15,000-Hour Attack Fails: Bitcoin's Indestructibility Confirmed by Tech Veteran

Woofun AI reports that Canadian entrepreneur Jeff Booth, a founding partner of Ego Death Capital and director at Core Scientific, concluded his 15,000-hour campaign to destroy Bitcoin by declaring the network indestructible. Author of The Price of Tomorrow, Booth determined that the vulnerability lay within his own methodology rather than the code, reinforcing his conviction in Bitcoin's resilience despite initial skepticism.

Booth's journey began with deep-seated doubts about power structures rather than mathematical flaws. A 20-year veteran who co-founded BuildDirect in 1999 and ran it for 18 years, he initially viewed Bitcoin with suspicion. When his book was published in January 2020, Bitcoin (BTC) was mentioned in just one paragraph. His primary concern was whether the network could remain decentralized and secure against the overwhelming power of sovereign states, prompting him to dedicate thousands of hours to testing its limits.

To simulate potential threats, Booth operated a node to model attacks from governments, competitors, or large miners. "I spent about 15,000 hours trying to figure out, 'How can I kill Bitcoin? What would it look like?'" Booth told Scott Melker on the show Wolf of All Streets. This analysis occurred while BTC was trading at around $63,000, with a market cap of approximately $1.27 trillion—about 50% lower than the record high of $126,198 set on October 6, 2025. Booth distinguishes sharply between price volatility and network security, arguing that while price fluctuates daily, security has never wavered.

Every simulated attack scenario encountered the same structural barrier: blocks continued to be generated on schedule, secured by real energy. "...A new block appears every 10 minutes, secured and governed decentralistically by energy, just like the Internet..." Booth draws a deliberate parallel to early Internet protocols, which were kept simple to allow permissionless building. Today, roughly 24,000 accessible nodes follow the same consensus rules, and the supply cap of 21 million coins has withstood public debate this month, after Adam Back rejected proposals to raise it. "Do I think Bitcoin is decentralized and secure now? Yes, I do."

Booth's financial commitments reflect this conviction. In 2022, he helped establish Ego Death Capital, a fund supporting software companies built on Bitcoin rather than miners or tokens. The fund raised $100 million in its second round in July 2025.

Additionally, he has served as a director at mining company Core Scientific since it exited Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in January 2024, positioning himself at the intersection of infrastructure and investment.

Woofun AI data shows that despite his bullish stance, Booth acknowledges quantifiable risks, particularly regarding mining pool centralization and node software homogeneity. Over the past month, three mining pools have generated about 61% of the blocks. Approximately 80% of the accessible nodes run the same Bitcoin Core client, meaning most of the network relies on a single codebase. Booth expects market competition, rather than protocol changes, to drive down these figures as expensive miners eventually go bankrupt.

Economic pressures are already reshaping the mining landscape. After accounting for depreciation, Riot Platforms reported a cost of $90,631 per coin last quarter, far higher than the current market price. The hash rate has dropped by about 22% from its peak in October 2025, as miners either leave the network or rent their electricity to AI tenants. Core Scientific illustrated this shift with its financial statements: 83% of its second-quarter revenue came from hosting services, while only 13% came from its own mining operations.

Industry experts offer conflicting interpretations of these trends. Venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya argues that the shift of energy to AI represents a structural problem for miners, rather than a healthy reshuffle. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong disagrees with this view. "Interesting perspective. The first point seems temporary, while the second is more lasting. But hash rate or energy going into Bitcoin mining doesn't determine its price (if miners go offline, the network's difficulty adjusts automatically to maintain the same block generation rate). In the long run, Bitcoin's price is..." — Brian Armstrong (@brian_armstrong) July 20, 2026.

Governance and security challenges persist, highlighted by the BIP-110 split. A group of developers pushed for BIP-110, a temporary soft fork requiring blocks to emit validation signals, otherwise they will be rejected. The chain split at block 961,632 on August 8. This separated BIP-110 fork has so far produced four blocks, while Bitcoin has generated over 1,100 blocks. Mining pool OCEAN still runs a separate endpoint for the minority chain, with a hash rate of 1.15 EH/s, while its main endpoint has a hash rate of 19.22 EH/s.

Meanwhile, users suffered losses due to vulnerabilities in the Coldcard wallet and exploit attacks on BTCPay Server this summer, incidents Booth classifies as human failure rather than consensus mechanism breakdowns.

Booth believes Bitcoin will fail only if people collectively invest in a system he claims will steal their wealth, but he maintains that widespread adoption is inevitable. "I think it's inevitable. It's just a matter of time." The next critical test arrives soon: proponents of BIP-110 have proposed making a proof of work change and introducing a separate token on September 1. Whether anyone will follow them will provide a clearer indication of Bitcoin's governance status than 15,000 hours of theoretical analysis.