that look like?'” Booth said in an interview with the Wolf of All Streets, Scott Melker.

What 15,000 Hours of Attacks Actually Found

Every scenario ran into the same wall. Blocks kept arriving on schedule, and each one cost real energy to produce.

“…every 10 minutes there was a new block bounded by energy decentralized and secure and it would emerge exactly like the internet…”

“Do I think Bitcoin is decentralized and secure right now? Yes, I do.”

It closed a $100 million second fund in July 2025. He has also sat on the board of Core Scientific since the mining firm left Chapter 11 in January 2024.

He does not claim the network is finished or flawless.

Core Scientific shows the shift in one line of accounts. It drew 83% of second-quarter revenue from colocation and only 13% from mining its own coins.