Genesis was instantiated on 1/3/2009, this block was “premined/hardcoded”. Block 1 was mined on 1/8/2009, 5 days later.
Bitcoin was not running prior to the Genesis block. Block 0 was the first discrete block of time. Block 1 was the 2nd. Yes is took 5 days, but no time passed with respect the bitcoins ledger. No block, no time.
Where is this continuous time you speak of? With respect to Bitcoin time is only defined by blocks or the casual unit of change. The ledger does not change states between blocks, that is not continuous time. Outside of bitcoins ledger there is time yes, but it too must be discretized at the Planck scale for classical/binary information to emerge from quantum info. In what domain is time continuous?
The now or the present in Bitcoin is a boundary, it is not time. The now is the intersection of all historical blocks (past) and the mempool (future). There is no “present block”. Just a boundary between what is and what can be and with respect to the ledger, this is not time. Yes time passes in universe between blocks, but the ledger only cares about valid blocks. What is not measured, is not time. Between blocks in Bitcoin is stasis, the present, the now, but this is not time, it’s a boundary.
I am having trouble finding continuous time inside of bitcoins ledger here since the measurement of what is must be discrete.
