*Bitcoin does not assume time; Bitcoin computes time. It produces a discrete, thermodynamically anchored ordering of events that behaves analogously to physical time: irreversible, energy-bounded, and globally consistent. This makes Bitcoin the only system that provides an observable model of quantized time.*
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Replies (10)
Well, it’s not the only observed model of time, as radioactive decay is also an observable thermodynamically anchored quantifiable model of time.
Radioactive decay provides discrete events, but the theory that models those events still assumes continuous time. The exponential decay law requires continuous probability flow, and smooth evolution of the survival function. Unless one accepts the Planck interval as the true temporal quantum, decay gives discretized outcomes embedded inside a continuous-time ontology.
Bitcoin differs categorically: it does not measure time from an assumed continuum, it constructs time through irreversible, energy-expending events. Block time is not sampled from a continuous background but produced as the discrete unit of temporal ordering itself. In radioactive decay, discrete events are fitted to a continuous time; in Bitcoin, the events are the time.
The real question is ontological: if time is fundamentally discrete, radioactive decay must be reinterpreted, whereas Bitcoin already embodies a discrete, thermodynamically anchored temporal structure without relying on any continuous substrate.
Doesn't the difficulty adjustment use the timestamps of blocks (external continuous time source)?
Bitcoiners love to idolize bitcoin as if it didn’t just solve the Byzantine Generals Problem but also solved for time, humanity, and any other problem.
Bitcoin can rewire the brains of its devotees. Optimal rewiring not guaranteed.
Lmao.
Optimal rewiring not guaranteed indeed lmao.
Yes the difficulty adjustment references block timestamps, which ultimately come from external human time. But this does not alter the ontology of Bitcoin’s internal time. Timestamps are used to regulate rate, ensuring that block production tracks human chronological expectations. They do not define Bitcoin’s temporal substrate.
The smallest unit of temporal change in Bitcoin is still the block, an irreversible thermodynamic event created through proof-of-work. Whether those events occur faster or slower relative to wall-clock time is irrelevant: the ledger’s internal time advances only when a block is found. Timestamps adjust the equilibrium; blocks constitute time itself.
I hope you realize in order to solve the Byzantine Generals Problem, Bitcoin had to create the first non-circular, thermodynamically grounded definition of time; a system where temporal order is produced, not assumed, and each unit of time is an irreversible energetic event. That makes Bitcoin the only logical construction of quantized time from first principles, rather than a model that assumes continuity as an axiom. The result inevitably extends far beyond money: it reshapes coordination, verification, and the physics of information. This is not because Bitcoin is idolized, but because its foundational breakthrough is larger than its original purpose.
And if time is quantized, not continuous as assumed, then the formalism of QM is rekt by Bitcoin.
