I Spent 15,000 Hours Trying to KILL Bitcoin. Here’s What I Learned | Jeff Booth

Jeff Booth argues that free markets naturally produce deflation because competition forces entrepreneurs to deliver more value over time, but the credit-based monetary system requires perpetual expansion because repaying debt destroys money. He contends that global debt cannot be repaid, that no one alive has experienced a true free market, and that governments must continuously debase currency to prevent the system from collapsing. The United States recorded its largest monthly budget deficit in history in July at 432 billion dollars, with debt service now the single most expensive line item in the federal budget. He characterizes the system as zero-sum, where asset price appreciation in housing and similar assets reflects currency debasement rather than real gains, and where the abundance of money creates scarcity everywhere through misallocation of resources.

Booth spent approximately 15,000 hours attempting to find ways to kill Bitcoin before concluding it was sound. His central concern seven years ago was whether Bitcoin could remain decentralized and secure against centralizing power. He ran a node, concluded his participation contributed to that security, and changed his view. He now defines Bitcoin technically as a decentralized secure database producing a new block every ten minutes, bounded by energy, where cheating is flushed out by the free market. He argues that Bitcoin would be attacked everywhere precisely because if its premise held, the entire existing financial system would be repriced by it. He warns that if Bitcoin became merely an asset like gold, derivative instruments would be built on top of it, it would centralize, and it would fail the same way gold failed to remain outside the financial system.

He views AI as an accelerating threat to the existing system because the productivity gains it should deliver would, if allowed to flow freely, cause the credit-based system to fail. Instead, he argues, the system must create bubbles and misallocation of capital to absorb those gains. If AI productivity accrues only to those who own the means of production under the same monetary system, the result is a control and surveillance apparatus rather than broad prosperity. He argues that every financial instrument in use today, including private equity, Treasury companies, and public stocks, is derived from the same underlying credit-based system, making them all expressions of the same risk rather than genuine diversification.

On Bitcoin Treasury companies, Booth argues that those accumulating Bitcoin with no underlying cash flow are building ballooning liabilities, and that offering interest rates of eleven and a half to twelve percent to attract holders effectively moves Bitcoin out of self-custody and back into the existing financial system. He says some Treasury companies bought Bitcoin at peak prices and carry bad custody deals, making them effectively zombie companies. He argues that Strategy is likely to survive and potentially become one of the most valuable companies if Bitcoin emerges as a currency, but that no other Treasury company can replicate Strategy because it already holds hundreds of thousands of Bitcoin and has a structural head start. A higher Bitcoin price resolves most problems for existing Treasury companies. Ego Death Capital was asked to join Bitcoin Treasury company boards and declined.

Booth sits on the board of Core Scientific, one of the largest Bitcoin miners, and says miners are converting to data centers, which he believes is causing the centralization argument around mining consolidation to dissolve. He argues that free market incentives naturally resolve mining centralization because miners who pay too much for power go broke. He is an investor in Gridless, a company operating run-of-river power mining in Africa at two and a half cents per unit, compared to five to seven cents paid by US data centers. He states that block subsidy is more than sufficient to protect mining through 2080 and that additional transaction fees are not required.

Orange Juice was conceived through LP feedback as a way to build a long-term capital structure entirely outside the existing financial system. It targets cash-flow-generating businesses rather than high-growth businesses, with the stated intent to never sell them. Using a business generating ten million dollars in EBITDA per year as an example, the structure levers acquired cash flows at approximately three times to purchase Bitcoin, carries roughly three million dollars per year in interest at a ten percent rate, and deploys the remaining seven million dollars to acquire more businesses. Orange Juice also brings AI operational talent into acquired businesses, offers equity in the fund to sellers rather than only cash, and plans to help portfolio businesses accept and pay vendors in Bitcoin.

Booth draws a sharp distinction between Bitcoin itself and leverage built around it, arguing that leverage applied to Bitcoin produces the same volatile boom-and-bust cycles seen in the old system, and that people incorrectly blame Bitcoin rather than the leverage when those cycles play out. He argues that the two systems, credit-based and Bitcoin-backed, cannot coexist in the long term even if they appear to do so in the short term, and that the transition away from the current financial system is inevitable with only the timeline uncertain.