Finding Bitcoin Signal with Jeff Booth - WBD584

Jeff Booth is the Author of The Price of Tomorrow and
CEO/Chairman of Ego Death Capital. In this interview, we discuss
how Bitcoin fundamentals (such as its approach to the blockchain
trilemma, centring on truth, and its deflationary effects) run
counter to current economic theories, making Bitcoin’s signal
harder for some to find.


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A common refrain whilst we live through unprecedented global
economic turmoil and massive failures within DeFi is “why aren’t
people flocking to Bitcoin”. Obviously, Bitcoin’s signal is being
lost: the fundamentals that are designed to better protect people
against incompetent, corrupt and fraudulent behaviour aren’t
readily apparent to many. Why is this?


As Jeff Booth asserted in a recent article: “protocols create
value in the form of a new foundation that emerges slowly &
methodically”. However, capitalist societies have been
conditioned to accept and expect rapid change: ‘work fast and
break things’ has been taken as a given. Systems that run counter
to this are viewed as being ripe for disruption. 


Bitcoin has widely been seen as slow. It’s development was
famously the subject of a crisis centred on scaling arguments.
The outcome was an affirmation of some core principles: Bitcoin
would be predicated on decentralization and security. This
spurned a tsunami of altcoins that proliferated on the pitch that
they improved on Bitcoin by being able to scale. This meant many
dismissed it. Bitcoin was old tech.


But, as we have seen over the past few months, speed and scale
come at a cost. A real-world cost counted in billions of dollars.
The blockchain trilemma means that scale means making material
tradeoffs in terms of decentralization and security. The result:
hacks and fraud. If there is any silver lining to the FTX
collapse is that the conflation of crypto and Bitcoin now has
more than a theoretical critique. 


The importance of making the case for Bitcoin, of amplifying the
signal, is that it offers a transition to a new system where we
can benefit from deflation. A system that protects people. A
system based on a layer of truth.