Welcome to Slate Sunday. cryptoprune’s weekly features feature in-depth interviews, expert analysis, and thought-provoking editorials that go beyond the headlines and explore the ideas and voices shaping the future of crypto.
For more than a decade, Jeff Booth has been warning the world about how technology and debt don’t go together. The Vancouver-born entrepreneur and author of The Price of Tomorrow: Why Deflation is Key to an Abundant Future says the financial system we live in is a giant illusion. This is a structure that prevents the natural processes of progress and innovation from benefiting everyone equally.
“The natural state of free markets is deflation,” Booth reminded me early in our conversation.
“As we compete to provide value to others, we are forced to keep offering more and cheaper. And with technology, we expect prices to come down very quickly. That doesn’t happen with debt-based systems. These are the opposite systems. Debt-based systems need to expand forever.”
Booth, who led technology company BuildDirect for nearly 20 years and now runs venture firm Ego Death Capital, was named one of Goldman Sachs’ “100 Most Intriguing Entrepreneurs.”
He has spent the past few years speaking and investing around one central idea. That means the future doesn’t have to be dystopian. But to make it hopeful, you need to choose another incentive.
illusion of stability
Global economic data paint an increasingly volatile picture. The U.S. unemployment rate has risen to 4.1%, business bankruptcies have hit the highest since 2020, and credit card delinquencies have soared above pre-pandemic levels. Meanwhile, real wages have stagnated amid record debt, with global borrowing exceeding $337 trillion this year, according to the Institute of International Finance.
Despite this, prices continue to rise. Rising costs of living in both the United States and Europe are forcing millions of households to rely on short-term credit. In Booth’s framework, the results are built into the system itself. he says:
“When you go to the bank, the bank doesn’t have the money. Money exists because it’s lent out, and you pay interest on that debt. So you have a system where money has to grow forever. Money has to be manipulated forever…When you get deflation out of a debt-based system and prices fall, the debt resets and everything built on that debt collapses.”
Booth argues that we have never lived in a truly free market, but only in various forms of managed economies with different ideologies.
“Communism, capitalism, socialism, they’re all control structures…We’ve never really seen a free market.”
Bitcoin solves this
For Booth, Bitcoin represents the first truly global free market that cannot be manipulated. He reasons as follows:
“If we had an energy-limited, open, permissionless, decentralized, and secure protocol that could not be changed by governments, it would be the perfect description of the free market that existed for the first time in history.”
In his words, Bitcoin is “resetting the price of the whole world” because it operates outside of a system of debt and compounding credit. All assets in the world are steadily losing ground due to Bitcoin’s deflationary scarcity model, and real estate is a prime example. House prices may be rising in fiat terms, but they are significantly cheaper in BTC.
“If my house cost 300 Bitcoins five years ago, and now it costs 12 Bitcoins, the price has fallen forever in Bitcoin terms. The value of my house has not gone up; the currency in which it is priced has gone down.”
This change in perspective explains why Booth is encouraging people to not only buy Bitcoin, but to move their time to Bitcoin. And what does he say to those who believe it’s too late to start piling up satellites? On the contrary, he says with a laugh, “It’s extremely fast.”
“Learn Bitcoin and really understand it. Then buy Bitcoin, spend on Bitcoin, and move your time there. You will see a reflection of the world you want to see, instead of contributing to the world you fear.”
It’s a counterintuitive worldview in an era defined by anxiety.
fear and control system
Booth believes that our collective fear, whether it’s inflation, artificial intelligence or geopolitical conflict, is a symptom of being caught in a rigged game. It is in the interests of those in power to create a cycle of constant uncertainty and fear.
“The only reason a monopoly can exist is because of control systems. And monopolies support regulation. Who benefits from scaring people with AI? It’s the big AI companies, because now they can’t allow prices to drop to the lowest cost of production.”
In a truly competitive market, prices will naturally fall until they match the cost of actually manufacturing the good (minimum cost of production). Those who want to charge more will quickly be priced out, until producers settle on the lowest possible price without incurring losses.
Since the cost of writing another line of code is zero, Booth says that when AI is free and its cost is zero, that wealth flows to everyone (unless governments can manipulate money).
Under Bitcoin standards, he argues, technological deflation will ultimately benefit society rather than a few monopolistic gatekeepers.
“AI, robotics, Bitcoin, they’re a perfect symbiotic relationship. They accelerate each other. In that world, you don’t have to do anything to get richer and richer.”
There is, of course, a paradox in that Mr. Booth is beaming with positivity even as economic uncertainty increases. he said with a laugh.
“I’m insanely optimistic. I live in the optimism of a builder who does this every day. And when you’re in it every day and you see it expanding at the rate it’s expanding, it’s hard not to be insanely optimistic.”
the choice to act
Booth’s central message is about agency. He argues that individuals have more power than they realize.
“You have personal agency. Run a node and spend[Bitcoin]inside it. You don’t have to wait for anyone or ask permission. You just go.”
In a world where individual freedoms are being eroded day by day, we asked them how they feel about the inevitable rise in digital IDs, such as those proposed by CBDCs in the UK and Europe. He points to emerging technologies such as Nostr, a decentralized social protocol, and Fedi, a privacy-preserving platform that allows anyone to launch their own digital federation.
“So, I’m not on Twitter anymore. I’m on Nostr. You can’t block me. You can’t turn off my voice on Nostr…and you can’t block Fedi either. It’s used in many authoritarian countries because it’s a life-saving technology. And it’s already available.”
Ego Death Capital invested in Fedi three and a half years ago knowing that everyone would fall into the “centralized system trap.” This technology had to exist before that happened.
death of ego
The name of his venture, Ego Death Capital, reveals a lot about his philosophy.
“This seemed consistent with what I think Bitcoin will eventually do for everyone. Bitcoin has one rule: Don’t try to cheat, because you’ll be fooling yourself.”
Booth’s own journey toward this understanding was not immediate. And even after understanding the benefits of Bitcoin, he felt like a hypocrite when he realized that all of his work was done in the fiat world.
“I realized that 90% of my time was being spent on the systems I was making worse. Ego Death Capital was created to solve that paradox so I could move my time into the systems I wanted.”
He encourages other entrepreneurs, creators, and educators to do the same.
“Everyone is scrolling through Twitter in pain and fear. But every problem in that system is an opportunity for people in a new system to solve the pain. You can create extraordinary wealth by providing value. That’s the free market.”
Future wealth
Booth’s argument that technology-driven deflation should be embraced rather than feared has never felt more realistic or hopeful. Global youth unemployment is nearly 13%, according to the International Labor Organization, and Goldman Sachs warns that automation could eliminate 300 million full-time jobs by 2030. However, Mr. Booth sees a richness behind this change.
“The same AI that people think will destroy us will actually make our lives unimaginably richer. If prices fall faster than wages, everyone will be richer. But that can only happen in a system that cannot be manipulated: a free market.”
When I asked Booth if he thought we would live to see the world we envision, if it would really happen in our lifetimes, his answer was immediate: he said with a big smile.
“I can already see it. It’s the world I live in. It’s like the William Gibson quote: ‘The future is already here. The future is already here.’ It’s just not widely circulated. ”You can still live in this world tomorrow. It’s just a choice. The more you do it, the more it will reflect on you. ”
