Bitcoin Unbreakable: Tech Veteran Spends 15,000 Hours Trying to Kill It
A 20-year tech veteran spent about 15,000 hours trying to break Bitcoin. Jeff Booth, a founding partner at Ego Death Capital and director at Core Scientific, has concluded that he was the weak link in his attempts.
The Canadian entrepreneur's efforts were motivated by concerns over the network's decentralization and security against a determined state. He doubted whether the network could stay decentralized and secure, particularly if a government or powerful entity tried to disrupt it.
To test his hypothesis, Booth ran a node and modeled various attacks that a government, rival, or large miner might use. However, he found that no matter what scenario he ran into, the network consistently produced new blocks every 10 minutes, each costing real energy to produce.
Booth's findings suggest that price and security are separate issues. He argues that while the price of Bitcoin moves daily, its underlying security has not changed at all. To support his claim, he points out that around 24,000 reachable nodes enforce the same consensus rules today, and the 21 million supply cap remains intact.