Forward Global Summit 2025 | Jeff Booth, ego death capital

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Jeff Booth

General Partner

ego death capital

play_circle_outline Deflation in free market vs. credit-based system.

play_circle_outline Bitcoin re-pricing everything else over time.

play_circle_outline Ethereum lacks security and decentralization compared to bitcoin.

play_circle_outline Examples of platforms using bitcoin for freedom and privacy in communication.

play_circle_outline Embracing Innovation: Removing Middlemen in Gatekeeper Argument to Enhance Efficiency in Decentralized Networks like Bitcoin

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Jeff Booth, ego death capital

Jeff Booth

General Partner ego death capital

In this video, Jeff Booth, general partner at Ego Death Capital, explores groundbreaking insights on Bitcoin and its potential to revolutionize the global economic landscape. Recorded at the Forward Global Summit 2025 in Los Angeles, Booth discusses how Bitcoin's framework could lead to transformative changes in how society perceives and interacts with financial systems.

Booth, an esteemed author of "The Price of Tomorrow," shares their expertise on the futuristic vision of decentralized economies. Interviewed by industry analysts from theCUBE Resear... Read more

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What is the natural state of the free market? add

What is the current trend in prices of goods and services when measured against bitcoin in the global free market? add

What characteristic of Bitcoin distinguishes it from Ethereum in terms of decentralization and security when facing a hack on an exchange? add

What is the reason for the rapid growth of communities utilizing the Fedimint protocol, which provides privacy of communications and money inside networks that communities can own for themselves? add

What is the impact of removing middlemen and gatekeepers on innovation and deflation in the economy? add

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Jeff Booth, ego death capital

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>> Welcome back everyone to theCube here in Los Angeles at the Forward Global Summit 2025. I'm John Furrier, host of theCube. This summit is breaking the ground on major breakthroughs around integrating communities, trust networks, and building kind of a future model for deploying capital for the collective benefit of the world. That used to be called philanthropy, now it's kind of an integrated model between partners, entrepreneurs, capital markets, you name it. But then endgame is still the same, make the world a better place. Jeff Booth is here. He wrote the book, Price of Tomorrow, general Partner at ego death capital. Egos will die in this new era. Hopefully the collective intelligence of the individuals in a group will do it. Jeff, great to see you. Thanks for coming on.

Jeff Booth

>> Thank you. Great to see you too.

>> So you gave a breakfast talk this morning about bitcoin, and I'm so glad you came on. Next week we're going to be doing a crypto series to crypto trailblazers because now you're starting to see liquidity from bitcoin. Numbers are up, still going to go up. But you have an interesting theory around how bitcoin is not only a template for the future, but also an immutable force at this point, pun intended, because of the impact of what it does, its durability in immutability, but also the commerce. It's enabling and all the benefits that were traditionally in older paradigms of money, store of value, but there's things going on in that system that are broken or breaking or broken and no one knows it yet. Or take us through your thesis because your presentation really hit home and you're working with a company that OB is running that kind of has examples of how it's working. Take us through your thesis.

Jeff Booth

>> So the thesis is pretty simple, and I think most people can see this in themselves. The natural state of the free market is deflation. And we know that's true because we only use things that provide us more value, and an entrepreneur has to create more value to survive in the free market. So if we use things that give us more value and an entrepreneur has to create more value, then the output of that has to be deflation. In fact, what we're doing, what you're doing is touching a whole bunch of people you couldn't touch with a one-man show right now because you can go direct because of technology. So that's a massive productive force and it's everywhere in our world. And so what that means is prices should be falling everywhere, if you live in a free market. They should be falling at that rate everywhere, and you should get richer and richer and richer even if you didn't work as other people work for you and the natural course flows. But we don't live in that market or most people don't because they live in a credit-based system.

>> They think it's free.

Jeff Booth

>> So in other words, think about this. We've never lived in a truly global free market. We've lived in a control system masquerading as a free market and from the control system because the control system is based on debt. And I'm not saying bad people on this. I'm saying a credit-based system can't allow deflation because the credit-based system would collapse completely. So that credit-based system has to rob, has to steal the money that should flow to you through deflation plus inflation to constantly create more monetary units to make you believe prices go up. And you're inside that system and everybody's inside that system making it stronger with all their actions. So you ask yourself, "What would it look like if you had a decentralized secure protocol bounded by energy, bitcoin, the first ever decentralized secure protocol bounded by energy? What would it be pricing if you couldn't change it?" And it would be pricing perfectly in the global free market. So measured against bitcoin, prices of everything are falling. It appears to be rising because people are converting bitcoin to their piece of paper to then measure bitcoin price. But if you actually realize what is happening is my house was 300 bitcoin 5 years ago, my house is 22 bitcoin today. Energy prices are falling, all prices. And as long as bitcoin stays decentralized and secure, and when you really understand, you know it will. It's the only thing that will, it will reprice everything else over time.

>> Yeah, you're touching on some pretty innovative thinking around economics certainly. I love the control system. I want to just riff with you before I unpack a little bit more on some of that theory. Because I think in your presentation when I walked in, I heard, "TCPIP." I'm like, "Oh, yeah." And you kind of gave the history lesson of how the internet works, which is a great way to set the table for the infrastructure that we know is blockchain under the covers. And I bring this up because control systems in general were built to house things and they're old constructs. And not to throw another tech paradigm out there, but when security used to be perimeter-based, those were control systems. Now we don't live in a perimeter and security, it's borderless. Packers can come in that's why cybersecurity is out of control on the old system. So this idea of the walls coming down of the system I think is legit. So I am totally with you on that. What happens next? So I believe that, yeah, we have this system. The pressure from the new system, how do you see that evolving? I mean, I can throw all my money into bitcoin, you did as a hedge. Some people look at it as a hedge today because an alternative, it's going up, "Hey, I made more money on bitcoin," but they still got the money here. So obviously this ain't going to go away overnight. What has to happen? What's the sequence of events in your mind around how the money will flow, the commerce will flow? Is it piece by piece? Is there a needle moving moment? What's your vision on this?

Jeff Booth

>> So it'll be very chaotic because most people are giving today... Because it's the cognitive dissidence of your brain trying to understand what I said. Right? And you can nod. Everyone nods their head and they know that the free market is deflation, but they don't realize then everything that they're doing outside of living in that is empowering a control system. So that's actually why I use TCPIP and the internet as an example. What would it look like as people tried to come to this new paradigm from their old paradigm and that change was so hard, because they were trying to mesh their old way of living into the new paradigm. And the new paradigm didn't care. Every 10 minutes it was imposing a discipline bounded by energy that was an honest ledger. And so what it would mean is it would be repricing this. And so the bitcoin's IRR for the last 15 years is compounded annual growth rate is 45%. Yes, it's volatile, but that means if you're investing in houses and you have 8% return, you're losing 37% a year against bitcoin. But you think you're winning because you're because somebody else's losing money against houses. So you think you're winning, but you're actually losing. And so why that's going to be chaotic is most people don't understand-

>> Just rationalization of that.

Jeff Booth

>> It's a rationalization. Just like if you were in Argentina, people look at Argentina as their currency got totally debased going, "Why didn't they understand when they're doing the same thing in the U.S. today?"

>> They got to gather the system.

Jeff Booth

>> Bitcoin is the only thing that's decentralized and secure. And I'm saying not crypto. And it would get really confusing as well because protocol's are winner-take-all and the internet's a protocol and they come in layers and add more functionalities. Technologies are the next technology beats the other technology and winner-take-most. So we think in terms of technologies, because we don't see protocols very often, there is only one internet. You choose to be on it or you choose not to be on it. There is only one bitcoin. You're going to be choosing to be on it or not be on it. And if you don't choose it, you're going to get repriced to buy it. And it's developing in layers and there's more and more functionality building and layers. In fact, at ego death, that's what we're investing in and we're investing in... And if you saw what was happening and the rate of growth all around the world, you'd be very inspired.

>> Yeah. I think it's inspiring. I think people just don't know yet what to do. There's a little bit of rationalism mindset-wise because it's mind-blowing to the average. "All my money's... Why would I put it all to bitcoin? What if some hacker takes it?"

Jeff Booth

>> Feels scary.

>> "I'll probably lose my key." So you also mentioned, and I think the store of value argument's 100% on point too. Take me through the options. You mentioned sole custody, there's mechanisms. For an average person, a philanthropist saying, "Hey, I got all the billions of dollars, whatever." And they do to bitcoin. What's the best practice, is sole custody? You mentioned Coinbase, these intermediaries, is that just a stopgap? Is that a halfway house for kind of really say the more managed service? You mentioned ETFs. What's the good out of that? Are those good signs or bad signs or just temporary?

Jeff Booth

>> I think they're neutral. And this is a confusing topic and everybody has their different view of this. Here's my view of it, spending probably 15,000 hours trying to kill what I'm saying right now. So trying to-

>> Due diligence.

Jeff Booth

>> Exactly. And so human beings sacrifice kind of ease of use for convenience all the time for centralization. So it would be normal in a world that you thought prices should go up to trust somebody else with your bitcoin because institutions should be able to be trusted. But every time you're doing that, you're not only removing yourself from the equation. Essentially you're trusting somebody else with your bitcoin and it's not your bitcoin and that has to get centralized. And you're paying for the service to do that. So you're paying somebody to be able to be a trusted-

>> An instrument.

Jeff Booth

>> Instrument. So I am a very big believer in self-custody, and you have to understand how you can have zero counterparty risk to the existing system, no counterparty risk by having self-custody and doing that well. Yes, you have to learn how to trust yourself. You have to learn how to set that up safely. But once you do, then it becomes very, very easy to live outside of that system and in your world will literally get better and better and better.

>> So there are tutorials online for self-custody tactics, lockboxes, whatever. Don't hold it all in your house.

Jeff Booth

>> Exactly.

>> I won't encourage bad behavior, but there's been incidents where I know my friends who were home invaded for their self-custody. So you have to have a strategy.

Jeff Booth

>> Strategy.

>> There are mechanisms for that.

Jeff Booth

>> There are great mechanisms for that.

>> Okay. Talk about alternative stable coins, Ethereum, other crypto platforms. A lot of developers love Ethereum when it came out because you can build decentralized applications which had smart contracts. Again, taking the middle man out, a great concept. What's your thoughts on that developer angle side of it? And then we'll go into some examples where you're seeing some people today that you're funding.

Jeff Booth

>> So I reduce this down to first principles and the decentralization security bounded by energy is the innovation. And all of the other blockchains either have to lack security or be centralized. So the hack on the exchange with Ethereum last week that they actually had a talk about rolling it back to take it back tells you it's not decentralized. You couldn't do that with bitcoin. There is nobody to roll back.

>> Can't go back. There's no resilience.

Jeff Booth

>> So when somebody... Exactly.

>> It's secure.

Jeff Booth

>> It's bounded by energy, it's secure.

>> Excuse me, you say bounded by energy. Describe that for the folks who heard that. What do you mean it's bounded by energy?

Jeff Booth

>> So because of proof of work on how it chases abundant energy and it sources and you have to do the work to mine bitcoin, find that holds it to energy. So it puts a floor of energy, which is actually our new operating system for the world. And so that bounded by energy, you can't change that.

>> Energy, you mean power?

Jeff Booth

>> I mean, electricity, power, all of the compute that goes in. The way the compute works to mine this is the number one cost in mining bitcoin is the energy. So it chases energy all over the world, low cost energy to be able to make the economics work in bitcoin. And that further decentralizes it. And then the nodes that audit the rules make sure those rules are followed. So that bounds this thing to energy.

>> So it's all about the developer, back to the developer angle because I think as you have that input, like TCPIP, again, layers are totally right. Protocols come out, but it's disruptively enabling new things. What's the enablement?

Jeff Booth

>> I love that you just said that because that's what most people don't know. So if you just walk through, if bitcoin made a choice or the design choices, wouldn't allow it to scale on layer one. That's what keeps it decentralized, secure, bounded by energy, but it couldn't scale five to seven transactions per second. And so what people think now is, and then if you were just in this world and bitcoin was repricing you and it appeared to you everyone was getting rich in bitcoin, but it was every 10 minutes just repricing the world and it appeared to you, then it would make sense. "I'm going to create a better bitcoin." And the free market, there's 11 million coins right now and there would always be new ones because we get fallen into a trap of a better thing. And so how do you create a better one? If you create a better one by centralizing, you have to ask yourself a pretty simple question. If you're still going to centralize, why wouldn't you just use a database instead of a high-cost database? You wouldn't use a blockchain to centralize. You wouldn't use a blockchain to centralize. So what ends up happening is bitcoin then develops Lightning Network and Liquid and other layer-2s that right now, most people don't know this, touch 650 million people in the world that are transacting on bitcoin all the time. 650 million. Layer-2 is growing faster than the internet was growing in the 90s. And people don't even realize that it does all these transactions.

>> The other argument I would get in favor of this conversation is you mentioned TCPIP, I remember specifically when they came out because I was working at IBM at the time, right out of, well, as a co-op student, and SNA was the systems network architecture, proprietary protocol, had DECnet, if you will. The nerds out there that are my age and you know that and you're weird like me. But that was when TCPIP came out, that was the OSI stack, which only the middle layers got standardized on. But I remember the conversation was TCPIP is a de facto standard. It wasn't a standard.

Jeff Booth

>> No.

>> It became a standard.

Jeff Booth

>> Because it was open.

>> Because it was open and connected campuses.

Jeff Booth

>> Exactly.

>> And then Cisco was born, all that stuff happened. So the choice was then embrace it for the collective benefit or compete and no one else could compete.

Jeff Booth

>> Because the open networks win. Because there's more minds contributing to the open network. And so we're not used to that because the internet on top of it has been captured by money. So we think of the network effect only is giant companies, but open networks at the protocol level win. They always win.

>> Protocol winner take all, I agree.

Jeff Booth

>> And they're winner take all. And so all of the innovation that's happening on top of bitcoin right now is just natively in all the layers. And so if you...

>> It's a standard.

Jeff Booth

>> It's a standard.

>> It's a standard.

Jeff Booth

>> It's a standard.

>> It's better to have the agreement. Let's just use that and then everybody wins.

Jeff Booth

>> Exactly. Everybody wins. And it would be normal that people would try to only win themselves and have a different coin.

>> But they move up the stacks s to speak.

Jeff Booth

>> But then those people that are doing those coins, if they were just honest actors in being in bitcoin, they would win more.

>> Well, yeah. This is why I think, I talk to Elliot about this all the time. Media education because people need to get educated that it's actually an enablement, not a detriment.

Jeff Booth

>> Exactly.

>> And so I think that is just education. "Hey, you could make money with this or do whatever you want to do." And so talk about some examples. You have a great example in your talk, which I was blown away. It's a social freedom thing with bitcoin, but the mechanism of what they're doing is so compelling. It's early days, but they just go direct and they're changing countries. I mean, this is freedom fighter platform of the century.

Jeff Booth

>> Yeah, it's incredible.

>> You want results. Take us through that example and why it's important from a systems perspective, because that's the innovation outside the application itself is freedom for all, which I love.

Jeff Booth

>> So it's that one example and we're invested in a whole bunch of these different examples. But that one example came out of a need. Essentially bitcoin, the people saw it as a store of value but not a utility where they could create value, communication and everything else. So this company created on top of bitcoin, another protocol called Fedimint that sits on top of bitcoin as integrated to it using, I won't get technical, but the simple thing is it provides privacy of communications, complete privacy of communications and money inside a network that a community can own for themselves. And those communities are now growing all over the world and it's tethered to bitcoin and they're growing so fast all over the world. Why? Because authoritarian dictators are rising in the world and this gives the antidote to that.

>> I like that confidence angle too, because when you have stability in protocols, whether it's open, I believe open, trusted networks is a big deal. Open networks and protocols, open always wins. That's my philosophy. Take it or leave it. I think everyone would agree with that. Then you could have confidence. And so overthrowing a government, you got to have confidence. You can't half-ass it otherwise those consequences are great.

Jeff Booth

>> But imagine what happens in the overthrow in these governments. They shut off your communications, they shut off your banking. That's how these dictators thrive. But if they can't shut off your communications, they can't shut off your banking because you're outside of that network, all of the power goes back to the people. It removes the power from the-

>> Takes all the middlemen out. It's a classic gatekeeper, middleman argument. The efficiency, again, I'm biased on this because I believe it is happening and it's totally happening, it's going to continue. Jeff, thank you. We have to do a deep dive on this again because there's so much we can go into it for an hour. Actually beat Joe Rogan's record at six hours. Thanks for coming on the show.

Jeff Booth

>> Yeah, thanks very much.

>> All right. Jeff Booth is here. Look at the innovation is across the board, Forward Global's bringing together not just philanthropists, donors, everyone's a philanthropist. You can note your time, your capital as human intelligence becomes the focus, the innovations and deflation, we heard deflation, price is going to drop with things like bitcoin. So stay with us for more coverage. theCUBE.net will bring all the data to you. Thanks for watching.