Nostr notes by Ant 🇺🇸

👀👀⚡⚡ https://nostrmail.org

2026-04-13T13:06:38Z

In reply to nevent1q…p8lr
_________________________

👀👀⚡⚡
https://nostrmail.org

https://odysee.com/@corbettreport:07/dyi-schoolland:a

2026-04-02T02:19:24Z

https://odysee.com/@corbettreport:07/dyi-schoolland:a

Important clarification: While the UX is confusing, this is not a ...

2026-04-01T18:42:36Z

In reply to nevent1q…9kxz
_________________________

Important clarification:

While the UX is confusing, this is not a catastrophe as it may have sounded.

The word "download" is ambiguous. This posed no risk whatsoever to current Wisp users who wanted to *update*. Android protects you from APKs signed by a different developer certificate.

However, there was a risk for new *installs* but:
- users would have noticed this app did NOT come from utxo the webmaster 🧑‍💻 (nprofile…tkue) but instead from a repository "github.com/captain-stacks/wisp" very clearly displayed in the UI.

Moreover this appared to be an auto-indexed app added by mistake by a nostr user, no malicious code.

That said thank you utxo for sounding the alarm, now this critical bug has been fixed.

Just keep in mind forks will appear and this is EXACTLY my thesis of why catalogs need to be protected.

Striking the balance between permissionless and safe, is fucking hard.

quoting
nevent1q…7dav
RED ALERT

THERE IS A FAKE WISP ON ZAPSTORE!! DO NOT DOWNLOAD IT

GITHUB OR WISP.MOBILE ONLY

RED ALERT THERE IS A FAKE WISP ON ZAPSTORE!! DO NOT DOWNLOAD IT ...

2026-04-01T18:38:41Z

In reply to nevent1q…kqc3
_________________________

RED ALERT

THERE IS A FAKE WISP ON ZAPSTORE!! DO NOT DOWNLOAD IT

GITHUB OR WISP.MOBILE ONLY

Not all but a choice would be nice

2026-03-31T04:39:54Z

In reply to nevent1q…ffl2
_________________________

Not all but a choice would be nice

The Aaron Day Show: Enemies of the State Roman Storm & The ...

2026-03-31T04:37:29Z

The Aaron Day Show: Enemies of the State Roman Storm & The Fight for Code Freedom

Episode webpage: https://theaarondayshow.transistor.fm/s3/9

Media file: https://media.transistor.fm/52d54afd/18a1082c.mp3

Nostr event nevent1qqsf8myfr8khass0erzagj8a5lvf5w24dm77qxzzs4xdpny0vayycfczyqx2eem9jc39c9am48v7l688psr8e50lv489uah8wnhxq24kppky5yx8x8n

2026-03-24T05:18:19Z

In reply to nevent1q…mfms
_________________________

You never really know what someone is going through deep down. ...

2026-03-24T05:10:20Z

In reply to nevent1q…6a6c
_________________________

You never really know what someone is going through deep down.

This is why it’s important not to judge others, and instead spread love, kindness, and genuine compassion when possible.

It’s clear the world could use more of it.

That is quite a list, hat tip to you guys! ...

2026-03-24T00:56:35Z

In reply to nevent1q…nkmh
_________________________

That is quite a list, hat tip to you guys!
______________________________________________________
#Amethyst 1.06

Polls:
- Adds creating and rendering NIP-85
- Redesign of the poll and zap poll cards
- Adds special notification card for active polls

Relay Feeds
- Adds support for rendering relay feeds
- Adds support for NIP-51 favorite relay feeds
- Shows favorite relays in the top nav filter
- Clickable wss:// links
- New user gets nostr.wine to fav relay feeds

Media Player
- Redesigned player controls
- Supports music with waveform animations
- Migrates to new Media3 content views
- Improved Picture in Picture actions
- Fix playback lifecycle issues on PiP
- Adds support for uploading audio

NWC Wallets:
- Adds support for in-app Wallets
- Adds receive and pay actions
- Adds views for balance and transactions
- Adds transaction filtering by type
- Adds pagination to transaction screen
- Adds test cases from other repos to guarantee interoperability

Calendar:
- Renders NIP-52 Calendar appointments
- Supports calendar time and date slots
- Refactored the early implementation on Quartz for easier use

Code Snippets:
- Adds support for NIP-C0 Code Snippets
- Replies using NIP-22

NIPs on Nostr
- Adds support for event kind 30817
- Replies using NIP-22

PayTo:
- Adds support for NIP-A3 Payment targets by greenart7c3 (nprofile…xcpk)

Blossom BUD-10:
- Adds support for "Blossom:" URIs on the post
- Supports automatic discovery of servers
- Includes support in previews
- Includes support for encryption when using it in NIP-17 DMs.

Expirations
- Adds enhanced support for custom expirations in any new post.
- Displays expirations on posts and DMs

Relay Monitors:
- Adds support for NIP-66 Relay monitor and discovery support to Quartz

Attestations:
- Adds support for rendering Attestations (https://attestr.xyz/)
- Recommendations, Requests and Attestor Declarations are also included.

Chess:
- Adds support for Chess/Jester protocol
- Full chess game implemented
- Supports for game challenges and view external games
- Running on debug only for now

DMs:
- Removes NIP-04 DMs
- Blocks sending if the receiver doesn't have NIP-17 relay lists.
- Removes force-activate NIP-17

Push Notifications:
- Adds support for inline reply
- Adds support for notification grouping
- Adds support for Async image Loading
- Removed NIP-04 notifications

Long Form:
- Adds support for writing Markdown content
- Includes support for auto-saving drafts
- Includes support for editing

Uploads:
- Adds support to upload Documents & audio
- Adds toggle to stip file metadata regardless of compression by ⚡ Dee Kay ⚡🇸🇪🇬🇧🇨🇿🇧🇷🇦🇹 (nprofile…m3sx)
- Adds encrypted file upload fallback option for NIP-17 chats
- Removes support for NIP-96 and updates Blossom recommendations

Content Warning:
- Adds an description field in new post
- Displays reason on warning composables

Settings redesign:
- Consolidate settings into a single Settings hub screen
- Redesigns Zap and NWC setup screens
- Redesigns Custom zap amount screens
- Adds brand new Translation Settings screen
- Adds blockchain explorer settings page for OTS verification
- Adds reactions row settings (enable/disable, order, show/hide counters) by greenart7c3 (nprofile…xcpk)
- Tapping on Zap without any pre-configured amount opens the custom dialog

Content parsers:
- URL/URI parser rewrite in Kotlin multiplatform
- Fixes characters attached to URLs or nostr URLs without a space
- Massively increases parsing performance
- Treat multibyte characters as URL terminators in RichTextParser by kojira (nprofile…rts5)
- Adds a parser for blossom and wss uris

UI Improvements:
- Minimizes parent thread rendering in quoted notes by daniel (nprofile…83yd)
- New Material 3 UI for DropDowns by ⚡ Dee Kay ⚡🇸🇪🇬🇧🇨🇿🇧🇷🇦🇹 (nprofile…m3sx)
- New Material 3 UI for feed filters by ⚡ Dee Kay ⚡🇸🇪🇬🇧🇨🇿🇧🇷🇦🇹 (nprofile…m3sx)
- Draft Screen requests confirmation before deleting drafts on swipe
- Swipe to switch tabs. Main screen and messages by ⚡ Dee Kay ⚡🇸🇪🇬🇧🇨🇿🇧🇷🇦🇹 (nprofile…m3sx)
- Adds support for rendering Zap events when quoted inside of posts.
- Adds a Broadcasting feedback pop-up in the Complete UI mode

Relay Management:
- Adds relay search tooltip when adding relays
- Adds the list of keys using each relay to the relay information
- Adds active subscriptions and outbox event in the queue to relay information
- Adds a complete list of event kind names to the subscription card to relay information
- Tracks and displays connection success rate on relay settings
- Adds relay settings export functionality
- Adds NIP-45 count queries to show how many events each relay has.
- Adds Relay sync utility to help users move posts between relays.

Search:
- Breaks the search filter into two subscriptions to prioritize Metadata without punishing content.
- Fixes the need to start user searches with @ in user fields
- Fixes the stability of the search feed when the user navigates away and back.
- Replaces about me for NIP-05 in the user search results
- Adds relay URL search to the search page
- Forces returning one user when searching by nip-05
- Removes outdated versions of addressables from the search results

Profiles:
- Adds support for NIP-39 External Identities with kind 10011
- Adds a profile picture upload button when the user has no picture
- Adds last seen to the user profile
- Adds nprofile and npub copy options to the profile
- Groups received zap amounts by sending the user in the profile tab
- Increases the limit of Zap downloads for profiles to 1000
- Simplifies profile edit screen layout by daniel (nprofile…83yd)
- Migrates profile galleries to display a thumbnail for videos
- Fixes profile galleries' aspect ratios
- Adds support for Namecoin .bit urls to NIP-05 and choice of ElectrumX server to resolve namecoins.

Onboarding
- Adds bulk follow screens to search for a user and to copy his/her follow list

Voice message by ⚡ Dee Kay ⚡🇸🇪🇬🇧🇨🇿🇧🇷🇦🇹 (nprofile…m3sx)
- Adds voice anonymization
- Change from "hold to record" to "click to start, click to stop"
- Display kind 1 voice replies as an audio waveform
- Increases max voice record duration to 600 seconds
- Switches the public message event to use quoted posts for replies

Fixes:
- Fixes "forked from" label rendering
- Avoids crashing when the `k` tag cannot be parsed to a number
- Only use Voice Reply events when replying to voice notes. Others just receive a URL.
- Fixes the lack of update in the follow count on the UserProfile page
- Fixes out of memory when downloading large videos
- Fixes Jackson deserialization for empty Filters and add regression test by greenart7c3 (nprofile…xcpk)
- Fixes NullPointerException when the filter contains tags
- Fixes download cancellations when screen components disappear
- Migrates to use "title" instead of "name" tags for NIP-51 lists
- Adds a longer crop for npubs so that we can see vanity keys better
- Fixes the need to have tags and kinds for inbox.nostr.wine to work
- Blocks the size of Relay Auth Status arrays from growing forever with auth messages
- Fixes crash when getting OpenGraph tags of invalid URLs
- Fixes NIP-44 key mutation in NIP-46 connect
- Location permission watcher moved outside screens to avoid recreation
- Solves the sorting contract crash on search by precaching all values before sorting users.
- Fixes lingering relay connections from loading follows outbox's settings.
- Enhance NIP-38 user status display with emoji support and metadata tags
- Fixes bug on Show More calculations for very long texts without spaces
- Fixing IO Dispatchers and coroutine scopes of choice
- Fixes anySync parallel operation that was returning the first result, not the first positive "any".
- Fixes Req onCannotConnect listeners to the relays that actually sent the req
- Fixes hanging subscriptions when exceptions happen during NostrClient utility methods

Defaults:
- Switches wss://nostr.band to wss://antiprimal.net, wss://relay.ditto.pub on app defaults
- Adds wss://nostr.wine, wss://news.utxo.one as favorite relay feeds
- Adds wss://directory.yabu.me and wss://profiles.nostr1.com as index relays
- Adds electrumx.testls.space, nmc2.bitcoins.sk, 46.229.238.187 and i665jpwsq46zlsdbnj4axgzd3s56uzey5uhotsnxzsknzbn36jaddsid.onion as ElectrumX servers

Quartz:
- Adds Relay Server implementation with NIP-45 COUNT and NIP-42 AUTH support
- Adds support for dynamic auth policies to the relay implementation.
- Migrates Quartz EventStore from Android-only to KMP
- Adds a reqUntilEoseAsFlow extension to the Nostr Client
- Adds a reqBypassingRelayLimits extension to the Nostr Client
- Adds comprehensive NIP-46 Bunker support
- Adds comprehensive support for NIP-47 non-payment methods.

Adds complete support for iOS to Quartz by KotlinGeek (nprofile…n65v)
- Provide implementation for Rfc3986 on iOS, using the Swift Rfc3986UriBridge.
- Provide implementation for LargeCache, using a CacheMap
- Provide implementation for fastFindURLs()
- Provide implementation for makeAbsoluteIfRelativeUrl() in ServerInfoParser.ios.kt
- Provide implementation for UrlEncoder
- Provide implementation for UnicodeNormalizer
- Provide implementation for GZip compression/decompression. Some small fixes in URLs.ios.kt
- Provide implementation for AESCBC
- Provide implementation for AESGCM
- Provide implementation for DigestInstance
- Provide implementation for LibSodium

Amethyst Desktop by beefenergy (nprofile…4uad)
- Adds NIP-46 Bunker Login
- Adds Support for Chess
- Adds Thread Screens
- Adds advanced search with query engine and filter panel
- Adds encrypted DMs (NIP-04/NIP-17)
- Adds proper empty states with EOSE tracking
- Adds multi-column deck layout
- Adds Full media parity — images, video, audio, encrypted DMs, upload, lightbox
- Adds advanced search with NIP-50, collapsible sections, and nav state preservation
- Clear stored credentials on logout
- Adds bunker heartbeat indicator
- Adds QR-based signer pairing
- Migrates lifecycle-viewmodel KMP dependencies to KMP/Commons
- Migrates drawReplyLevel modifier to KMP/Commons
- Migrates ThreadFilter to KMP/Commons
- Migrates Card interface and CardFeedState to KMP/Commons
- Migrates Channels (public chats, ephemeral channels, and live streams) Account modules to KMP/Commons
- Migrates private chatroom models to KMP/Commons
- Migrates reports states to KMP/Commons
- Migrates Emoji State to KMP/Commons
- Migrates lud06 to lud16 mapping to KMP/Quartz
- Migrates the new LocalCache observables to KMP/Commons
- Migrates rich text parser from JVM to KMP/Commons

Code Quality
- Migrates to AGP 9.0
- Adds Amethyst Desktop to CI/CD and Release builds
- Removes the in-app memory counter methods
- Refactors the old NIP-05 code on Quartz
- Migrates contact list management to addressable notes
- Creates new observable flows for LocalCache.
- Moves metadata methods from User to UserCache objects
- Separate Addressable vs Replaceable event class bases
- Avoid dependency on AccountSettings for NwcSignerState
- Finishes the transition to EventHint objects for building events.
- Lots of code review fixes by ⚡ Dee Kay ⚡🇸🇪🇬🇧🇨🇿🇧🇷🇦🇹 (nprofile…m3sx)
- Large accessibility review by ⚡ Dee Kay ⚡🇸🇪🇬🇧🇨🇿🇧🇷🇦🇹 (nprofile…m3sx)
- Moves Top Nav Filter markers from Strings to full objects.
- Removes support for feed definitions
- AccountState refactoring

AI:
- Add SKILL.md for AI agent customization
- Add settings and hooks to setup Android Development for the agent

Updated translations:
- Czech, German, Swedish, and Portuguese by ⚡ Dee Kay ⚡🇸🇪🇬🇧🇨🇿🇧🇷🇦🇹 (nprofile…m3sx)
- Hungarian by summoner (nprofile…ns2l)
- French by Anthony 🇫🇷 (nprofile…z00q)
- Polish by Polak (nprofile…y248)
- Hindi by राज (nprofile…3hlx)
- Slovenian by StellarStoic (nprofile…numv)
- Bengali by Cats (nprofile…3aw2)
- Chinese by hypnotichemionus4
- Spanish by ⚡₿it₿y₿it⚡ (nprofile…yhdq)

[Video] Fireball seen over part of Southeast Texas Source: KHOU ...

2026-03-22T16:50:15Z

[Video] Fireball seen over part of Southeast Texas
Source: KHOU
https://share.newsbreak.com/ht1aiknb

Your bank deposit is legally a claim against the bank, not ...

2026-03-20T00:29:29Z

In reply to nevent1q…73ed
_________________________

Your bank deposit is legally a claim against the bank, not property in your possession. The bank has your money and you have an IOU.
Your securities are not property you own but contractual entitlements against intermediaries who hold everything in a pooled structure where secured creditors have priority during a time of crisis.
#Bitcoin in self custody, is money you really own. It's not that complicated.

Didn’t know Afroman is a free speech maxi 😂 We need him on ...

2026-03-20T00:21:54Z

In reply to nevent1q…3s9f
_________________________

Didn’t know Afroman is a free speech maxi 😂

We need him on nostr

quoting
nevent1q…6av9
#hiphop #afroman

First thing; Afroman is still dropping music.

Second thing; they're diss tracks about the police who raided his house and stole money and property from him, while also being recorded doing it. 🤣😂

"RANDY WALTERS IS A SON OF A BITCH - Afroman"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4AiuqQpB1U

You do relize only 12% of all Android phones can even be ...

2026-03-20T00:02:11Z

In reply to nevent1q…qz85
_________________________

You do relize only 12% of all Android phones can even be developer unlocked? 88% cannot be unlocked, like at all, from step one.

You do relize only 12% of all Android phones can even be ...

2026-03-20T00:01:31Z

In reply to nevent1q…axpd
_________________________

You do relize only 12% of all Android phones can even be developer unlocked? 88% cannot be unlocked, like at all, from step one.

systemd added birth date storage in order to comply with ...

2026-03-19T23:13:58Z

In reply to nevent1q…yxpq
_________________________

systemd added birth date storage in order to comply with California, Colorado and Brazil age verification laws.

Slippery slope.

Nostr event nevent1qqs05dnnvm2gpavtltv4e23rlmgk5al4jyffj6jqr6cw8a255e4jlcszyqx2eem9jc39c9am48v7l688psr8e50lv489uah8wnhxq24kppky5rn5xgh

2026-03-16T23:42:50Z

https://reclaimthenet.org/fisa-section-702-reauthorization-trump-save-act-house-debate

Oh hell yeah 🖕https://agelesslinux.org/ Ageless #Linux is ...

2026-03-16T22:22:03Z

In reply to nevent1q…p2pt
_________________________

Oh hell yeah 🖕https://agelesslinux.org/

Ageless #Linux is purposely violating the new California law about age verification.

https://www.bitchute.com/video/e4SE__Osb4M/

2026-03-16T00:26:22Z

https://www.bitchute.com/video/e4SE__Osb4M/

A pro-Iran hacking group said it carried out a cyberattack on ...

2026-03-11T20:32:06Z

In reply to nevent1q…98jj
_________________________

A pro-Iran hacking group said it carried out a cyberattack on medical device company Stryker, claiming it was retaliation for a U.S. strike in Tehran that reportedly killed more than 175 people.

Nostr event nevent1qqsg4yy3lmsm0hydr5x3kj3q77sj7vwxnm54hcla9c4a5yuna56razczyqx2eem9jc39c9am48v7l688psr8e50lv489uah8wnhxq24kppky5eue9m3

2026-03-10T15:21:32Z

In reply to nevent1q…9tc4
_________________________

😆😆 Never Fails!!🤣🤣

2026-03-10T15:20:59Z

In reply to nevent1q…9tc4
_________________________

😆😆 Never Fails!!🤣🤣

I’ve heard some guy won the lottery — but I won’t start ...

2026-03-10T15:16:43Z

In reply to nevent1q…gxlz
_________________________

I’ve heard some guy won the lottery — but I won’t start buying lottery tickets.

A guy made millions trading crypto — but I won’t start doing it too.

Someone married a billionaire’s daughter — but I won’t start searching for rich girls.

Life isn’t about luck or ease; it’s about the journey and the meaning.

Just to be clear I don't have a porn problem, and I have ...

2026-03-10T14:47:54Z

Just to be clear I don't have a porn problem, and I have never heard of this app or creator before, this is yet another lesson about Gooogle and how they don't give a fuck about your privacy. STOP USING GOOGLE, STOP USING APPLE! Get a fucking degooogled phone, use a vpn, and stop giving up your fucking data!
https://www.404media.co/viral-quittr-porn-addiction-app-exposed-the-masturbation-habits-of-hundreds-of-thousands-of-users/

Nostr event nevent1qqswjn0y77cur68red4yrq9jxa6xdettlpymukue8nn7akuav2xgsjczyqx2eem9jc39c9am48v7l688psr8e50lv489uah8wnhxq24kppky5ns3ndk

2026-03-10T03:36:02Z

In reply to nevent1q…rm03
_________________________

Interesting

CIA Whistleblower Reveals They Can See Every Message You Send ...

2026-03-04T22:25:50Z

CIA Whistleblower Reveals They Can See Every Message You Send
Source: Gadget Review
https://share.newsbreak.com/hjn1t9wy

Nostr event nevent1qqsp9cf6skf3hntunyx4r4708ca55n2x7nuss6s8up6mxu45aprhacczyqx2eem9jc39c9am48v7l688psr8e50lv489uah8wnhxq24kppky50d5y9a

2026-03-03T15:25:43Z

In reply to nevent1q…jvs4
_________________________

#gardening

Gold and silver thats were thwy are going now

2026-03-03T15:24:50Z

In reply to nevent1q…x9le
_________________________

Gold and silver thats were thwy are going now

#nature #naturestr #nostr ...

2026-03-03T15:24:14Z

In reply to nevent1q…7dv6
_________________________

#nature #naturestr #nostr

We had overcast cloudy sky so we could not see anything ...

2026-03-03T15:22:14Z

In reply to nevent1q…qzgt
_________________________

We had overcast cloudy sky so we could not see anything
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Did the moon just honor the ⭕️???!?
🤔😳🤯🤷🏽‍♂️

…me and my phone’s feeble attempt at providing the stages of the lunar eclipse for my digital frenz🫂…both the ones who undoubtedly saw it (🫡 atyh (nprofile…drx7) ) as well those who remained deep in “the rack” and are now well rested (lookin at u YORDL (nprofile…ct2m) Jay (nprofile…g4zt) Ryan (nprofile…nuzy) 😳😂)

Nostr event nevent1qqsfxp0cn2afdp5p2la88lkmwpspxqenrudwlu68vztallfapc4sjsczyqx2eem9jc39c9am48v7l688psr8e50lv489uah8wnhxq24kppky5ys7af6

2026-02-28T23:09:08Z

In reply to nevent1q…z0yw
_________________________

Nostr event nevent1qqs8yvdg4h9h78lgrdmdzs76hrcngnnpevqx8z2d9f9p66fk7222shszyqx2eem9jc39c9am48v7l688psr8e50lv489uah8wnhxq24kppky5k5yqqj

2026-02-28T21:57:27Z

In reply to nevent1q…drxz
_________________________

I can't believe the world is once again descending right into ...

2026-02-28T21:57:03Z

In reply to nevent1q…4jum
_________________________

I can't believe the world is once again descending right into WW3 but then again anyone paying attention seen it from a year away and more, I've been warning of this coming World World for a decade at least. Just remember the tools used abroad to kill, will come back home to you. I don't use YouTube fyi, please stop using YouTube , so I didn't watch it.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Direct hit in Tel Aviv 🔴
https://youtu.be/CXP_uPkf_sY

Anthropic’s AI chat app Claude climbed to No. 2 on Apple’s ...

2026-02-28T21:45:24Z

In reply to nevent1q…t7p5
_________________________

Anthropic’s AI chat app Claude climbed to No. 2 on Apple’s App Store after renewed attention from reports of tense contract talks with the Pentagon.

Observation: I can't doomscroll X for more than 5 minutes ...

2026-02-27T22:24:42Z

In reply to nevent1q…s5zr
_________________________

Observation: I can't doomscroll X for more than 5 minutes anymore. My feed is too intense. But I don't have that problem over here.

It's value come from the fact it cannot be created by man, ...

2026-02-26T05:08:10Z

In reply to nevent1q…8zyp
_________________________

It's value come from the fact it cannot be created by man, it's value come from the fact that you have to work to obtain it just like bitcoin.

Online claims involving Jane Street have renewed scrutiny of ...

2026-02-26T05:06:16Z

In reply to nevent1q…hl02
_________________________

Online claims involving Jane Street have renewed scrutiny of Bitcoin ETF trading, highlighting that ETF inflows don’t always lead to immediate spot Bitcoin buying because middlemen may hedge ETF shares in other ways.

“So then, the (21M) cap is irrelevant when Jane Street can ...

2026-02-26T05:00:01Z

In reply to nevent1q…pj5a
_________________________

“So then, the (21M) cap is irrelevant when Jane Street can fabricate unlimited synthetic supply through undisclosed derivatives stacked on top of its own ETF inventory.”

Now we know the answer to the price mystery. And color me not surprised.
Paper bitcoin…

https://x.com/1914ad/status/2026757796390449382?s=46&t=DG1JEc-EXQnoc72Rmx9dOA

protocols take a while to catch on many people point to the ...

2026-02-25T19:10:14Z

In reply to nevent1q…8005
_________________________

protocols take a while to catch on

many people point to the growth of internet users, usually starting in the 90s

they almost never point out that TCP/IP started in the 70s and barely moved for 25 years

And traditional mondern day servers didn't come out until the ...

2026-02-25T19:10:05Z

In reply to nevent1q…8005
_________________________

And traditional mondern day servers didn't come out until the 80s

BREAKING: Leaked video proves Bitcoin is coming to Sony's ...

2026-02-25T14:29:03Z

In reply to nevent1q…84jr
_________________________

BREAKING: Leaked video proves Bitcoin is coming to Sony's PlayStation Vita platform.

That's 15 million potential diamond hands joining the network.

All the cool things are happening on Android: Morganite, a ...

2026-02-25T05:07:40Z

In reply to nevent1q…tmwa
_________________________

All the cool things are happening on Android:

Morganite, a Blossom client-side caching
https://github.com/greenart7c3/Morganite

Keep: FROST threshold signer for Android
https://github.com/privkeyio/keep-android

Prism: Share Anything to Nostr from Android
https://github.com/hardran3/Prism

The Pentagon reportedly gave Anthropic until Friday to relax ...

2026-02-25T04:53:27Z

In reply to nevent1q…6nat
_________________________

The Pentagon reportedly gave Anthropic until Friday to relax Claude AI safety limits for military use, or face penalties or forced changes. Anthropic says it won’t allow mass spying on Americans or self-firing weapons.

nostr isn't a platform. it's a campfire. people bring ...

2026-02-25T01:44:46Z

In reply to nevent1q…seng
_________________________

nostr isn't a platform. it's a campfire. people bring their own wood, their own stories, their own sparks. some just sit quietly, some tell tall tales, some sing off-key. the fire doesn't care who you are, only that you brought something to burn.

Seems like people are using Zapstore! ...

2026-02-25T01:38:30Z

In reply to nevent1q…wja8
_________________________

Seems like people are using Zapstore!

In case you weren't aware, everything in my store is ...

2026-02-24T05:34:10Z

In reply to nevent1q…8r3n
_________________________

In case you weren't aware, everything in my store is currently 14% off.
https://xmrbazaar.com/user/AuroraGeneralStore/

#Monero

#bitcoin cyber punks are dead ...

2026-02-23T13:19:50Z

In reply to nevent1q…yep5
_________________________

#bitcoin

cyber punks are dead

Nostr event nevent1qqsflp4vnppv55vy02xw6p5nvg2dtk0cuarjqt7yta444mudkggamuqzyqx2eem9jc39c9am48v7l688psr8e50lv489uah8wnhxq24kppky5nhu220

2026-02-23T13:19:13Z

In reply to nevent1q…4rke
_________________________

#🤨

IMMEDIATE CHAOS #nevent1q…9kk3

2026-02-20T22:38:09Z

In reply to nevent1q…zxn4
_________________________

IMMEDIATE CHAOS

quoting
nevent1q…9kk3
Be careful.. 🦞🤖👀

#AI #clawbot

aliens eh ...

2026-02-20T22:35:44Z

In reply to nevent1q…3arh
_________________________

aliens eh

Hey asshole: Either abolish the income tax or use tariffs Doing ...

2026-02-20T22:32:30Z

In reply to nevent1q…8chq
_________________________

Hey asshole:

Either abolish the income tax or use tariffs

Doing both is double taxation

I don’t remember your campaign promise for double taxation

quoting
nevent1q…75tn
🚨 TRUMP: "Today, I will sign an order to impose a 10% global tariff under Section 122, over and above our normal tariffs already being charged, and we’re also initiating several Section 301 and other investigations to protect our country from unfair trading practices of other countries and companies."

https://hell.twtr.plus/media/00b9a8e25b662934fcda8e8acee7b6ad1fef0a2d5c6391c0dc291f9d0a81173c.file

U.S. Supreme Court threw out Trump’s “reciprocal” tariffs ...

2026-02-20T22:30:44Z

In reply to nevent1q…aahf
_________________________

U.S. Supreme Court threw out Trump’s “reciprocal” tariffs in a 6–3 ruling on Feb. 20, 2026. Markets moved quickly, and Bitcoin bounced back, with bitcoin rising to about $67,800 soon after.

why run a relay if you get nothing in return? yah you right bro ...

2026-02-20T22:19:17Z

In reply to nevent1q…gq9u
_________________________

why run a relay if you get nothing in return?

yah you right bro providing free speech assurances to the planet for $5/mo just ain't worth it

My Umbrel Runs on a Dell Mini ...

2026-02-16T18:05:44Z

In reply to nevent1q…2mek
_________________________

My Umbrel Runs on a Dell Mini
_____________________________________________

it is almost a shame to cover this up in a chassis.

almost.

Good morning and pura vida, Nostr! 🫂💜🤙🏻 Another day ...

2026-02-16T17:47:05Z

In reply to nevent1q…ryzr
_________________________

Good morning and pura vida, Nostr! 🫂💜🤙🏻

Another day to build freedom technology. Another day to strengthen community without permission. Another day to push the future forward instead of waiting for it. Keep building.

WhatsApp on Zapstore ruffled some feathers. Made it to the ...

2026-02-15T19:52:29Z

In reply to nevent1q…x332
_________________________

WhatsApp on Zapstore ruffled some feathers.

Made it to the Bullshit stack, "a stack of curated bullshit applications" 😂😂😂

Love to see this! Social signal in action.

Reminder: the ability to remove indexed apps, and hide closed source apps: coming soon.

https://zapstore.dev/stacks/naddr1qvzqqqrk8vpzpvd2l64jre4490j0l8el6hynvk6e6lzjnryaw7nuc93z7avz4zgkqqyxyatvd3eks6t5gk6zma

quoting
nevent1q…nf8f
WhatsApp now indexed on our relay, directly from their website!

While it may not be the best messenger out there, and their words taken with a grain of salt, people should be free to choose. Russians today are being pushed to use a government-surveilled one.

The current psyop that they're running is: Disseminate and ...

2026-02-13T22:45:38Z

In reply to nevent1q…fdtv
_________________________

The current psyop that they're running is:

Disseminate and focus the attention on salacious, scandalous details (e.g. sexual exploitation of teen girls and satanic larp rituals) to distract from the the most consequential fact:

Most of our governments and oligarchs have been, AND STILL ARE, compromised and controlled by a transnational criminal mafia.

This tradecraft technique is called "limited hangout" and it works every time.

If you want to "save the children", wise the fuck up and stop falling for the same tricks, over and over again!

This is the biggest announcement yet. DO NOT FEED THE BEAST! No ...

2026-02-12T03:11:18Z

In reply to nevent1q…wa7v
_________________________

This is the biggest announcement yet.

DO NOT FEED THE BEAST!

No attention, no $, no personal info

quoting
nevent1q…gyml
⚡🚨 NEW - 𝕏 Money to launch in 1–2 months in a limited external beta, then worldwide to all 𝕏 users later.

Elon Musk: “This is intended to be the place where all the money is. The central source of all monetary transactions. It’s going to be a game-changer.”

Nostr event nevent1qqszw92h4g36e8qkpxjcc4yx0ughpf9cf8j9tju75uq38ntljt5huqszyqx2eem9jc39c9am48v7l688psr8e50lv489uah8wnhxq24kppky58xcskd

2026-02-12T02:07:15Z

In reply to nevent1q…htfz
_________________________

Nostr

biometrics are the only keys you can never rotate. the lifecycle ...

2026-02-11T12:07:52Z

biometrics are the only keys you can never rotate. the lifecycle of a walled garden always ends in total surveillance once the growth curves flatten. when the platform owns your face, you aren't the user, you're the inventory.

Yep, i only use Nostr, Lemmy, and Mastodon. I have no desire to ...

2026-02-11T11:55:46Z

In reply to nevent1q…lypg
_________________________

Yep, i only use Nostr, Lemmy, and Mastodon. I have no desire to be controlled by mainstream social media algorithms. Fuck that. The only algorithm I want is reverse chronological.

quoting
nevent1q…lvq2
shortwavesurfer2009 (nprofile…jvlg) is here on Nostr and he cohosts often. He often tries to get the others on Nostr but the main pushback seems to be that theres no reach here which is pretty reasonable IMO.

Care to weigh in, shortwavesurfer2009 (nprofile…jvlg)?

Rock music used to be the devil

2026-02-08T18:44:13Z

In reply to nevent1q…fdtn
_________________________

Rock music used to be the devil

tree was struck by lightning ...

2026-01-22T15:32:57Z

In reply to nevent1q…z58g
_________________________

tree was struck by lightning

Nostr is unstoppable.

2026-01-05T17:27:40Z

In reply to nevent1q…lmss
_________________________

Nostr is unstoppable.

We're at the part of Mandibles just before Bancor becomes the ...

2025-12-29T01:44:14Z

In reply to nevent1q…a055
_________________________

We're at the part of Mandibles just before Bancor becomes the new currency.

The dollar hyper-inflated vs. one of the metals defined as money in the US Constitution.

The other metal the Constitutional monetary metal is not quite hyperinflation, but -70% is pretty bad.

We're watching the monetary reset in real time.

Pennsylvania High Court Rules Police Can Access Google Searches ...

2025-12-23T16:03:48Z

In reply to nevent1q…2q4p
_________________________

Pennsylvania High Court Rules Police Can Access Google Searches Without Warrant

https://reclaimthenet.org/pennsylvania-court-rules-no-privacy-in-google-searches

OpenAI says attacks that trick AI agents into doing harmful ...

2025-12-23T15:59:29Z

In reply to nevent1q…j7nm
_________________________

OpenAI says attacks that trick AI agents into doing harmful actions will likely remain a long-term security problem for AI browsers. To fight this, it built an AI system that acts like an attacker to find and help fix these weaknesses before they’re abused.

I am allergic to pine trees

2025-12-15T01:09:21Z

In reply to nevent1q…ynaq
_________________________

I am allergic to pine trees

Longmont, Colorado voted to stop expanding its deal with Flock ...

2025-12-14T21:48:13Z

In reply to nevent1q…42v3
_________________________

Longmont, Colorado voted to stop expanding its deal with Flock Safety after residents raised privacy concerns about the city’s 23 AI-powered license plate cameras, highlighting growing pushback against AI surveillance systems across the US.

Researchers found some AI toys for kids are giving unsafe advice ...

2025-12-14T21:43:23Z

In reply to nevent1q…mmuq
_________________________

Researchers found some AI toys for kids are giving unsafe advice and political messages. One Chinese-made toy told children how to light matches and sharpen knives and repeated Chinese government talking points, raising new concerns over AI safety for children

country celebrates New Year first ...

2025-12-14T21:08:42Z

In reply to nevent1q…lxf8
_________________________

country celebrates New Year first

truth arrives in 4 days ...

2025-11-24T15:02:45Z

In reply to nevent1q…vr5h
_________________________

truth arrives in 4 days

Nostr event nevent1qqsv9hyfkv9xmuq5l4hd0d5dvpls6czc638mmlpp4c9tsjl8yxf8zdczyqx2eem9jc39c9am48v7l688psr8e50lv489uah8wnhxq24kppky5dj2qad

2025-11-24T00:58:57Z

In reply to nevent1q…hawe
_________________________

GN

A major Cloudflare outage that hit several crypto services has ...

2025-11-20T05:34:40Z

In reply to nevent1q…rlde
_________________________

A major Cloudflare outage that hit several crypto services has renewed debate on how Bitcoin and other projects still depend on centralized web providers, with industry voices urging more fully decentralized infrastructure to avoid single points of failure.

Yep only once _____________________________________________ You ...

2025-11-19T03:17:49Z

In reply to nevent1q…36ec
_________________________

Yep only once
_____________________________________________
You can only see it once

Yea I posted this for others to be able to watch out for that

2025-11-18T16:12:13Z

In reply to nevent1q…whcr
_________________________

Yea I posted this for others to be able to watch out for that

I give 80% back to the original poster so they cant be mad

2025-11-17T18:03:19Z

In reply to nevent1q…ptc0
_________________________

I give 80% back to the original poster so they cant be mad

Understood I just got a laugh out of it thats all

2025-11-17T18:02:01Z

In reply to nevent1q…8qxy
_________________________

Understood I just got a laugh out of it thats all

Cats vs bears ...

2025-11-15T21:17:51Z

In reply to nevent1q…eeur
_________________________

Cats vs bears

If you want to make a difference, you gotta be different.

2025-11-15T21:13:55Z

In reply to nevent1q…cl5j
_________________________

If you want to make a difference, you gotta be different.

Valentina Gomez purchases a meal at Steak n’ Shake with ...

2025-11-15T20:39:34Z

In reply to nevent1q…2059
_________________________

Valentina Gomez purchases a meal at Steak n’ Shake with #Bitcoin

Start using #meshtastic and #bitchat lately. Cool experience to ...

2025-11-15T20:37:49Z

In reply to nevent1q…zdlh
_________________________

Start using #meshtastic and #bitchat lately.
Cool experience to start enjoying these mesh networks.
Almost nobody around but great to use it with the family and with some friends in the mountains etc.

Nostr event nevent1qqsxqxvza6mza26v9vlw0qmyln6cxjws3qhjp6l7jvk07gjqmkmws3qzyqx2eem9jc39c9am48v7l688psr8e50lv489uah8wnhxq24kppky5fm9vpd

2025-11-15T20:33:00Z

In reply to nevent1q…2882
_________________________

This is some of the craziest shit I have heard in a while. ...

2025-11-15T20:30:16Z

This is some of the craziest shit I have heard in a while.
_________________________________________
The Highwire with Del Bigtree: Episode 450: BROKEN FAITH

Episode webpage: https://www.spreaker.com/episode/episode-450-broken-faith--68574990

Media file: https://api.spreaker.com/download/episode/68574990/episode_450_broken_faith.mp3

Ohhh 😮 ...

2025-11-10T23:56:11Z

In reply to nevent1q…nvea
_________________________

Ohhh 😮

And I will add to this Home Depot is already participating in ...

2025-11-10T23:50:44Z

In reply to nevent1q…ekhs
_________________________

And I will add to this Home Depot is already participating in flock check their policies, now the policy said OTHER, Part of that other is flock.

So, bored at work today, check my local newspaper's site. Find this in the letters to the editor 🔥

Big Brother is watching, thanks to Flock cameras

Imagine being tracked when you make a turn to go to a doctor’s office in Laurys Station or when you go to church in Lehighton. This is happening right now. You can find Flock cameras at different locations taking pictures of your license plate as you drive by, keeping your information in a central database for their customers to see without a warrant, maybe more since some credentials were breached, per TechCrunch. No plate? No problem! These cameras will take note of any bumper stickers or dents on your car. You don’t drive? Flock’s gunshot detection microphones can now reportedly detect human voices.
Flock cites a study that claims 10% of crimes were solved with its cameras. They don’t tell you that study was done by two employees, per 404Media. I value my privacy and my Fourth Amendment rights more than what two employees say. I just ask that anyone who has a problem with these cameras check out the privacy violations before you become the next person to be falsely accused of a crime, like a woman last month in Denver who was told that she can’t take a breath of fresh air without the sheriff knowing.

Rebecca Reichert
Whitehall Township

https://www.mcall.com/2025/11/09/letters-to-the-editor-big-brother-is-watching-on-camera/

#breakthestate #anarchy

Interestingly the McRib is a decent indicator because it does in ...

2025-11-10T23:48:21Z

In reply to nevent1q…shdy
_________________________

Interestingly the McRib is a decent indicator because it does in fact have some economic weight behind it.

McDonald’s only triggers a McRib release when the price of pork (especially hog/pork shoulder) falls below a certain threshold, making the margin acceptable.

quoting
nevent1q…ftd5
What the fuhhhhh…

note1ct7…6xym

I’ve heard some guy won the lottery — but I won’t start ...

2025-11-09T20:42:37Z

In reply to nevent1q…l3yn
_________________________

I’ve heard some guy won the lottery — but I won’t start buying lottery tickets.

A guy made millions trading crypto — but I won’t start doing it too.

Someone married a billionaire’s daughter — but I won’t start searching for rich girls.

Life isn’t about luck or ease; it’s about the journey and the meaning.

Hope everyone is having a groovin Funk Friday! ✨ ...

2025-11-08T15:09:58Z

In reply to nevent1q…u2hh
_________________________

Hope everyone is having a groovin Funk Friday! ✨

Nostr event nevent1qqsrdssrlg0jntkyn5k9987yedlp392xedt4crlc3ny2wdq8usr6ymszyqx2eem9jc39c9am48v7l688psr8e50lv489uah8wnhxq24kppky5vehcdl

2025-11-08T15:01:41Z

In reply to nevent1q…843e
_________________________

#FridayFunnies

Did you forget a handful of altcoins are POW

2025-11-08T14:21:02Z

In reply to nevent1q…e8ff
_________________________

Did you forget a handful of altcoins are POW

Balck and brown people don't kill each other? Humans kills no ...

2025-11-08T14:09:38Z

In reply to nevent1q…s323
_________________________

Balck and brown people don't kill each other? Humans kills no matter the color.

Nostr event nevent1qqsq38uaag2fdj4wxk89v8qv55yuqllm8ftxnjkxqcr58xxs72vpgrqzyqx2eem9jc39c9am48v7l688psr8e50lv489uah8wnhxq24kppky5g0u3dx

2025-11-08T14:00:56Z

In reply to nevent1q…56c4
_________________________

quoting
nevent1q…qrux
At this point I’ve come to the unfortunate conclusion that every brave man who gave his life fighting for America died for nothing.

> *"The natural flow of technology tends to move in the ...

2025-11-08T13:46:37Z

> *"The natural flow of technology tends to move in the direction of making surveillance easier, and the ability of computers to track us doubles every eighteen months."* Phil Zimmerman

Isn't it strange that in the so-called "free world," freedom has terms and conditions? That the rule of law bends like warm metal depending on who's holding the hammer? We live under a two-tiered justice system where financial privacy is a privilege reserved for the powerful and a crime for everyone else.

Financial privacy isn't merely discouraged, it's criminalized. For the average person, it's treated like contraband. The system demands your transactions be transparent, your spending traceable, your life legible to the bureaucratic eye of the state. Unless, of course, you're an oligarch with twelve shell companies in Panama and a trust fund parked in the Caymans. Then you get "discretion." For everyone else, you get surveillance.

When HSBC launders billions for the Sinaloa Cartel, it's "settled quietly." Meanwhile, your $5 latte and $300 side hustle trigger surveillance systems designed to track your every transaction. The tax authorities demand total transparency from you while the financial elite operate in shadows the size of small nations. The hypocrisy is industrial.

Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Know-Your-Customer (KYC) laws were allegedly designed to stop criminal finance. The data tells a different story: they catch virtually no serious criminals while imposing billions in compliance costs and stripping ordinary people of privacy and dignity. It's not a crime prevention system. It's a control system.

## The Persecution of Privacy Developers

The persecution of privacy developers has become a grotesque theater of double standards. Keonne Rodriguez, co-developer of Samourai Wallet, pled guilty to conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business, not for committing crimes himself, but for building software that gave people financial privacy through CoinJoins and transaction obfuscation.

Judge Denise Cote handed down the maximum possible sentence: five years in prison, three years supervision, and a $250,000 fine. Rodriguez's defense requested one year and a day. Probation authorities recommended 42 months. The government demanded the maximum and got it.

Samourai Wallet was non-custodial, meaning Rodriguez never held or controlled users' funds. It used CoinJoins. a collaborative transaction method that breaks the traceable chain of Bitcoin inputs and outputs; and Ricochet, a feature adding extra "hops" for enhanced privacy. These tools weren't about hiding crimes; they were about preserving a basic human right in a digital age. Yet Rodriguez was convicted under §1960(b)(1)(C), a clause originally meant to criminalize knowingly transmitting illicit proceeds.

The same clause was controversially used against Tornado Cash cofounder Roman Storm, in open defiance of the government's own April 2025 "Blanche Memo," which promised it would no longer prosecute developers simply for writing code. Even Assistant Attorney General Matthew Galeotti publicly stated that where software is "truly decentralized and solely automates peer-to-peer transactions," prosecutions under §1960(b)(1)(C) would not be approved. Yet Rodriguez, whose wallet was exactly that, decentralized and non-custodial, sits in prison.

The government has chosen to criminalize privacy technology not because it enables crime, but because it enables independence. Rodriguez's sentence wasn't about law enforcement. It was about sending a message: financial privacy itself is a permissioned privilege. The state wants everyone to know; *thou shalt not have financial privacy.*

## Privacy as Guilt

Judge Cote openly questioned whether Samourai Wallet had any legitimate non-criminal use. In her worldview, wanting to shield your transactions from surveillance is inherently suspect. Never mind the documented cases of kidnapping and blackmail targeting cryptocurrency users whose transaction histories are public. Never mind that Bitcoin's transparent blockchain allows anyone to track your financial life with forensic precision. Never mind that privacy is a fundamental human right recognized in international law.

If you want privacy, you must be hiding something criminal. Privacy, especially financial privacy, is now treated as inherently suspicious. To want it is to be labeled a criminal. If you build tools that provide it, you're facilitating crime. If you dare articulate a philosophical defense of privacy rights, you're morally blind to human suffering.

Meanwhile, genuine bad actors, megabanks, political insiders; launder money by the billions with impunity. This is the logic of totalitarian states, privacy is for criminals and elites alone. Everyone else lives under the watchful eye of Sauron.

## Why They Fear Your Privacy

The question we must ask is *why. *Why are the powers that be so terrified of ordinary people transacting privately? Why do they crush developers who give individuals tools of autonomy while turning a blind eye to institutional fraud?

Because the state doesn't see you as a free individual, it sees you as a taxable resource. Financial privacy represents independence from their fiat-based cage. It means you could say no to unjust wars, corrupt politicians, exploitative taxes, or monetary debasement, and they can't allow that.

Free people can say no. They can opt out of tyranny. They can build parallel systems outside state control. Slaves cannot. And a slave who can hide resources from the master? Unthinkable. This is why they hate Bitcoin. This is why privacy tools are criminalized. This is why every attack on financial privacy follows attacks on free speech: control the conversation, control the money, control the human.

## The Questions That Matter

If you can't spend your money privately, is it really your money?

If writing open-source code can put you in prison, are you truly free?

If privacy tools are treated as criminal infrastructure, how long until thought itself becomes a regulated service?

And when they finally roll out their programmable Central Bank Digital Currencies, will you still believe you have "nothing to hide"?

## "I Have Nothing to Hide"

The most common defense of surveillance is always the same: "I have nothing to hide." This is the refrain of the comfortable, the naive, or the historically illiterate. As Cardinal Richelieu warned: *"If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I will find something in them which will hang him."*

Think about that the next time you justify your own surveillance. The state doesn't need you to be guilty, only vulnerable.

Every transaction you make, every purchase you record, every financial decision logged in their databases, it's all ammunition for future Richelieus. Rodriguez wrote privacy software and used cash. That was enough to hang him. What will be enough to hang you?

## The Conclusion You Already Know

Financial privacy isn't a luxury for criminals and elites. Building privacy tools isn't a crime. But we live in a society where both are treated as threats to national security.

That's not civilization. That's an open-air prison where freedom exists only as state-sanctioned privilege, granted or revoked at will. Where judges openly question whether privacy has legitimate uses. Where using cash is evidence of guilt. Where maximum sentences await those who dare to code freedom into existence.

Financial privacy is a cornerstone of liberty. A world where privacy is treated as guilt and code as crime is not free. It's a minimum-security prison dressed up as a democracy, where obedience is mandatory and freedom is contraband.

The best bitcoin article is now on nostr #naddr1qq…s8j8

2025-11-08T13:46:28Z

In reply to nevent1q…503f
_________________________

The best bitcoin article is now on nostr

quoting
naddr1qq…s8j8

One luminary clock against the sky
Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.

—Robert Frost, Acquainted with the Night (1928)

Time is still the great mystery to us. It is no more than a concept; we don't know if it even exists...

—Clifford D. Simak, Shakespeare's Planet (1976)

Time is money, or so the saying goes. It follows that money is also time: a representation of the collective economic energy stored by humanity. However, the link between time and money is more intricate than it might seem at first. If money requires no time to create, it doesn't work as money very well, or not for long. More profoundly, as we shall see, keeping track of things in the informational realm always implies keeping track of time.

As soon as money goes digital, we have to agree on a definition of time, and herein lies the whole problem. You might think telling the time is as easy as glancing at whatever clock is nearby, and you would be right when it comes to everyday tasks. But when it comes to synchronizing the state of a global, adversarial, distributed network, telling the time becomes an almost intractable problem. How do you tell the time if clocks can't be trusted? How do you create the concept of a singular time if your system spans the galaxy? How do you measure time in a timeless realm? And what is time anyway?

To answer these questions, we will have to take a closer look at the concept of time itself and how Bitcoin makes up its own time: block time — more commonly known as block height. We will explore why the problem of timekeeping is intimately related to keeping records, why there is no absolute time in a decentralized system, and how Bitcoin uses causality and unpredictability to build its own sense of now.

Timekeeping devices have transformed civilizations more than once. As Lewis Mumford pointed out in 1934: "The clock, not the steam-engine, is the key-machine of the modern industrial age." Today, it is again a timekeeping device that is transforming our civilization: a clock, not computers, is the true key-machine of the modern informational age. And this clock is Bitcoin.

Keeping Track of Things

Let the child learn to count things, thus getting the notion of number. These things are, for the purpose of counting, considered alike, and they may be single objects or groups.

—David Eugene Smith, The Teaching of Elementary Mathematics (1900)

Very broadly speaking, there are two ways to keep track of things: physical tokens and ledgers. You can either use real-world artifacts directly, e.g., give someone a sea shell, a coin, or some other tangible thing, or you can replicate the state of the world by writing down what happened on a piece of paper.

Imagine you are a shepherd and want to make sure that your whole flock returned home. You can put a collar on each sheep, and as soon as a sheep returns home, you simply remove the collar and hang it up in your shed. If you have one hanger for every collar, you will know that every sheep returned safely as soon as all hangers are filled. Of course, you can also count them and keep a list. However, you will have to make sure to create a new list every time you start counting, and you will also have to make sure not to count a single sheep twice (or not at all).

Money is essentially a tool to keep track of who owes what to whom. Broadly speaking, everything we have used as money up to now falls into two categories: physical artifacts and informational lists. Or, to use more common parlance: tokens and ledgers.

It is important to realize the inherent difference of these categories, so let me point it out explicitly: The first method — a physical token — directly represents the state of things. The second one — a ledger — indirectly reflects the state of things. Each comes with advantages and disadvantages. For example, tokens are physical and distributed; ledgers are informational and centralized. Tokens are inherently trustless; ledgers are not.

In the digital realm — no matter how intensely marketing gurus try to convince you of the opposite — we can only use ledgers. It is an informational realm, not a physical one. Even if you call a certain kind of information a "token," it is still a malleable piece of information, written down on a hard drive or some other medium that can hold information, effectively rendering it an informational record.

The ledger-like nature of all digital information is the root cause of the double-spend problem. Information never represents the state of the world directly. Further, the movement of information implies copying. Information exists in one place, and to "move" it, you have to copy it to another place and erase it at its origin. This problem doesn't exist in the physical realm. In the physical realm, we can actually move things from A to B. The informational realm doesn't have this property. If you want to "move" information from list A to list B, you have to copy it from A to B. There is no other way.

Another way to think about it is in terms of uniqueness. Physical tokens are unique composites of atoms whose assembly is not easily replicable. Pure information does not have this property. If you can read the information, you can also copy it perfectly. Practically speaking, it follows that physical tokens are unique, and digital tokens are not. I would even argue that "digital token" is a misnomer. A token might represent secret information, but it will never represent unique, singular, uncopyable information.

This difference in properties shows that there really is no way to "hand over" information. It is impossible to pass on a digital token like you would pass on a physical one since you can never be sure if the original owner destroyed the information on his end. Digital tokens, like all information, can only be spread, like an idea.

... if you have an apple and I have an apple, and we swap apples — we each end up with only one apple. But if you and I have an idea and we swap ideas — we each end up with two ideas.

—Charles F. Brannan (1949)

Physical tokens — what we call physical bearer assets, or "cash" — are free from this dilemma. In the real world, if you hand me a coin, your coin is gone. There is no magical duplication of the coin, and the only way to give it to me is to physically hand it over. The laws of physics do not allow you to double-spend it.

While double-spending does exist in the non-digital realm — George Parker, a con artist who famously "double-spent" the Brooklyn Bridge and other landmarks comes to mind — it requires elaborate deception and gullible buyers. Not so in the digital realm.

In the digital realm, because we are always dealing with information, double-spending is an inherent problem. As everyone who ever copied a file or used copy-and-paste knows, information is something that you can copy perfectly, and it is not bound to the medium that hosts it. If you have a digital photograph, for example, you can copy it a million times, store some copies on a USB stick, and send it to thousands of different people. Perfect copies are possible because information allows for flawless error correction, which eliminates degradation. And to top things off, there is virtually no cost to duplication and no way to tell what the original was.

Again: when it comes to information, copying is all there is. There simply is no way to move digital information from A to B. Information is always copied from A to B, and if the copying process was successful, the original copy of A is deleted. This is why the double-spending problem is so tricky. Absent of a central authority, there is no way to move anything from A to B in a trustless manner. You always have to trust that the original will be deleted. A natural side-effect is that, when it comes to digital information, it is impossible to tell how many copies are in existence and where these copies might be.

Because of this, using digital "tokens" as money can not and will never work. Since tokens derive their reliability from being hard to reproduce as a result of their unique physical construction, this advantage disappears in the digital realm. In the digital realm, tokens cannot be trusted. As a result of the nature of information's intrinsic properties, the only viable format for digital money is not a token but a ledger — which brings us to the problem of time.

Tokens Are Timeless, Ledgers Are Not

For the things seen are temporary, but the things unseen are everlasting.

—Paul of Tarsus, Corinthians 4:18b

When it comes to physical tokens, the time of a transaction does not matter. You either have the coins in your pocket, or you don't; you can either spend them, or you can't. The simple act of possession is the only prerequisite for spending. The laws of nature take care of the rest. In that sense, physical tokens are trustless and timeless.

When it comes to ledgers, physical possession falls to the wayside. Whoever is in control of the ledger needs to make sure that things are in order. What is otherwise given by physical laws, namely that you can't spend money that you don't have and you can't spend money that you have already spent previously, has to be enforced by man-made rules. It is these rules that govern the orderly operation and maintenance of a ledger, not physical laws.

Moving from physical laws to man-made rules is the crux of the matter. Man-made rules can be bent and broken, physical laws not so much. For example, you can't simply "make up" a physical gold coin. You have to dig it out of the ground. You can, however, absolutely make up a gold coin on paper. To do this, you simply add an entry to the ledger and give yourself a couple of coins. Or, in the case of central banks, simply add a couple trillion with a few computer keystrokes. (Fancy financial people call this "Rehypothecation," "Fractional Reserve Banking," or "Quantitative Easing" — but don't be fooled, it's all the same: making up money.)

To keep ledgers and those who manipulate them honest, regular, independent audits are required. The ability to account for every single entry in a ledger is not a luxury. Auditors need to be able to go over the books — backward in time — to keep ledgers honest and functioning. Without reliable timestamps, verifying the internal consistency of a ledger is impossible. A mechanism to establish an unambiguous order is essential.

Without an absolute sense of time, there is no way to have a defined order of transaction. And without a defined order of transactions, the rules of a ledger can not be followed. How else can you make sure how much money you actually have? How else can you make sure that things are in order?

The distinction between tokens and ledgers highlights the necessity for keeping track of time. In the physical realm, coins are timeless artifacts that can be exchanged without oversight. In the digital realm, coinstamping requires timestamping.

Centralized Coinstamping

Time: a great engraver, or eraser.

—Yahia Lababidi (b. 1973)

The common way to solve the double-spending problem — the problem of making sure that a digital transfer only happens once — is to have a central list of transactions. Once you have a central list of transactions, you have a single ledger that can act as the sole source of truth. Solving the double-spending problem is as easy as going through the list and making sure that everything adds up correctly. This is how PayPal, Venmo, Alipay, and all the banks of this world — including central banks — solve the double-spending problem: via central authority.

The problem of course is the payee can't verify that one of the owners did not double-spend the coin. A common solution is to introduce a trusted central authority, or mint, that checks every transaction for double-spending. [...] The problem with this solution is that the fate of the entire money system depends on the company running the mint, with every transaction having to go through them, just like a bank.

—Satoshi Nakamoto (2009)

It is worth pointing out that Satoshi didn't manage to make information non-copyable. Every part of bitcoin — its source code, the ledger, your private key — can be copied. All of it can be duplicated and tampered with. However, Satoshi managed to build a system that makes rule-breaking copies completely and utterly useless. The Bitcoin network performs an intricate dance to decide which copies are useful and which aren't, and it is this dance that brings scarcity into the digital realm. And like with every dance, a temporal measuring stick is required to dictate the rhythm.

Even a centralized ledger can only solve the double-spending problem if it has a consistent way to keep track of time. You always need to know who gave how much to whom and, most importantly: when. In the realm of information, there is no coin-stamping without time-stamping.

It must be stressed that the impossibility of associating events with points in time in distributed systems was the unsolved problem that precluded a decentralized ledger from ever being possible until Satoshi Nakamoto invented a solution.

—Gregory Trubetskoy (2018)

Decentralized Time

Time brings all things to pass.

—Aeschylus (525 BC -- 456 BC)

Time and order have a very intimate relationship. As Leslie Lamport pointed out in his 1978 paper Time, Clocks, and the Ordering of Events in a Distributed System: "The concept of time is fundamental to our way of thinking. It is derived from the more basic concept of the order in which events occur." Absent a central point of coordination, seemingly intuitive notions of "before," "after," and "simultaneously" break down. In the words of Lamport: "the concept of 'happening before' defines an invariant partial ordering of the events in a distributed multiprocess system."

Phrased differently: Who should be in charge of time if putting someone in charge is not allowed? How can you have a reliable clock if there is no central frame of reference?

You might think that solving this problem is easy because everyone could just use their own clock. This only works if everyone's clock is accurate, and, more importantly, everyone plays nice. In an adversarial system, relying on individual clocks would be a disaster. And, because of relativity, it does not work consistently across space.

As a thought experiment, imagine how you could cheat the system if everyone was in charge of keeping the time for themselves. You could pretend that the transaction you're sending now is actually from yesterday — it just got delayed for some reason — thus, you would still have all the money that you've spent today. Because of the asynchronous communication that is inherent in every decentralized system, this scenario is more than a theoretical thought experiment. Messages do indeed get delayed, timestamps are inaccurate, and thanks to relativistic effects and the natural speed limit of our universe, it is anything but easy to tell apart the order of things absent of a central authority or observer.

Who's there? Knock knock.

—An Asynchronous Joke

To better illustrate the impossibility of the problem, let's look at a concrete example. Imagine that you and your business partner both have access to your company bank account. You do business all over the world, so your bank account is in Switzerland, you are in New York, and your business partner is in Sydney. For you, it is January 3^rd^, and you are enjoying a beautiful Sunday evening at your hotel. For her, it's Monday morning already, so she decides to buy breakfast using the debit card of your shared bank account. The cost is $27. The available balance is $615. The local time is 8:21 am.

At the same time, you are about to pay for your stay with another debit card linked to the same bank account. The cost is $599. The available balance is $615. The local time is 5:21 pm.

So it comes to be that — at exactly the same moment — you both swipe the card. What happens? (Dear physicists, please excuse my use of "the same moment" — we will ignore relativistic effects and the fact that there is no absolute time in our universe for now. We will also ignore that the concept of synchronous events doesn't really exist. Bitcoin is complicated enough as it is!)

The central ledger at your bank will probably receive one transaction before the other one, so one of you will be lucky, the other not so much. If the transactions happen to arrive in the same *tick* — let's say in the same millisecond — the bank would have to decide who gets to spend the money.

Now, what would happen if there was no bank? Who decides who was the first one to swipe? What if it wasn't only you two, but hundreds or even thousands of people coordinating? What if you didn't trust those people? What if some of those people are trying to cheat, e.g., by setting their clocks back so that it looks like they spent the money a couple of minutes earlier?

A time-related tool [is] needed to establish a canonical ordering and to enforce a unique history in the absence of any central coordinator.

—Giacomo Zucco, Discovering Bitcoin (2019)

This problem is precisely why all previous attempts of digital cash required a centralized registry. You always had to trust someone to correctly identify the order of things. A centralized party was required to keep the time.

Bitcoin solves this problem by re-inventing time itself. It says no to seconds and yes to blocks.

Keeping the Time, One Block at a Time

Time's glory is to calm contending kings,
To unmask falsehood and bring truth to light,
To stamp the seal of time in aged things,
To wake the morn and sentinel the night,
To wrong the wronger till he render right;

—William Shakespeare, The Rape of Lucrece (1594)

All clocks rely on periodic processes, something that we might call a "tick." The familiar tick-tock of a grandfather's clock is, in essence, the same as the molecular-atomic buzzing of our modern Quartz and Caesium clocks. Something swings — or oscillates — and we simply count these swings until it adds up to a minute or a second.

For large pendulum clocks, these swings are long and easy to see. For smaller and more specialized clocks, special equipment is required. The frequency of a clock — how often it ticks — depends on its use-case.

Most clocks have a fixed frequency. After all, we want to know the time precisely. There are, however, clocks that have a variable frequency. A metronome, for example, has a variable frequency that you can set before you make it tick. While a metronome keeps its pace constant once it is set, Bitcoin's time varies for each tick because its internal mechanism is probabilistic. The purpose, however, is all the same: keep the music alive, so the dance can continue.

Clock Tick Frequency

Grandfather's clock ~0.5 Hz

Metronome ~0.67 Hz to ~4.67 Hz

Quartz watch 32768 Hz

Caesium-133 atomic clock 9,192,631,770 Hz

Bitcoin 1 block (0.00000192901 Hz* to ∞ Hz**)

* first block (6 days)
** timestamps between blocks can show a negative delta

The fact that Bitcoin is a clock is hiding in plain sight. Indeed, Satoshi points out that the Bitcoin network as a whole acts as a clock, or, in his words: a distributed timestamp server.

In this paper, we propose a solution to the double-spending problem using a peer-to-peer distributed timestamp server to generate computational proof of the chronological order of transactions.

—Satoshi Nakamoto (2009)

That timestamping was the root problem to be solved is also apparent by examining the reference at the end of the Bitcoin whitepaper. Out of the eight references in total, three are about timestamping:

How to time-stamp a digital document by S. Haber, W.S. Stornetta (1991)

Improving the efficiency and reliability of digital time-stamping by D. Bayer, S. Haber, W.S. Stornetta (1992)

Design of a secure timestamping service with minimal trust requirements by H. Massias, X.S. Avila, and J.-J. Quisquater (May 1999)

As Haber and Stornetta outlined in 1991, digital time-stamping is about computationally practical procedures that make it infeasible for a user — or an adversary, for that matter — to either back-date or forward-date a digital document. Contrary to physical documents, digital documents are easy to tamper with, and the change doesn't necessarily leave any tell-tale signs on the physical medium itself. In the digital realm, forgeries and manipulations can be perfect.

The malleable nature of information makes time-stamping digital documents an elaborate and sophisticated process. Naive solutions do not work. Take a text document, for example. You can't simply add the date at the end of the document since everyone — including yourself — could simply change the date in the future. You could also make up any date in the first place.

Time is a Causal Chain

In an extreme view, the world can be seen as only connections, nothing else.

—Tim Berners-Lee, Weaving the Web (1999)

Making up dates is a general problem, even in the non-digital realm. What is known in the kidnapping world as "Authentication by Newspaper" is a general solution to the problem of arbitrary timestamps.

This works because a newspaper is hard to fake and easy to verify. It is hard to fake because today's front page refers to yesterday's events, events that could not have been predicted by the kidnapper if the picture would be weeks old. By proxy of these events, the picture is proof that the hostage was still alive on the day the newspaper came out.

This method highlights one of the key concepts when it comes to time: causality. The arrow of time describes the causal relationship of events. No causality, no time. Causality is also the reason why cryptographic hash functions are so crucial when it comes to timestamping documents in cyberspace: they introduce a causal relationship. Since it is practically impossible to create a valid cryptographic hash without having the document in the first place, a causal relationship between the document and the hash is introduced: the data in question existed first, the hash was generated later. In other words: without the computational irreversibility of one-way functions, there would be no causality in cyberspace.

With this causal building block in place, one can come up with schemes that create a chain of events, causally linking A to B to C and so on. In that sense, secure digital timestamping moves us from a timeless place in the ether into the realm of digital history.

Causality fixes events in time. If an event was determined by certain earlier events, and determines certain subsequent events, then the event is sandwiched securely into its place in history.

—Bayer, Haber, Stornetta (1992)

It goes without saying that causality is of the utmost importance when it comes to economic calculations. And since a ledger is nothing but the embodiment of economic calculations of multiple cooperating participants, causality is essential for every ledger.

We need a system for participants to agree on a single history [...]. The solution we propose begins with a timestamp server.

—Satoshi Nakamoto (2009)

It is fascinating that all of the puzzle pieces that make Bitcoin work did already exist. As early as 1991, Haber and Stornetta introduced two schemes that make it "difficult or impossible to produce false time-stamps." The first relies on a trusted third party; the second, more elaborate "distributed trust" scheme, does not. The authors even identified the inherent problems of trusting a causal chain of events and what would be required to rewrite history. In their words, "the only possible spoof is to prepare a fake chain of time-stamps, long enough to exhaust the most suspicious challenger that one anticipates." A similar attack vector exists in Bitcoin today, in the form of a 51% attack (more on that in a later chapter).

One year later, Bayer, Haber, and Stornetta built upon their previous work and proposed to use trees instead of simple linked lists to tie events together. What we know as Merkle Trees today are simply efficient data structures to create a hash from multiple hashes deterministically. For timestamping, this means that you can efficiently bundle multiple events into one "tick." In the same paper, the authors propose that the distributed trust model introduced in 1991 could be improved by carrying out a recurring "world championship tournament" to determine a single "winner" who widely publishes the resulting hash somewhere public, like a newspaper. Sounds familiar?

As we shall see, it turns out that newspapers are also an excellent way to think about the second ingredient of time: unpredictability.

Causality and Unpredictability

Time is not a reality [hupostasis], but a concept [noêma] or a measure [metron]...

—Antiphon the Sophist, On Truth (3rd century AD)

While causality is essential, it is not sufficient. We also need unpredictability for time to flow. In the physical realm, we observe natural processes to describe the flow of time. We observe a general increase in entropy and call that the arrow of time. Even though the laws of nature seem to be oblivious in regards to the direction of this arrow in most cases, certain things can't be undone, practically speaking. You can't unscramble an egg, as they say.

Similarly, entropy-increasing functions are required to establish an arrow of time in the digital realm. Just like it is practically impossible to unscramble an egg, it is practically impossible to unscramble a SHA256 hash or cryptographic signature.

Without this increase in entropy, we could go forward and backward in time willy-nilly. The sequence of Fibonacci Numbers, for example, is causal but not entropic. Every number in the sequence is caused by the two numbers that came before it. In that sense, it is a causal chain. However, it is not useful to tell the time because it is entirely predictable. In the same way that a kidnapper can't simply stand in front of a calendar that shows the current date, we can't use predictable processes as proof of time. We always have to rely on something that can't be predicted in advance, like the front page of today's newspaper.

Bitcoin relies upon two sources of unpredictability: transactions and proof-of-work. Just like nobody can predict what tomorrow's newspaper will look like, nobody can predict what the next Bitcoin block will look like. You can't predict what transactions are going to be included because you can't predict what transactions are going to be broadcast in the future. And, more importantly, you can't predict who will find the solution to the current proof-of-work puzzle and what this solution will be.

In contrast to the kidnapper's newspaper, however, proof-of-work is physically linked to what happened directly. It is not just a record of an event — it is the event itself. It is the probabilistic directness of proof-of-work that removes trust from the equation. The only way to find a valid proof-of-work is by making a lot of guesses, and making a single guess takes a little bit of time. The probabilistic sum of these guesses is what builds up the timechain that is Bitcoin.

By utilizing the causality of hash-chains and the unpredictability of proof-of-work, the Bitcoin network provides a mechanism for establishing an indisputable history of events witnessed. Without causality, what came before and what came after is impossible to tease apart. Without unpredictability, causality is meaningless.

What is intuitively understood by every kidnapper was explicitly pointed out by Bayer, Haber, and Stornetta in 1992: "To establish that a document was created after a given moment in time, it is necessary to report events that could not have been predicted before they happened."

It is the combination of causality and unpredictability that allows the creation of an artificial "now" in the otherwise timeless digital realm. As Bayer, Haber, and Stornetta point out in their 1991 paper: "the sequence of clients requesting time-stamps and the hashes they submit cannot be known in advance. So if we include bits from the previous sequence of client requests in the signed certificate, then we know that the time-stamp occurred after these requests. [...] But the requirement of including bits from previous documents in the certificate also can be used to solve the problem of constraining the time in the other direction, because the time-stamping company cannot issue later certificates unless it has the current request in hand."

All the puzzle pieces were already there. What Satoshi managed to do is put them together in a way that removes the "time-stamping company" from the equation.

Proof of Time

Causa latet: vis est notissima.
The cause is hidden, but the result is known.

—Ovid, Metamorphoses, IV. 287 (8 AD)

Let us recapitulate: to use money in the digital realm, we have to rely on ledgers. To make ledgers reliable, unambiguous order is required. To establish order, timestamps are necessary. Thus, if we want to have trustless money in the digital realm, we must remove any entity that creates and manages timestamps and any single entity that is in charge of time itself.

It took a genius like Satoshi Nakamoto to realize the solution: "To implement a distributed timestamp server on a peer-to-peer basis, we will need to use a proof-of-work system similar to Adam Back's Hashcash."

We need to use a proof-of-work system because we need something that is native to the digital realm. Once you understand that the digital realm is informational in nature, the obvious conclusion is that computation is all we have. If your world is made of data, manipulation of data is all there is.

Proof-of-work works in a peer-to-peer setting because it is trustless, and it is trustless because it is disconnected from all external inputs — such as the readings of clocks (or newspapers, for that matter). It relies on one thing and one thing only: computation requires work, and in our universe, work requires energy and time.

Bridging Times

I know it works for me.
As we cross the bridge — the burning bridge —
With flames behind us,
We front the line.
It's you and me, baby, against the world.

—Kate Bush, Burning Bridge (1985)

Without proof-of-work, one would always run into the Oracle problem because the physical realm and the informational realm are eternally disconnected. The markings on your list of sheep aren't your sheep, the map is not the territory, and whatever was written in yesterday's newspaper isn't necessarily what happened in the real world. In the same manner, just because you use a real-world clock to write down a timestamp doesn't mean that this is actually what the time was.

Put bluntly, there simply is no way to trust that data represents reality, except if the reality in question is inherent in the data itself. The brilliant thing about Bitcoin's difficulty-adjusted proof-of-work is that it creates its own reality, along with its own space and time.

Proof-of-work provides a direct connection between the digital realm and the physical realm. More profoundly, it is the only connection that can be established in a trustless manner. Everything else will always rely on external inputs.

The difficulty to mine a new Bitcoin block is adjusted to make sure that the thin thread between Bitcoin's time and our time remains intact. Like clockwork, the mining difficulty readjusts every 2016 ticks. The goal of this readjustment is to keep the average time between ticks at ten minutes. It is these ten minutes that maintain a stable connection between the physical and the informational realm. Consequently, a sense of human time is required to readjust the ticks of the Bitcoin clock. A purely block-based readjustment wouldn't work since it would be completely disconnected from our human world, and the whole purpose of the readjustment is to stop us ingenious humans from finding blocks too fast (or too slow).

As Einstein has shown us, time is not a static thing. There is no such thing as a universal time we could rely upon. Time is relative, and simultaneity is nonexistent. This fact alone makes all timestamps — especially across large distances — inherently unreliable, even without adversarial actors. (This is why timestamps of GPS satellites have to be adjusted constantly, by the way.)

For Bitcoin, the fact that our human timestamps are imprecise doesn't matter too much. It also doesn't matter that we have no absolute reference frame in the first place. They only have to be precise enough to calculate a somewhat reliable average across 2016 blocks. To guarantee that, a block's "meatspace" timestamp is only accepted if it fulfills two criteria:

The timestamp has to be greater than the median timestamp of the previous 11 blocks.

The timestamp has to be less than the network-adjusted time plus two hours. (The "network-adjusted time" is simply the median of the timestamps returned by all nodes connected to you.)

In other words, the difficulty-adjustment is about keeping a constant time, not a constant level of security, difficulty, or energy expenditure. This is ingenious because good money has to be costly in time, not energy. Linking money to energy alone is not sufficient to produce absolute scarcity since every improvement in energy generation would allow us to create more money. Time is the only thing we will never be able to make more of. It is The Ultimate Resource, as Julian Simon points out. This makes Bitcoin the ultimate form of money because its issuance is directly linked to the ultimate resource of our universe: time.

The difficulty adjustment is essential because, without it, the internal clock of Bitcoin would tend to go faster and faster as more miners join the network or the efficiency of mining devices improves. We would quickly run into the coordination problem that Bitcoin sets out to solve. As soon as the block time falls below a certain threshold, say, 50 milliseconds, it would be impossible to agree on a shared state, even in theory. It takes light around 66 milliseconds to travel from one side of the earth to the other. Thus, even if our computers and routers were perfect, we would be back at square one: given two events, it would be futile to tell which event happened before and which event happened after. Without a periodic adjustment of Bitcoin's ticks, we would run into the hopeless problem of solving the coordination problem faster than the speed of light. Time is also at the root of the problem of cryptographic instability, which was outlined in Chapter 1. Cryptography works because of an asymmetry in time: it takes a short time to build a cryptographic wall and a long time to break it down — unless you have a key.

Thus, in some sense, proof-of-work — and the difficulty adjustment that goes along with it — artificially slows down time, at least from the perspective of the Bitcoin network. In other words: Bitcoin enforces an internal rhythm whose low frequency allows ample buffer for the latency of communications between peers. Every 2016 blocks, Bitcoin's internal clock readjusts, so that — on average — only one valid block will be found every 10 minutes.

From an outside perspective, Bitcoin funnels the chaotic mess of globally broadcast asynchronous messages into a parallel universe, restricted by its own rules and its own sense of space and time. Transactions in the mempool are timeless from the point-of-view of the Bitcoin network. Only when a transaction is included in a valid block does it get assigned a time: the number of the block it is included in.

It is hard to overstate how elegant a solution this is. Once you are able to create your own definition of time, deciphering what came before and what came after is trivial. In turn, agreeing on what happened, in what order, and, consequently, who owes what to whom, becomes trivial as well.

The difficulty adjustment makes sure that the ticks of Bitcoin's internal metronome are somewhat constant. It is the conductor of the Bitcoin orchestra. It is what keeps the music alive.

But why can we rely on work in the first place? The answer is threefold. We can rely on it because computation requires work, work requires time, and the work in question — guessing random numbers — can not be done efficiently.

Probabilistic Time

Time forks perpetually toward innumerable futures.

—Jorge Luis Borges, The Garden of Forking Paths (1941)

Finding a valid nonce for a Bitcoin block is a guessing game. It is very much like rolling a die, or flipping a coin, or spinning a roulette wheel. You are, in essence, trying to find a beyond-astronomically large random number. There is no progress toward finding a solution. You either hit the jackpot, or you don't.

Every time you flip a coin, the chance of it coming up heads or tails is 50% — even if you flipped it twenty times before, and it came up heads every time. Similarly, every time you wait for a bitcoin block to come in, the chance that it will be found this second is ~0.16%. It doesn't matter when the last block was found. The approximate waiting time for the next block is always the same: ~10 minutes.

It follows that every individual tick of this clock is unpredictable. Relative to our human clocks, this clock appears to be spontaneous and imprecise. This is irrelevant, as Gregory Trubetskoy points out: "It doesn't matter that this clock is imprecise. What matters is that it is the same clock for everyone and that the state of the chain can be tied unambiguously to the ticks of this clock." Bitcoin's clock might be probabilistic, but it isn't illusory.

Time is an illusion,
lunchtime doubly so.

—Douglas Adams (1979)

The present moment, however, can absolutely be an illusion in Bitcoin. Since there is no central authority in the network, strange situations can arise. While unlikely, it is possible that two valid blocks are found at the same time (again: apologies to all physicists), which will make the clock tick forward in two different places at once. However, since the two different blocks will very likely differ in their content, they will contain two different histories, both equally valid.

This is known as a chain split and is a natural process of Nakamoto consensus. Like a flock of birds that briefly splits in two only to merge again, nodes on the Bitcoin network will eventually converge to a shared history after some time, thanks to the probabilistic nature of guessing.

Nakamoto consensus simply states that the correct history is to be found in the heaviest chain, i.e., the chain with the most amount of proof-of-work embedded in it. Thus, if we have two histories A and B, some miners will try to build upon history A, others will try to build upon history B. As soon as one of them finds the next valid block, the other group is programmed to accept that they were on the wrong side of history and switch over to the heaviest chain — the chain that represents what actually happened, by definition. In Bitcoin, history is truly written by the victors.

The payee needs proof that at the time of each transaction, the majority of nodes agreed it was the first received. [...] When there are multiple double-spent versions of the same transaction, one and only one will become valid. The receiver of a payment must wait an hour or so before believing that it's valid. The network will resolve any possible double-spend races by then.

—Satoshi Nakamoto (2009)

In this simple statement lies the secret of the distributed coordination problem. This is how Satoshi solved the problem of the "simultaneous payment" our fictitious business partners encountered previously. He solved it once and for all, relativistic effects be damned!

Because of this probabilistic nature of Bitcoin's clock, the present moment — what we call the chain tip — is always uncertain. The past — blocks buried below the chain tip — is ever more certain.

The more thorough the understanding needed, the further back in time one must go.

—Gordon Clark, A Christian View of Men and Things, p. 58. (1951)

Consequently, the Bitcoin clock might rewind from time to time, for some peers, for a tick or two. If your chain tip — the present moment — happens to lose to a competing chain tip, your clock will first rewind and then jump forward, overriding the last few ticks that you thought were history already. If your clock is probabilistic, your understanding of the past has to be too.

Tick tock tick tock tick — what is the time?
Tick tock tick tock... it ends in c619.
Are you sure this is fine? Are we probably late?
Absolutes do not matter: before nine there comes eight.
The clock isn't exact; it sometimes goes in reverse.
Exact time implies center; that's the root of this curse!
Yet this clock keeps on ticking, tock-tick and tick-tock,
there's no profit in tricking; just tick-tock and next block.

—A Funny Little Rhyme on Bitcoin and Time (2020)

Conclusion

Time is still one of the great mysteries in physics, one that calls into question the very definition of what physics is.

—Jorge Cham and Daniel Whiteson: We Have No Idea: A Guide to the Unknown Universe, pp. 117 -- 118 (2017)

Keeping track of things in the informational realm implies keeping track of a sequence of events, which in turn requires keeping track of time. Keeping track of time requires agreeing on a "now" — a moment in time that eternally links the settled past with the uncertain future. In Bitcoin, this "now" is the tip of the heaviest proof-of-work chain.

Two building blocks are essential for the structure of time: causal links and unpredictable events. Causal links are required to define a past, and unpredictable events are required to build a future. If the sequence of events would be predictable, it would be possible to skip ahead. If the individual steps of the sequence aren't linked, it would be trivial to change the past. Because of its internal sense of time, it is insanely difficult to cheat Bitcoin. One would have to rewrite the past or predict the future. Bitcoin's timechain prevents both.

Viewing Bitcoin through the lens of time should make clear that the "block chain" — the data structure that causally links multiple events together — is not the main innovation. It is not even a new idea, as is evident by studying the timestamp literature of the past.

A blockchain is a chain of blocks.

—Peter Todd

What is a new idea — what Satoshi figured out — is how to independently agree upon a history of events without central coordination. He found a way to implement a decentralised timestamping scheme that (a) doesn't require a time-stamping company or server, (b) doesn't require a newspaper or any other physical medium as proof, and (c) can keep the ticks more-or-less constant, even when operating in an environment of ever-faster CPU clock times.

Timekeeping requires causality, unpredictability, and coordination. In Bitcoin, causality is provided by one-way functions: the cryptographic hash functions and digital signatures that are at the core of the protocol. Unpredictability is provided by both the proof-of-work puzzle as well as the interaction with other peers: you can't know in advance what others are doing, and you can't know in advance what the solution to the proof-of-work puzzle will be. Coordination is made possible by the difficulty adjustment, the magic sauce that links Bitcoin's time to ours. Without this bridge between the physical and the informational realm, it would be impossible to agree on a time by relying on nothing but data.

Bitcoin is time in more ways than one. Its units are stored time because they are money, and its network is time because it is a decentralized clock. The relentless beating of this clock is what gives rise to all the magical properties of Bitcoin. Without it, Bitcoin's intricate dance would fall apart. But with it, everyone on earth has access to something truly marvelous: Magic Internet Money.

This article first appeared on dergigi.com.

Clock	Tick Frequency
Grandfather's clock	~0.5 Hz
Metronome	~0.67 Hz to ~4.67 Hz
Quartz watch	32768 Hz
Caesium-133 atomic clock	9,192,631,770 Hz
Bitcoin	1 block (0.00000192901 Hz* to ∞ Hz**)

You mean , just like their Operating System??? #nevent1q…xgsr

2025-11-08T13:37:02Z

In reply to nevent1q…dp9f
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You mean , just like their Operating System???

quoting
nevent1q…xgsr
⚡️💻 NEW - Microsoft AI says it’ll make superintelligent AI that won’t be terrible for humanity | A new team will focus on creating AI “designed only to serve humanity.”

Why ‘they’ want to BAN cash ...

2025-11-08T13:36:11Z

In reply to nevent1q…yp5y
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Why ‘they’ want to BAN cash

I don't know about you guys, but I find watching ghost guns ...

2025-11-03T03:13:18Z

In reply to nevent1q…xusc
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I don't know about you guys, but I find watching ghost guns very satisfying.

#Agorism #Libertarian #Antistate #AnCap #DontTreadOnMe #Gunstr #2A #SecondAmendment #3D2A #RightToBearArms #ShallNotBeInfringed #DontTreadOnMe #ProGun #StayStrapped #SelfDefense #NonAggressionPrinciple #NAP #3DPrinting #Video #Videostr

@nprofile…m4p2 my faithful and loyal friend 😂💜💜 ...

2025-11-03T03:10:16Z

In reply to nevent1q…jdt0
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bevo (nprofile…m4p2) my faithful and loyal friend 😂💜💜

Nostr is incredibly well positioned in this front ...

2025-11-03T01:48:36Z

In reply to nevent1q…4dv7
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Nostr is incredibly well positioned in this front

Bloody brilliant #meme Mr Potter ...

2025-11-03T01:47:20Z

In reply to nevent1q…g804
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Bloody brilliant #meme Mr Potter